mike mcclaran
Builds Successful Business In Second Career As Loader/Backhoe Owner/Operator
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By Tammy Boone
Photos By Terica Messmer

Starting your own business as a second career may not be the easiest thing for some people to do, but for Mike McClaran, it has worked out for the best. When Mike started work as an owner/operator 20 years ago, doing business as McClaran Equipment, Inc., it wasn’t the typical start-up story. Mike had no background in construction, and at that time was working at TRW Inc., a global manufacturing and service company that provides high technology and engineering products and services to the aerospace and other industries.

As Mike tells it, he just didn’t like working indoors, and on whim, he bought a 10-wheel dump truck, breaking the news to his wife Kathy with the pink slip for the truck in hand. He spent his first year hauling for a pipeline company. He said he took any chance he could get to jump on a backhoe.”

After that first year of business, he took yet another risk. He then purchased a trailer and his first of five Case loader/backhoes. “I pretty much am self-taught on the equipment by working on the jobs,” Mike says.

(Top & Above) A trench leading to a hole for a new Edison vault.

These days, Mike works as a sub-contractor, trenching for underground dry utilities. Much of his work is for phone and power utilities, working on projects for Southern California Edison, Verizon and AT&T.

Mike works wherever the
job takes him throughout California. He has worked
as far south as Chula Vista, close to the Mexican border, all the way north to Oakland. Mike and his wife operate their business from their home in Yorba Linda.

Mike purchased his most recent Case loader/backhoe in December 2006 from Jacob Sanchez at D3 Equipment in Santa Fe Springs. It is a fully equipped 580SM-2.     

According to Case’s website, their M Series
2 line features “hydraulic loader and backhoe
quick-couplers for faster attachment changes from the cab.” The M Series
2 line of backhoes also “delivers all the power you need with fine control” and Case’s exclusive Pro Control System “lets you feel your way through backhoe functions and allows you to quickly position the bucket with pinpoint accuracy.”

Mike has been very pleased with all the Case equipment he has owned. “I’ve had great success with the equipment,” he explains. “I’ve had little to no downtime with each piece of equipment I’ve owned.
I don’t think I ever had my last backhoe in the shop.

“I wouldn’t have traded my last Case in, but Kathy insisted I get a machine with an enclosed cab with air conditioning and heat,” Mike continues. “Buying another Case was an easy decision for me. It’s the kind of thing that when you find something you like and you stick with it.”

Mike is currently working on a project in Palm Springs digging trenches for communication lines going into a Southern California Edison sub-station. This job will take approximately a week.

One of Mike’s biggest jobs was for a project that he worked on for about six months solid. He says there aren’t too many jobs that size these days. A more typical big job for him lasts anywhere from one to two months. He recently worked on a job located in Beaumont where he dug 18,000 lineal feet of sub-trench. That job lasted about six weeks.

Throughout his time as an owner/operator, Mike says he has always stayed busy. He mainly works for two general contractors that he says are both great companies with great people.

Mike feels that because he’s been in the business for so long, there aren’t many challenges, although he says, “When they do come up, I enjoy it. I still learn things all the time.

“I love what I do,” he continues. “It’s like being able to play in the dirt all day with life-size Tonka trucks.”

Kathy handles all the office and paper work for McClaran Equipment, Inc. She jokes that she owns the company and Mike works for her.

On a more serious note, she says that even though Mike doesn’t talk much about it, she hears back constantly from people he has met on various jobs and from longtime friends that are amazed at the work Mike can do with his loader/backhoe. They tell her that when they come up against a problem and think it can’t be done, Mike can do it.

“I was a little afraid when he left TRW to drive a dump truck, and again when he bought the first backhoe, but everything he’s done has been successful.” says Kathy. Cc