In 1974, Max Jantz started Max Jantz Excavating with one John Deere pull-type scraper and a love of the land. Fast forward to 2020, and MJE has grown into the largest agriculture construction business in the region. For more than 40 years, Max sought opportunities throughout the Midwest to grow the operation by expanding his skills, crews, and equipment fleet.

For many years, the company’s primary focus was dirt work for both municipal and commercial projects. By 2001, Max had gone from a one-man operation to managing a staff of over 40 employees and an equipment fleet of more than 130. His children, Aaron and Heather, also joined the staff.

In that time, the focus of our company evolved, expanding to designing and building turnkey feedyards and dairies. As capabilities grew beyond dirt-moving, the company’s name also shifted from Max Jantz Excavating to the more expansive MJE LLC. 

Now with over 350 pieces of equipment, MJE continues to be a premier contractor in heavy civil construction with a focus on feedyard and dairy turnkey construction. MJE partners with their clients in a signature design, build and construction process. MJE employs nearly 200 people including master craftsmen, designers, estimators and project managers who bring experience, determination, and passion. Through careful planning and communication with partners, MJE seeks to advance ideas and turn them into fully-functioning, efficiently designed enterprises for their clients.

Our program of in-house solutions led to manufacturing livestock equipment in the early ’90s. As production grew, it became apparent in 2017 that ‘the old shed out back’ was no longer large enough to house or manufacture the amount of fencing, gates, feeders, and additional livestock equipment that we were building. 

In 2018, MJE added key personnel with over 25 years of experience in the livestock equipment manufacturing industry and built a 41,000-square-foot manufacturing and 22,000-square-foot paint facility in Montezuma. That expansion also fueled the creation of a new sister company – MJE Livestock Equipment, or MJE LE for short. That’s how many of our clients and staff affectionately know it.

We’ve introduced a new look and over the coming months, we’ll be launching new, easy-to-navigate websites for both MJE and MJE LE. Our evolved logo and name better fit the wide range of services we have now, but our dedication to clients remains the same. 

Customers can expect the same service, support, and superior quality they’ve come to know over 45 years. We seek to listen to your needs, construct large scale civil projects, design custom turnkey dairies and feedyards and manufacture livestock equipment that will provide value to you and your operation for years to come. 

Check out our websites for new products we’ve developed to support ever-changing ag industry needs and the stories of success with our industry partners. While we honor our past, we look fearlessly forward to the future of MJE and MJE LE.