About Spidex
Twenty-five years of seat time. One very capable machine.
Spidex is the work of one operator who spent his career learning where the ground gets difficult — and chose the one excavator built to go there.
The operator
A Swiss-trained engineer who never left the field.
Domenic Frei was born in Switzerland and has worked in civil and hydraulic engineering since 1998 — earning a civil engineering apprenticeship and qualifying as a certified walking mobile excavator operator.
He spent his early career as a foreman and supervisor on projects across Switzerland, the former Yugoslavia and Russia, working the kind of mountain and water terrain the walking excavator was invented for. That background — engineering on paper and operating in the field — is still how every Spidex job runs today.
After relocating to Canada, Domenic supervised work for an environmental services company: Canadian Pacific Railway projects, hydrocarbon-impacted soil remediation, and third-party excavations coordinated with municipal and provincial authorities — all under strict health-and-safety standards. In 2008 he incorporated Spidex in Vernon, British Columbia, to offer that same precise, low-impact excavating across Western Canada.
How we work
Why crews keep calling the same machine back.
The spider is unusual equipment, but the reason clients return is simpler than the machine. It comes down to four things.
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Access is everything
We say yes to the slopes, swamps and shorelines that turn other contractors away — and we get there without cutting a road to do it.
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Leave it better
Low ground pressure and biodegradable fluid aren’t marketing. They’re how we work in watersheds and alpine parks and get invited back.
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Safety, certified
COR and Gold Shovel Standard certified, with the utility and wildfire tickets the backcountry demands. Every site, every time.
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Owner on the controls
When you hire Spidex, the person quoting your job is the person running the machine. No layers, no surprises, decades of seat time.
Our motto
We start where others quit.
It isn’t a slogan we picked because it sounded good. It’s a description of the jobs that end up on our schedule — the access problems, the sensitive ground, the work that needs a machine that walks.
Talk to the operator