Success Stories

True Access Capital SBA 504 Loans Fund Business Growth with Fixed-Rate Financing: Tri-State Underground

Another 504 borrower, Rick Hess, the owner of Tri-State Underground, is stretching out at his company’s new home, a three-building property, purchased with a 504 loan through True Access Capital.

Tri-State provides directional drilling, trenching and boring services. The underground contracting company’s operations moved to their current location in 2019, after the business received a 504 Loan through True Access Capital to fund the property purchase and building renovations.

Prior to that, Tri-State operated out of two rented locations, one that housed office space and one, five miles away that housed materials. “We’d get job details in the office and then drive five miles to the yard to get materials and that whole process added at least half an hour to the day,” Rick says.

“It’s a godsend to have everything under one roof.”

These days, Rick’s 15 employees — including the mechanic he hired, as an indirect result of the 504 funding — are all working from one site, where they have a dedicated office, a pole barn, and a mechanic’s shop. The mechanic’s shop allowed Tri-State to create a new job and hire an in-house mechanic, who is completing work faster and cheaper than the previously outsourced work.

Meanwhile, business is growing — and Rick says the growth is directly supported by the 504 funding. “We are continuing to grow, which would have been utterly impossible at our other locations. I was busting at the seams there. We wouldn’t have been able to do half the things we’ve been able to do since we moved in here,” says Rick.