
Transcript
Chad Krueger on Safe Digging Month & Diggers Hotline (Hour 1)
Nite Lite with Pete Schwaba and Greg Bach · Mon Apr 27, 2026
From Washington to Hollywood and right back to Wisconsin.
It's Night Light with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
Connecting the dots on the stories shaping our world with smart takes.
Sharp humor and plenty of personality.
You know, I really expected more professional behavior from you.
It's news and culture without the noise.
Yeah, I'm on.
Here's Pete Schwabba.
Dude.
And Greg Bach.
Dude.
Oh, it's finally Monday and we are back on the air and all is good.
You have no idea how I wait all weekend just to get back in front of the microphone and start yakking.
Welcome to Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
I am Pete Schwabba coming to you live from northeast Wisconsin.
And just down the coast is my partner in crime, Mr. Greg Bach, coming to us live from Radio Park in Racine and Dom Lee holding down the fort in Madison, working the board.
Hey guys, how are you?
Doing well.
How about you, Pete?
I am doing swell.
It's a great, it's a gloomy.
Fun, fun day, fun day Monday.
And I really am.
I'm happy to be back with you guys.
It was a long weekend and, you know, I'm not glad it's over, but I'm kind of glad it's over.
Greg, you had a big weekend.
You took Friday night off for some, for some all out fun with the wife.
How, how was
is
He is written for a lot of country artists.
He is an artist in himself.
He, you know, I would, I would say he, he, he's, sometimes he's country, sometimes he's folk, sometimes he's Americana, sometimes he's straight out rock.
He is fantastic.
We went to go see him at the Sylvie in Madison and I forgot what a standing room only concert feels like for three and a half hours.
Wow.
Whoa.
It was yeah,
I am Greg Bach.
I
So during like in the latter half of the set, like actually probably like two, three songs before their set was done.
And then they did the, good night everybody.
And then three minutes later, like, hello, we're back for an encore.
But they played a song where they jammed off for like 25 minutes and he just ran through the entire venue playing guitar and just being amazing and fun.
It was so cool.
And so, no, it was a great time.
Yeah, my wife and I went, we went with some of our friends, some high school friends of mine.
And just an absolute blast.
And I will say, I did manage to make it.
My body did hold up under nearly four hours of standing up, but it was a good show.
And I would, I mean, the venue was beautiful.
And if you haven't listened to Stephen Wilson Jr.'
's music, I would do it.
It's fantastic.
Did you guys stay overnight?
Yes.
Yeah.
We got
And what I didn't realize, I don't know, I know Madison, but what I don't know, if you say West Madison or East Madison, because what it felt like where our hotel was actually was a Northern part of Madison, but it just was far away from downtown, but it was a nice hotel.
And the next morning,
I said, someone said, you guys want to get breakfast?
I'm like, yeah, we can get downstairs and grab some breakfast.
They got a, they got a breakfast bar and they go, well, we can get some like real food.
I'm like, uh, excuse me.
There's, there's eggs and bacon and sausage and cereal and muffins and bagels and milk and toast and all like, and it's free.
And it's part of the room.
Like we got this as part of the deal.
Like, and you want to go spend another like 20 to $95 on food.
So.
I got voted down, but we had some, we had, we had a good breakfast brunch, but overall it was just great.
We had a really, really good time.
And I, you know, it was one of those things where you, you know, those feelings, you both, you know, this where you just say, I got to do something.
I got to get out of here.
I got to like take a day or two to myself.
That's what I did.
And it was great.
And I
I love when there's like my wife and I always go back and forth and that she's like, well, this place is nice, but this place has free breakfast and usually free breakfast wins out.
but inevitably we leave the free breakfast and she says, that was terrible.
Well, it just doesn't learn.
We still, I'm like, of course it
I tamper, like my expectations are at a certain level for hotel breakfast.
I don't know how you guys feel about this, but like I'm never expecting five star, like, you know, you know, the toast of the town breakfast here.
I'm expecting exactly what I'm getting.
A pile of eggs inside of a hot pan.
Right.
And whatever accoutrement they have.
But my wife also doesn't like eggs.
She hates eggs.
They make her not feel well.
So she doesn't really want to sit in a room where it smells like eggs.
So I get what she's saying.
But I was sort of just like, there's food right there.
That's
It's the hotel breakfast of watching a movie at home.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I would recommend it.
I thought it was fun.
And, you know, I enjoyed it.
So it was a it was a very good weekend.
We just kind of chilled out and had a long weekend.
We're going to go anywhere.
So it was it was all good stuff.
But but it is good to be back here in the chair.
