Customer Relationships Drive Matthews Brothers Expansion

Matthews Brothers Dredging is taking a new approach to dredging in the Houston, Texas, region.

With limited availability of dredge disposal areas, the company bought the former Texas Deepwater in July 2025 and renamed it the Houston Placement Area.

Having the Houston Placement Area gives Matthews Brothers Dredging greater control over placement logistics, capacity, scheduling and long-term planning, CEO Trey Taylor said.

Beneficial use of the materials from the placement area is one of several innovative ideas Matthews Brothers Dredging has put into practice. These ideas also have helped to propel the company’s exponential growth. Taylor, who was the 15th employee hired in 2016, now heads a workforce of roughly 155. The company maintains an office in Pass Christian, Miss., where it also has a fabrication yard for waterfront repairs and renovations, along with a new office in Channelview, Texas, that opened last year.

Matthews Brothers was founded by brothers Shaw and Tom Matthews in Pass Christian in 1999. At the time it focused more on dock building and reconstruction, but opportunities in the Houston area led to its diversification and expansion. Over time, the company has grown into a specialist Gulf Coast dredging company focused on recurring maintenance dredging, precision mechanical dredging, hydraulic placement and long-term customer partnerships, Taylor said.

Matthews Brothers‘ primary operating market is in the Houston Ship Channel, with additional work taking place along other industrial waterways. Recent projects have involved locations in Port Arthur, Lake Charles, Beaumont, Texas City, Galveston and Corpus Christi.

The company’s dredging volume continues to increase as its fleet and placement capacity expand.

“Last year we did 50 projects between Houston and Port Arthur, and that’s just not normal in the dredging industry,” Taylor said. “Most will do four to 10, depending on their fleet size, but we specialize in the smaller projects, get in there, do the job and get out. We move very fast to respond to the customers.”

Matthews Brothers’ unique approach to dredging began by asking customers about what they have disliked about previous dredging projects. Many of them said their biggest problems were temporarily losing access to docks, terminals and channels, while others said long waits for dredging and trying to fit in a dredger’s schedule were issues.

Matthews Brothers sought to put a new model into place to preserve customers’ daily operations. The company begins with looking at a customer’s schedule and finding a time to dredge that will cause minimal disruptions, Taylor said. The company also can assist with required testing necessary for permitting.

Because mechanical dredging does not require a pipeline from the dredging site to the placement area, the process minimizes interruption to customers’ docks, terminals and vessel traffic. It also allows Matthews Brothers to mobilize and demobilize quickly, helping customers complete dredging work with less impact to their daily operations, Taylor said.

Dredged materials are removed with a bucket and placed into a hopper barge. From there they are transported to one of two disposal areas, which can be as far as 25 or 30 miles away. The dredged materials are then hydraulically unloaded at the disposal sites.

The process means dredging often takes place more quickly and on a schedule more favorable to customers.

Additionally, “It’s really opened up the market to more frequent dredging, which really helps the ship channel,” Taylor said.

Along the way, the company’s customer base has grown from one major customer in 2016 to nearly 70, including companies that operate active docks, terminals, refineries, chemical plants and industrial waterfront facilities.

As a result, Matthews Brothers has grown from having one operating spread (dredge and unloader) to four. Equipment includes two Liebherr 8200s, one Liebherr 8300 and an all-electric dredge from MTeck. It has three unloaders and is currently building a fourth unloader.

The equipment is purpose-built for the job. Matthews Brothers’ MBI-10 barge-mounted, electric clamshell bucket dredge was the first of its kind along the Gulf Coast, Taylor said. It went into operation last June. The unloader now under construction will expand Matthews Brothers’ capacity to handle both loose materials and clay.

Matthews Brothers takes pride in how many repeat customers it has and how word of mouth from past customers has brought in new ones, Taylor said. Those relationships have helped customers to grow their operations, which has ultimately led to Matthews Brothers’ own expansion.

“The company is not simply growing because there is more market activity,” Taylor said. “It is growing because customers are choosing to bring MBD back and expand the relationship.”

Featured photo caption: Matthews Brothers’ Dredging’s MBI-08 dredges in Port Arthur, Texas, using a heavy digging bucket for a capital expansion project. (Photos courtesy of Matthews Brothers Dredging)