Shawver Well Company, Inc. celebrating 80 years in business


Shawver Well Company's current fleet of rotary drill rigs ...

George Shawver's first homemade drilling rig - 1937 in Kirkville ...

Shawver Well Company was founded in 1937 by George Shawver, who, at the time, lived in Kirkville, located just northwest of Ottumwa in southeast Iowa. During his high school years, George earned money hauling water with teams of horses to help local prospectors drill test holes for coal in the newly discovered coal areas of southern Iowa.

After high school, jobs were hard to find, so George decided to do the only thing he knew, drill test holes for coal. When local prospectors came to town looking for coal, George hired out to do their drilling. He built his first rig from wood and powered it from a power take-off of a tractor.

When prospecting for coal diminished, George turned to drilling for water. His first company was called Midwest Drilling but changed to Shawver Well Company shortly after.

In 1939, George went to Milwaukee, WI to purchase his first manufactured drill rig, which was built by a company called Bucyrus Erie. On the way to Milwaukee, George stopped to get a cup of coffee and he was so unsure of whether he should purchase the drill rig, he flipped a quarter - heads he went on to pick up the drill rig; tails, he turns around and goes home. Obviously, it came up heads, and the rest is history.

George was drafted late into World War II. He was born blind in one eye and stayed state side as a motor sergeant in a prisoner of war camp in Clarinda. Prior to going into WWII, George made his last payment on the rig and stored it.

After the war, steel was still hard to get and George couldn’t get any casing to use in his drilling. So, he applied for a job with a large national drilling company that had just moved into Iowa. When the company found out he owned a drill rig, they instead subcontracted for him to drill a city well in Nashua, as they were both short of equipment and people.

In 1947, George came to Nashua, from Ottumwa, to drill a new city well. While drilling the city well in Nashua, Alec Milne of Milne and Chase from Fredericksburg found that George owned the drilling rig and asked George to stay. Work was more plentiful in northeast Iowa, and Milne and Chase could get casing, so George stayed.

In 1950, George moved his wife, Helen, and two children, Marvin and Janet, to  Fredericksburg. That year, George and Helen’s youngest son, Gary, was born. When George and Helen settled in Fredericksburg, they built a home and lived there until 1960, when they moved the business one mile east of Fredericksburg, to its present location today.

During the 1950s, 1960s and the first part of the 1970s, George operated the company utilizing cable tool-type equipment. He had two people that worked for him for over 30 years that were both drillers, and during that time period the company did primarily domestic and farm water wells, along with some larger diameter wells, mostly for cities and towns in northeast Iowa. In the early 1960s, George also drilled two deep wells in search of oil in Iowa - one just south of Cresco and the second near Wall Lake, each with no success.

In 1974, George purchased his first rotary drill rig and in 1976, his second rotary drill rig. It was at that time that his son, Gary, joined the business, and in 1980 George retired and Gary took over the management of the company. By 1980, the company had grown to three rotary drill rigs and two cable tool drill rigs. The recession of the 1980s caused the company to downsize to only two drill rigs. By the late 1980s the economy improved and the company upgraded its fleet with more modern drills and equipment.

In 1994, the company opened its first satellite operation in Dyersville with the building of a new facility and moved a driller to reside in the Dyersville area. In 1999, the company expanded its operation into large diameter commercial and municipal drilling and that division remains today.

In 2001, land was purchased just south of Waukon on Highway 76 and a new shop was built and another branch opened. In 2002, Shawver Well Company purchased Cook’s Well Service of Decorah and ventured into the domestic well pump and septic tank installation business. In 2006, Shawver Well Company also purchased Grady Pump Service of Waukon and further expanded its operation into the domestic pump installation and service market.

Shawver's pump division offers 24/7 emergency service 365 days a year,  specializing in new well pump systems, troubleshooting and septic installation. That pump division includes three certified pump installers and one person in the office and covers a wide area in and around Allamakee, Winneshiek and Clayton counties.

In September of 2012, Shawver Well Company was purchased by its employees and become an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) business. There are approximately 11,000 ESOPs in the United States and becoming an ESOP is highly regulated by the U.S. Labor Department.

In early 2013, Gary Shawver fully retired from the day-to-day operations after 36 years in the business and the company is now under the operation of General Manager Ryan Budke, who was initially hired by Gary Shawver in 2002 and was promoted to General Manager in August of 2014. Since 1950, when the business was at one employee, the company has now grown to approximately 23 full-time employees.

As Shawver Well Company has grown, it has covered more and more of northeast Iowa and now serves an area (for domestic and farm wells) from Mason City to the northwest to Clinton on the southeast and all of northeast Iowa in between. Shawver Well Company is also licensed in the state of Minnesota.