Talking to you guys, we've got a great show for you tonight, folks.
Chad Kruger will be here.
He is the manager of PR at Diggers Hotline.
Nice.
Now, you guys might not know what Diggers Hotline is.
I just found out a few years ago when I bought a house, but it's a big deal.
And we're going to talk about it.
And Chad's going to tell us stuff we should need to know, whether we're homeowners or people that wander on other people's lawns with a shovel.
We know that so here's a here's a not a public service announcement that stretch but not like diggers hotline, but We have our nightlight movie club folks Thursday nights in the second hour from 67 this week's movie
is good fellas.
We're going gangster.
We're going OG gangsters, good fellas, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Paul Servino.
And I can't, I can't think of the, uh, Lauren, not Lauren McCall.
Who plays, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
It's going to be a fun, you know, there's so many quotable lines, great scenes, great characters.
And you guys will be at weigh in on all of this.
So check out good fellas and be part of the nightlight movie club.
That's Thursday night.
It's going to be a lot of fun as it is every week.
But right now, you know, guys, I think we should get to our question of the night.
I think you're right.
Oh, here we go.
What monster from the movies scares you the most?
What monster from the movies scares you the most?
Let us know, folks.
Be part of the show.
855-752-4842.
855-755 Civic.
You can also text us on the app, the Civic Media app.
It is free to download, very easy to use, and we would love for you to text us over said app.
Also, if you're watching the radio on YouTube, Facebook, or...
The, uh, the app Greg still calls Twitter.
I do as well.
Uh, join us there too.
Drop a stream, comment and let us know what your favorite monster or scariest monster is from the movies.
There's so many to choose from.
Mine are kind of obvious.
I'm excited to share those with you guys at some point tonight.
All right.
We'll do all that, but, uh, should we get to some, uh, some news stories?
What do
you
So if you haven't heard already, but you probably already heard there was a shooter Arrested in what looks to be the third assassination attempt at President Trump's life this week this Saturday at the correspondence dinner that took place in Washington DC the the building was shut down the Man was arrested.
He was taken into custody.
He had a very lengthy manifesto to go along with his actions and
You know this is a very you know, this is a very interesting topic to talk about yet again But the thing that I kind of want to focus on and I don't know what you guys think about this is the fact that the The reaction to the folks inside the room as well as to those outside on social media, you know
I don't remember when an attempt was made on President Reagan's life.
I was way too little.
But I have to assume that the country went insane for quite a few days.
It was probably huge news.
And it is huge news and everyone is okay.
But the security aspect of it all and the reaction from people just seemed to be almost
I don't want like almost humdrum like instead of saying like we need to find out what's going on We need to beef up the security.
We need to make sure that that this doesn't happen We just kind of move on rather quickly and a New York Times article that was posted about this attempt Talks about the fact that there were no metal detectors on site at this event
I can't go to the airport without going through a metal detector.
I had the fortune to visit the US Capitol.
The layers of security just to walk into the building, you would think somewhere where the President, the Vice President, and all these luminaries of politics.
It would be incredibly hard to get in there, but there wasn't.
And saw pictures of Cash Patel sitting in his chair watching it happen.
It's just mind-blowing to me now that the reaction is, I don't know what to say, because of course I didn't want anything to happen, and I'm not gonna take the side of folks who are saying, I'm not gonna say anything about that here, because that's not for what we're talking about.
But for me, it's just like the matter of security, or lack thereof, plus the fact that it just seems to be
it happens and then people go on social media and have their reactions there.
Calling out liberals, calling out this, doing that.
When in fact, we should be looking at the danger that in a year's time or a two years time, there have been three attempts.
Why aren't we doing better at this then?
And you can argue, I know a lot of people have come out and said they thought the last one where he yelled fight, fight was staged.
This one is just so bizarre, Greg.
I kind of agree with you.
Like the next day I went over to my parents' house and we were talking about baseball for half an hour.
And then it's like, oh yeah, and there was another attempt made on Trump's life.
It's, in this America, it's just become part of the drill.
It's so chaotic and the news stories and the cycle.
What I thought was interesting though is I saw that right after this happened,
PBS reported that President, they're calling it President Trump's Justice Department, not the Justice Department, which is madding, is using the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday to try to pressure preservationists to drop their lawsuit over his planned $400 million ballroom on the side of the former East Wing of the White House.
What?
And then somebody on social media said, how about we do that for all the kids in schools?
I mean, it's...
It's crazy that it's just become humdrum.
But anyway, we've got two other great stories, not that this was a great story, but two more stories for you coming up after a very short break.
