Profile: August Mack Environmental.

• Author: Mengle, Rev
• Position: August Mack Environmental Inc. - Company Profile

Geoffrey Glanders remembers finding himself on a drilling barge in Louisiana in 1981 with a crew of French Canadians who weren't too impressed with the young Indiana University geology graduate.

Then came one night at a poker table.

"For whatever reason, I was extremely lucky, I started winning and I cleaned everybody out," Glanders says, a grin beginning to appear on his youthful face. "I had instant respect. Never mind four years of college and all the background: 'This guy can play poker.'"

Five years ago, Glanders took a gamble of a different kind, forming his own environmental consulting and engineering firm. What began as Hoosier Environmental Services with four employees and $300,000 in revenues, is now August Mack Environmental Inc., an Indianapolis-based company with 40 employees and offices in three states that expects to have revenues of $6 million this year.

While the dramatic growth has been welcome, the original name did pose an identity problem. The term "Hoosier," after all, has an entirely different meaning in many other parts of the country. "When we started to cross state lines with our marketing and our new offices, we ran into some resistance," Glanders says. "The name didn't carry well. It was too territorial."

So Glanders and partner Brian Petriko, vice president of operations for the firm, sat down and mulled over new monikers. After deciding against several high-tech sounding names, they chose names from relatives who were businessmen: "August" (Glanders' grandfather's name, and his middle name) and "Mack" (Petriko's grandfather's last name).

August Mack's services include:

* investigating sites for potential environmental contamination;

* remedial action to clean up any problems that are found, whether August Mack does the cleanup itself or provides project supervision;

* above-ground and underground tank management;

* industrial hygiene consulting;

* pollution control.

Last year the company did more than 500 "jobs," ranging from simple soil tests to major pollution control projects. The company's client base has doubled in the past couple of years, with about half its work being done for industrial clients, 20 percent for petroleum-industry clients and the rest divided between lending institutions, the state and municipal entities. Among others, August Mack has done business with Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Eli Lilly & Co.

August Mack's success has hardly been luck. The company has focused on a core market...