BURLINGTON, N.C. — Former rental company and dealership owner Tom Coble has returned to rentals in a big way with the expansion of Coble Trench Safety, an underground safety rental company. Headquartered in Burlington, N.C., Coble Trench Safety already has branches in Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro, servicing municipalities, general contractors and state contract holders with equipment rentals, sales, service and training. Coble plans to expand his company throughout the Southeast.
“We serve the industry by saving our clients time, money and lives through offering knowledge in addition to renting, selling and servicing trench safety equipment,” Coble said. “We're in the business of preventing accidents. Our OSHA-compliant training classes help our customers through teaching them about working safely underground.”
Coble, who sold his Greensboro, N.C.-based Coble Cranes & Equipment/Coble Rents to United Rentals in the summer of 1999, began noticing headlines nationwide dealing with trench excavation cave-in accidents.
“I couldn't believe the number of job-site fatalities due to trench cave-ins,” Coble said. “It became obvious to me that while there were plenty of suppliers and dealers, the industry really lacked genuine trench safety specialists who were ‘in the trenches,’ helping their customers understand what it means to work underground safely.”
Coble Trench Safety is offering monthly training sessions in English and Spanish, designed to help keep job foremen and trench entrants up to speed on regulations and technologies relating to trench safety.
Coble points out that underground safety precautions are required by OSHA for job sites that deal with laying pipe, pulling cable, sewer work and any form of underground activity. Worksites that lack proper precautions are subject to significant fines and a trench-related fatality can delay a job for up to six months and cost more than $1 million.
The company, which has more than 20 employees, rents aluminum trench shields, bedding boxes, double-wall shields, excavation braces, hydraulic accessories, manguards, manhole shields, mega shores, modular aluminum panel shields, shoring shields, slide rail systems, trench rescue systems, vertical shores, waler systems and more.