You've got Nightlight
So I'm hoping people join in and tell us over the text line, the app or the stream, let us know your favorite or scariest movie monsters.
So many to choose from.
And I don't even like scary movies, but this was kind of a fun one to think about.
Well, I mean, it's, so there's a story came out of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Francesca Pica, who I, back on the morning show, I interviewed and talked to her about the home prices, the median home prices are going up, like up, up, up.
What's funny is that in, so here's the funny thing is in Milwaukee, the median home price is $235,000.
I was surprised by that number.
But then I saw the homes that were costing that much, like this one in the story, $235,000 for an 1,100 square foot home.
Three bathrooms, three bedrooms, three bathrooms in an 1,100 square foot.
That is- There's no
But what really surprised me though, like-
Now listen, when I say that it's not surprising, I am surprised.
That's a lot of money for a great deal of people, but in this day and age where the median around the country is about $400,000, the fact that it's not higher in Waukesha was a little shocking, but here was the one that really, really surprised me.
In Menominee Falls, the median price is $505,000.
for all home, not a mansion, not a castle.
The one they were showing here, it was, what did they say?
It was 2,700 square feet.
That's a big home.
That's, I would say bordering a little too big, but three bedroom, two bathroom, 1.1 acre, two car garage.
By the way, I'm not selling these homes, everybody.
I'm just surprised that, I would have switched that.
Like in, what would Tosa, it's 435.
And I would have thought Menominee Falls, okay, between like,
275 and three or 350 or whatever.
But a half a million dollars median price for a home in Menominee Falls is mind boggling to me.
you know, folks, you grab that bag of cash you got there, Robert bank or just, you know, go into someone's property, the petty cash.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like,
The thing for me, you know, I'll say this is when my wife and I were considering the home purchase we We tossed and turned over this stuff like where do we want to move?
Where can we afford and we realize we just can't afford to live in milk for what we want space wise and comfort wise we could not afford to live in Milwaukee and While yes, it's a bit of a drive.
It's about 45 minutes.
You know give or take
Kenosha is a great place.
And that's what I would tell a lot of people too.
You know, if you want to live in a city, I understand.
And I live in a city.
I just don't live in the big city of Wisconsin, but I love Kenosha.
It's a good neighborhood, good people, lots to do still, right?
I'm just as close to the lake as I ever was.
And, you know, and that's, I mean, I'm not going to give anybody advice on buying a home.
I know that's a stressful situation, especially with the home prices, but I would say,
Look outside to the suburbs, look outside like due south or whatnot and go from there.
But yeah, this is absolutely, it's, it's like a half a million dollars from a nominee falls.
but I
And I know you're
the
And it's good to know like, and I love anything we do to research space and find out stuff like this is just fantastic.
And at first I heard it.
I'm like, there's no way that's possible.
On the beach out here, 200 feet from my door,
I'm like Thursday.
It's a public beach.
But yeah, incredible.
All right.
So there's your three stories, folks, but let us know what your favorite or who your favorite or scariest movie monster is.
That's our question of the night.
When we come back, we're talking Diggers Hotline.
You cannot miss this, folks.
It's Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach on the Civic Media Network.
Welcome back.
It is great to have you here on this Monday.
With us here on this fun.
It's our fun show.
It's the fun edition of nightlife Mondays are a blast.
It's great to have you our question of the night is What is your favorite or scariest movie monster?
We will be reading your texts in hour number two I've got several But we want to hear from you and we want you to be part of the show because it's always more fun when you guys participate I'm peach wabba.
He is Greg Bach and Dom is in Madison and now we are about to welcome our first guest of the evening
He joins us with some information that just might save our lives.
Chad Kruger is the manager of public relations at Diggers Hotline and he joins us now here at Nightlight over the stream.
Chad, welcome.
Hey, thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
It's great to have you here and I have to say that for those of us who, you know, I didn't even know what Diggers Hotline was before I owned a home and it's
pretty important.
I didn't even know you could dig and hit something.
Like that's how clueless I was.
I imagine there are people out there that are as uninformed as me.
So tell us what Diggers Hotline is and what you guys do there.
So education to homeowners is a big part of what we try to do because there are lines in the ground.
And what Diggers Hotline does is we'll take information from people who plan on digging and we'll ask questions.
and get some details where you're at, what kind of work you're doing.
And then we send that information to the utilities in your area, and the utilities come out and mark where buried lines are so that you can take care as you're working on your projects around your yard.
I mean, they were not doing the research.
With Pete's situation, they may not know there was research to be done.
Is this something that, I mean, even with Diggers Hotline, do we still see cases where people are getting hurt because they're not doing the research?
