Soil and Septic Go Hand In Hand for Mark Smith
M
By Leonard Shapiro
ark Smith is a third generation soil consultant, a man who still loves to get his hands dirty out in the field when he’s not running his bustling business based on Marshall’s Main Street. His grandfather, Verlin Smith, started Soil Consultants Inc. based in Fairfax County in 1960 and his father, Donn Smith, took over the business, ran it for 25 years and moved it to Manassas. Mark Smith’s company “In 2010, I opened Soils Inc. and handles soil and septic. we’ve been growing ever since,” Mark Smith said. “In the beginning, I was working out of the dining room in our house. We moved to another location in Marshall five years ago, and we outgrew it and moved here last year. That first year, it was just me. Now we’ve got 28 employees between the two companies.” There’s another equally busy branch of the business called Virginia Septic, formed when Smith bought out two other local septic companies. “That made us a one-stop shop for all types of sewage disposal,” he said. “We can install, operate and maintain septic tanks and we pump them for both residen tial and commercial. We do a lot of wineries, breweries, churches, pretty much anything that’s out there.” And Soils Inc. has a healthy client base as well. That company does soil testing for on-site sewage disposal systems as well as design work, storm water management, permitting and geotechnical-testing to make sure the soil can support foundations for new homes or commercial buildings. It’s all been a natural fit for Mark Smith, who said he knew what career path he wanted to follow as a young teenager. He regularly went out on jobs and worked in the office of his grandfather and father’s business, including plenty of time digging pits with a backhoe. He graduated from North Carolina State in 2005 with a degree in agronomy and not long after completed the necessary requirements to become a licensed professional soil scientist. He married his wife Ashley in 2010, the same year he started the business, and they and their three children live in Hume, a 20-minute drive to the Marshall office located in a former Atlantic Union branch building. His company has jobs all around Northern Virginia and occasionally its crews will wander elsewhere around the state, including the Northern Neck. “A lot of our clients come to us by word of mouth,” he said. “People will call and say ‘I’ve had three different people refer us to you.’ You always like to hear that.” Smith said he still thoroughly enjoys being out in the field because “I just like working outside. And watching the business grow has been fun and rewarding. We have a great staff, really good, dedicated employees, and I like creating relationships with clients. I’ve had some clients who have been with us right from the start.” He also has no qualms taking on difficult projects, “We pride ourselves on getting the job done,” he said. “For example, sometimes there’s a limited space in a drain field, but we’ll find a way to shoehorn it in there and make sure we stay within all the regulations. We’re creative and we think outside the box. And we’ll figure out a way to get it approved.” Smith likes to say the company’s unofficial slogan is “We believe highly in customer service and providing quality work quickly. We have an extremely high level of customer service that our clients have grown accustomed to.” Dirty hands, included.
Country ZEST & Style | Autumn 2022
39
