Recent rumours of USIC buying Consolidated??

**LocatorJoe** · January 5th, 2011, 09:18 AM

Rumours flying recently of USIC buying Consolidated? Anybody have any info?

**sprayandpray** · January 5th, 2011, 06:05 PM

Didn't Consolidated take the ATT contract away from USIC recently?

**Turk182** · January 5th, 2011, 06:10 PM

Originally Posted by sprayandpray

Didn't Consolidated take the ATT contract away from USIC recently?

And ELM in Illinois took half the Nicor contract from USIC last spring, and is now owned by USIC.

**sprayandpray** · January 5th, 2011, 06:13 PM

Oh I see now - if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em!!

**premo** · January 5th, 2011, 08:12 PM

Lol!!!

**Turk182** · January 5th, 2011, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by sprayandpray

Oh I see now - if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em!!

I think it was more to get the other contracts held by ELM, the Nicor contract was a very small piece of the pie.

**hebdog7** · January 19th, 2011, 10:49 PM

UtiliQuest in the North Texas area lost the Atmos contract. Consolidated and USIC are splitting the Atmos contract. I just heard about 15 minutes ago from a friend/ex-coworker.

**ProfessionalLocator** · January 20th, 2011, 12:01 AM

Originally Posted by hebdog7

UtiliQuest in the North Texas area lost the Atmos contract. Consolidated and USIC are splitting the Atmos contract. I just heard about 15 minutes ago from a friend/ex-coworker.

Rumor is that Utiliquest in Maryland held onto the Verizon contract plus picked up the portions of Maryland held by OCC, One Call Concepts. This is rumor and not confirmed.

Utiliquest Maryland has been trying hard to hold onto the Verizon contract, they lost all of Virginia Verizon, and the word is they dropped their bid price trying to keep it by underbidding.

Utiliquest Maryland has been unable to handle it's own workload and locators from Utiliquest Virginia have been coming to Maryland during weekdays to keep the workload performed. Then on the weekends they go back to Virginia to do their work that did not get done during the week. Heard this direct from Virginia Utiliuest locators that are doing this.

Word I got from one Utiliquest locator is their Virginia office picked up the Columbia Gas contract there. With a new gas contract placing more demand on the Virginia office there will not be locators available to send to Maryland. So they do not have enough locators to get the job and and if they picked up the OCC portions of Maryland that is instant trouble.

Word is they are using the phone lists of the locators that left, and perhaps fired as well, trying to get them to come back to work with them again. (I would love to hear that conversation. Yeah, we treated you like dirt so come on back and do it again.)

While there should not be any layoffs in Maryland if it is true they dropped their bid we can expect further pay and benefits cuts with a demand for higher higher hourly production rates.

If any Utiliquest Maryland locators wish to voice an opinion do so without revealing who you are.

**[HAF]Foxtrot** · January 20th, 2011, 04:05 AM

Rumor mill spins on. Gotta love it :-)

**sprayandpray** · January 20th, 2011, 06:55 AM

Originally Posted by hebdog7

UtiliQuest in the North Texas area lost the Atmos contract. Consolidated and USIC are splitting the Atmos contract. I just heard about 15 minutes ago from a friend/ex-coworker.

What we heard was that Atmos put the contract up for bid . Supposedly USIC, Infrasource, Heath and Utiliquest showed for the meeting and Utiliquest adv Atmos they would only be interested in keeping the areas where they also do Verizon. Absent from the meeting was Consolidated.

Atmos is supposed to announce their decision by March 1st and could choose multiple companies.