Kurt Kitchens is the dirt master, the dirt king. In addition, the company he co-owns with his brother Todd is proof that dirt can be a lucrative enterprise. Salt Lake City-based Just Pushing Dirt, Inc. does between $2 million and $3 million annually — pushing dirt around.
Kitchens even keeps dirt stashes in major cities throughout the United States; most disguised as parking lots. The company has more than 150 dirt stockpiles from coast to coast.
"One of our main interests is to provide dirt for extreme events like super cross, motocross, BMX, rodeos and monster truck shows, but we're also an excavation and general engineering contractor. We move dirt for a living,"
Kitchens said as he stood on one of the hard-packed dirt jumps of the Dew Tour BMX course. His company provides the dirt for every Dew Tour stop. The event is on the Salt Lake calendar through Sunday.
The firm, which also has a base in Los Angeles, does more than truck dirt into venues.
"Our biggest focus is to provide protection of whatever surface we're putting dirt on top of. Like, if we're in a grass stadium like Rio Tinto or the University of Utah, we'll put down a plastic layer over the field, then cover it with three-quarter-inch plywood. The dirt comes on top of that. Sometimes we're working inside the EnergySolutions Arena or another venue and they'll have an ice floor down. We'll put the plastic and plywood down and haul the dirt in on top of their ice," Kitchens said.
The company uses the same dirt over and over again. The Dew Tour stuff covering the parking lot next to the Triad Center has been used nearly 10 times for various bike and motorcycle events. Just Pushing Dirt keeps dirt stocked close to major venues in Salt Lake.
"For EnergySolutions shows, we keep the dirt in a rented piece of property off of Beck Street. We have about 1,500 tons there. We have a dirt stash near Rio Tinto Stadium. For the U. of U., we keep about 10,000 tons right on the campus. It's a parking lot right now."
The parking lots are essentially elevated pads of leveled dirt, topped with six inches of road base, a kind of gravel that allows cars to park there without getting their tires muddy. When Kitchens needs the dirt, usually two or three times a year, heavy machinery is used to scrape off the gravel and load the dirt into dump trucks, where it's hauled to the venue.
One reason for storing stockpiles of dirt close to frequently used venues is to keep trucking costs down.
"You try to eliminate trucking costs to make it more attractive for a promoter to come into that city. If ticket sales for an event aren't expected to be that great, the promoter certainly won't be able to afford huge trucking costs," Kitchens said.
While he didn't want to give exact figures for bringing dirt in for an event, Kitchens said that the costs vary between $10,000 and $100,000. That can include everything from just laying down the subflooring to bringing in dirt and building a course. He and four employees built the dirt course for the Dew Tour FMX jam that will take place on Sunday.
Just Pushing Dirt is famous among promoters. "Because we're also a general contractor, we can go into cities and work on job sites that the average person wouldn't be allowed to do," he said.
The company, which has 15-20 full-time employees and many more temporary workers, provided the subflooring on the grass field of Rice-Eccles Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2002 Olympics. They put asphalt on top of the subflooring, and the ice makers then came in and made the ice rink. The company has also provided dirt for events for the Jay Leno and David Letterman shows, as well as for numerous commercials and films.
But when it's all over, Just Pushing Dirt hauls the dirt away and puts everything back the way it was. Three giant yellow sweeper machines already wait behind a barrier at the Dew Tour BMX course. When the Tour is over, the dirt will quickly be loaded into dump trucks and hauled back to Beck Street. The lot will be swept and hosed down. By Tuesday, when the lot is once again open for parking, no one will ever know that the clean asphalt was, just days before, covered with tons of dirt for a BMX contest that was televised around the world.