It’s been 14 years since Sherri Marlo joined the drilling industry as a small business owner. The president and co-owner of Dupo, Ill.-based Bulldog Drilling and Terra Drill Inc. says, during that time, she’s gotten a first-hand sense of how valuable reliable employees are. If anyone understands the old saying, “good workers are hard to find,” Marlo does. She says a top challenge that she and the profession as a whole face today is finding people who want to make a career drilling, likely because of how demanding the work is. Lucky for her, she’s acquired a team of nine employees that she says she can’t imagine working without. They offer environmental and geotechnical drilling services to consulting firms, private companies and government agencies in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and New Jersey.
A. I’m president and owner of both Bulldog Drilling and the original company, which is Terra Drill Inc. So we actually have two companies. Terra Drill was the original company that we started and then in 2013 we started another company by the name of Bulldog Drilling. Now Terra Drill just owns the equipment and leases it to our other company, Bulldog Drilling. The field services and all of the employees are under Bulldog. So I’m actually president and owner of both companies.