In December of 2012, Berminghammer was contacted by Piling Inc (Texas) for the purpose of sourcing a Vertical Travel Lead System (VTL). Piling Inc had been awarded a contract to complete piling work for the $4 Billion dollar expansion of the Dow Chemical Plant in Freeport, Texas. The lead system was required to be able to guide 16" square concrete piles up to 53 ft. long. Berminghammer decided a 78-foot tall L18 vertical travel system was the appropriate solution. The system was shipped and piling began in February.

Piling, Inc. reported significant production gains with the Berminghammer VT system in comparison to the semi-fixed leads they were using prior. With the same hammer, the best reported day with the semi-fixed system was 35 piles in a 10 hour day (3.5 piles/hour). They have driven up to 62 piles in a 10 hour day (6.2 piles/hour) with the Berminghammer VTL system.

Randy Dietel said, "I had seen several presentations by Patrick Berminghammer on their Vertical Traveling Leader System at PDCA Conferences, and thought this job was a perfect fit to try it. The leader system has proved to be everything I had hoped it would be, so we bought it.”

The piling speed outpaced the land preparation and there was not enough area ready to keep the piling rig busy all day long. The size of the piling crew was also been reduced with the VTL system for significant labor savings. Chris Pennington said,

"The speed of handling, loading, and spotting the pile is a major improvement over the older system. We were also able to reduce the four man crew to a crew of two for this piling rig."

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