Trenchless Pioneers: John Mercer
Trenchless Pioneers is a special monthly series sharing with readers the trailblazers who grew and expanded the trenchless industry.
John Mercer has had a unique seat to the growth and evolution of the horizontal directional drilling (HDD) market. He played pivotal roles in the development of small HDD rigs, as well as the locators that followed the path of those early bores. And he founded the global company Digital Control Inc. (DCI) during the mid-1990s, which has set the standard for locating equipment.
He is the embodiment of a Trenchless Pioneer.
Mercer worked for Flow Mole during the 1970s — the early years of HDD when Martin Cherrington made his now famous first HDD crossing. The company was researching a way to replace the power and cable lines in areas where easements weren’t accessible, and a small footprint was critical. Mercer and FlowMole created the GuideDrill, a small drill with 1,600 lbs of thrust that used 1-in. drill pipe that could be taken into neighborhoods to install the lines; a cable locator was used to track the underground pipe.
“Martin Cherrington was doing river crossings with a horizontal directional drill rig. All the systems at that time lacked accurate guidance and generally needed multiple potholes to find the boring device at the terminus of the run. These devices did not qualify for operating in a narrow easement where other utilities were present,” Mercer says.
Mercer focused on a scaled down version of the rig that Cherrington used to maneuver in the confinement of the easements. “I needed to be able to have continuous steering, so I designed a drill head with an offset front end, like a chisel,” he says. “The head was designed so that it could turn in the drilled hole without wobbling to prevent stress on the drill string. Steering was accomplished by orienting the offset on the head in the direction that the drill had to move and then pushing the drill string forward. The device used a high-pressure bentonite solution forced through a small diameter nozzle to cut the sediment. Keyed drill pipe was used so that the drill head orientation could be set using the drill chuck orientation.”
At the time, the orientation nomenclature for drill orientation came from the oil industry — azimuth, elevation and tool face angle. Mercer believed better terminology was needed for HDD and leaned on his background in aeronautics to introduce new nomenclature: yaw, pitch and roll. “The terminology stuck and is used today,” he says.
After some skepticism from utilities about being able to install 160 ft of cable with only small entry and exit pits, they came around. “Soon, the HDD technique for installing not only electrical cables, but other utilities, as well, started to be accepted,” Mercer says.
After leaving FlowMole, Mercer set out to develop an advanced locator to address the shortcomings of using a cable locator for locating the dipole transmitter. DCI was born with that idea in mind and he developed the industry-changing Digitrak locating system that soared the industry to new levels of efficiency, accuracy and success. Over the years, upgrades and new innovations have led to a faster, more accurate system for drillers.
“When I was developing the first DigiTrak, my office and laboratory were a spare room in my home. My wife did the company incorporation, which was named Digital Control inc. and she kept track of the expenses,” Mercer says. “It was a two-person company until Peter Hambling joined us in late 1990 when the protype locator was about complete.”
Hambling helped to secure DCI’s first customer, StraightLine Mfg. and later established a sales relationship with Vermeer, a partnership that holds true today. But for Mercer, the time to let the next generation take hold of the DCI reigns had come.
The true legacy is who is at the helm of DCI today, Mercer says. Both he and Hambling have stepped back from their day-to-day roles at DCI, but remain part of its board. Their sons (Mercer’s son Matt and Hambling’s son Colin) stepped into their fathers’ shoes and have their sights set on taking the company to its next level of success.
“Peter and I took DCI through the entrepreneurial stage, but it was time to take the company through the development stage,” Mercer says. “The company has done well with Matt and Colin at the helm. DCI is truly a second-generation company. Recently, DCI was awarded as one of the top 100 companies in Washington to work for.”
Sharon M. Bueno is editor of Trenchless Technology.
