About Metro Hydrovac Toronto: 20 Years of GTA Hydrovac Excavation, Three Owned Trucks & Zero Utility Strikes

Alex Novak grew up in East York watching his father work on municipal sewer crews for the City of Toronto. He spent a lot of Saturdays riding along to yards and job sites, and he learned early that what's under a Toronto street is never quite what the drawings say.

In his twenties he took the Humber College Civil Engineering Technician program, then spent 7 years running a vacuum truck for a Mississauga environmental services contractor. That job meant confined space cleanouts, hazmat response and a lot of nights in industrial tanks and vaults. It also meant watching other crews dig blind around gas and fiber, and seeing what a strike costs everyone involved.

In 2004 he bought his first used Vactor 2100i and launched Metro Hydrovac Toronto out of a rented East End yard. The plan was simple: one truck, run properly, with every dig starting from a locate and ending with a log the inspector could sign.

Twenty years later the company runs a Toronto truck yard with three hydrovac units, an in-house maintenance bay and ON1Call-certified crews across the GTA. Alex still takes calls, still reviews sign-off sheets and still says the best part of the job is the moment a buried line comes up clean.

"At Metro Hydrovac Toronto, our vision is to expose Toronto's underground infrastructure safely, every single time, so our GC and utility clients never have to explain a dig-in to a project manager or insurance adjuster. We enjoy the moment a buried fiber or gas line emerges clean and the client realizes we actually meant it when we said non-destructive. We routinely hear that we exceeded their expectations, and this is what brings us joy."

Alex Novak, Founder