Yeah, that does happen, unfortunately.
There aren't a lot of numbers out there, but if you hear stories through the years, what's in the ground is it's either dangerous or it's expensive or both.
So there could be an electric line.
going to your house that's buried or there could be a natural gas line.
And if you put a shovel into that, maybe some natural gas escapes and now we've got a very dangerous situation.
Or you can put a shovel through a fiber optic line that's bringing the internet to your home.
And that's, that would wipe out a lot of people's workdays or Netflix, binging or something like that.
You don't want to take out your internet because that's, that's something we rely on a lot.
And that's expensive to repair as well.
Plus, you
You would be famous for a long time, but not in
good
A couple of years worth of cookies, maybe organizing the block party.
But yeah, that's just a mess you don't want to get into.
And one of the messages we try to say at Diggers Hopline,
This is a free service we're offering.
It's a free phone call or our website is free.
There's no charge for what we're doing.
The state law also requires it.
So let us know.
Give us a little bit of time.
It's three working days before your project.
So if you want to do something on the weekend, call us early in the week.
We'll get that info out to the utilities.
Don't mark those lines and then you don't have to bake cookies.
Yeah, and what I didn't know in addition to what I didn't know was that under state law individuals have to do this.
It's 811.
It's one phone call and but I didn't realize that was like you could get in trouble for not doing this.
What is that like a I assume it's not like a life sentence or anything, but you could really be faced serious trouble here.
Yeah, I think from a homeowner standpoint, I think the biggest trouble is going to be the danger from hitting that electric line with a shovel because no one wants to do that or taking out your internet, something dangerous or expensive.
If you're a professional excavator, if this is your profession, there's some other fines that go in that come into play if you do things the wrong way.
But yeah, the state law says you have to do this.
A lot of people think that I'm digging on my own property.
I don't have to do that.
But I own this.
Well, that's not what the law says.
That's not what safety and common sense says.
I think a lot of homeowners also think, yeah, I know diggers hop line.
That's for the guys with the big back hose down the street who are digging out a basement or putting in a pool or the big equipment.
It's not for me.
I'm just planting a tree.
It is.
It's for anyone who's doing any digging.
The way the law defines it is disturbing the soil.
And this is actually for my own sake because I want to do this this spring and summer, but even something like you've got tree planting and you've got major projects, but even something like what I want to do is some basic landscaping in the front and the back.
There will be digging involved.
Is it just makes sense to play it safe and call ahead of time?
Or is that like something like, you know, some basic landscaping or basic planting?
Is that something that you say you should be good or just call regardless?
So we're never going to say, yeah, you'll be fine.
Don't call in.
That's not our role.
Our role is to explain what the law says.
And the law says if you disturb the soil, you have to call a bigger top line.
So if you're planting, you're disturbing the soil.
A lot of people, I think, have the false understanding that, oh, those utility lines, they should be deeper.
I'm only digging down six inches.
That gas line should be much deeper.
It could be.
It maybe should be.
But there's no law saying how deep things should be.
When I first started in this industry 20-ish years ago, a friend of mine was mowing his lawn.
And the coaxial cable, the cable TV line kind of kinked up in his yard.
And the lawn mower cut his line.
He shouldn't have called bigger top line.
That's not what I'm saying here.
But I am saying that these lines are a lot shallower than most people expect.
Wow.
He's the manager of public relations at Diggers Hotline.
The number is 811.
Very easy folks.
Make the call if you plan on doing some digging and it's for your own safety and your neighbor's convenience as well.
Chad, you just mentioned when you got into this business, what does that mean exactly?
Like your PR now, but how did you, did you start in PR or did you actually work?
I
worked in a communications outreach position for another nonprofit entity before coming over to Diggers Hopline.
So there were some similarities, but learning the industry took a little bit.
The communication side, the outreach side comes naturally.
After a while, the excavation side does as well.
And April, we're coming in like, we're just about at the end of April, but April is safe digging month.
And that is something that you wanted to talk to us about.
Governor Evers called for it.
Can you tell us more about what that means as far as like its implementation, as well as what we should be talking about in the month?
Sure.
April is national safe digging month.
So the Senate has passed a proclamation declaring it as national safe digging month.
A lot of states,
are doing proclamations.
A lot of communities are doing, you know, proclamations coming out of their city council.
In Wisconsin, the governor has assigned a proclamation saying April is safe digging month.
And it's great to get that awareness to get, you know, someone with that kind of stature saying how important this process is because it truly is important.
It's the fact that it's free and we're a nonprofit and we're trying to help people
safely do the things that they want to do around their house.
I'm very grateful that the governor has declared safe digging month for April.
