The World’s Coolest Ditch-Digging Job Is Up for Grabs
LOUISVILLE—Humans have been digging ditches for thousands of years. Don Pemberton digs them just a bit quicker. Instead of using hands and shovels, he climbs into a souped-up, hot-rodded, 850-horsepower machine that digs trenches at 100 feet a minute, five times as fast as a normal machine used by utilities and excavators.
The 67-year-old is the sole operator of the Super Witch, a one-of-a-kind trenching machine that looks and sounds like a large chain saw on wheels. Equipment maker Ditch Witch uses it as a marketing and promotional tool to sell more-practical versions of the machine. The Super Witch makes appearances at industry trade shows, dealership openings, parades and factory tours.
When it roars, spectators come running with their phones out to see it do wheelies and rip-up dirt. “It would deafen you if you don’t have hearing protection on," said Pemberton. Pemberton is getting ready to hand over the controls.
His coming retirement is causing a lot of stress for Ditch Witch executives. They are having a hard time solving a big hiring problem: how to replace its most famous ditch digger. Will the Wienermobile of trenching equipment have to be mothballed? The saga of the retiring Super Witch operator is just one example of the millions of jobs that will need to be filled as baby boomers retire in the years ahead.
The median age of a manufacturing worker is 44 and more than a quarter of their workforce is 55 and older. Ed Malzahn developed the original Ditch Witch trencher in the 1940s at his family’s machine shop in Perry, Okla., to help construction workers lay water, electric, gas and sewer lines to single-family homes. The company boomed as America’s suburbs were developed.
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