Earlier, you said you weren't sure how many people this affects in terms of safety, but I just googled something earlier that said 400 people are killed annually in the United States by electrocution.
and a significant number of those deaths were from digging and hitting power lines.
I didn't know that when I bought a house and I found out, but I could have just as easily been one of those people.
Do people get this information right when they buy a house?
No, they don't.
The way we've approached it is trying to reach out to homeowners through advertising, through different online campaigns just to plant that seed.
And for a long time, it was about awareness.
But as time has gone on, I think a better message is, no, every time, even you, a homeowner, should make that call.
Because I think before you owned a home, you probably had heard of bigger soft line and you probably thought it was for someone with much bigger equipment than you have in your garage.
I always thought, well, I'm not doing any major excavation.
I'm not doing anything of a grand scale.
No one's bringing a backhoe on to my property or anything.
But the more I, and actually like the more I talked to people about over the years, the more I realized what you were saying is that it's nothing else than to better be safe than be sorry.
If you're doing any sort of work, just get it done.
You know, we hear stories about people installing a fence and they didn't call and they wished they called because they took out their internet or planning trees around the yard or shrubs or building a patio.
One thing that I've had to do at my properties is work on some of the landscaping, the sloping, the drainage around the house because with the heavy rains through the years, you got to make sure the water's going where you want it to.
So that's something I personally have used Diggers Hotline for when you're working on the drainage on your property.
So the evil part of me wants to say, yes, there's police out there who's Diggers Hotline police.
But no, the way the law is worded,
It comes out of the Public Service Commission and agency in the state government in Madison and they investigate and they issue fines.
People really wouldn't be arrested, I don't think, unless something really bad happens, unless you purposely do something and blow up a neighborhood and injuries and death and property damage, things of that nature.
But honestly, I've not heard of anyone being arrested.
Uh, my neighbor was doing this.
Can you send someone out to take care of it?
No, we can't.
That's no, I don't want to get into that.
Uh,
I do.
So we see this a lot with the professional excavators.
And I think it happens a little bit with homeowners where the utility companies are falling behind.
with sending people out to the properties to mark the lines at the location, which, you know, if you do what you're supposed to do, you call a diggers hop line, you wait three working days until you're legally cleared to dig.
The expectation is the utilities have their representatives out there and marking the lines.
The last couple of years, there have been some hiccups with that part of the process.
I don't know if it's a, you know,
more difficult to hire people these days.
I don't know if more tickets are coming through, more low-keep requests are coming in through Diggers Hopline going to the utilities.
But that's been a hiccup the last couple of years.
And I think you said the question is what's being done to address that.
At Diggers Hopline, we're kind of in the middle.
We don't have a lot of power to tell the utilities what to do.
trying to get everyone to the table and trying to understand everyone's perspective on this and hopefully find a compromise to try to make this get better in the future.
Improvement.
Thank you very much for having me on.
This is Night Light with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
I am Pete Schwabba coming to you live from northeast Wisconsin, just down the beautiful coast of Lake Michigan.
in radio park and Racine is Greg Bach.
And Dom Lee, Dom Lee, as we all so often call him is in Madison.
I like how your nickname
I think minimum wage at the time was $335 an hour.
And I admittedly was a bad employee.
They never let me open or close.
I was just a guy there to put out the buns or something mindless.
And I still got a nickel an hour raise.
I divested.
And there was another one of the other employees.
was my friend Jim, who was the valedictorian.
He's probably a gazillion or now they gave him a three cent an hour race.
What
Well, because they think you think that's a thing.
Like, like when I hear, like when I was younger, I don't know, Dom, how it is for like, like what your job history is like, but that thing of we're going to give you a 15 cent raise.
And even when I was younger, I'm like,
Am I supposed to be happy about that?
Am
I
six years ago.
Men are more likely to go to Burger King, Popeyes, KFC, Dominoes, and Arby's.
Women are more likely to want Dairy Queen.
But the top 10, the recent poll asked people to rank their current interest or their favorites.
Here's the top 10.
I don't
Mine too.
And you know what?
I don't think people realize this and I'm not a public service.
This is not diggers hotline, but like they, like you can get special, like the, the nacho cheese grosses me out at Taco Bell, but you can get shredded cheese on your nachos bell grande.
Like you can change it up to make it a little more.
Can make it a little more healthy.
They talked to their customers and they actually listened.
And I had Domino's Pizza, I think like two years ago.
And it was that thing of like,
Okay, I guess and I had I'm like this is actually really good It was really like there was a company that actually listened to the people and said hey Let's stop being the laughing stock of our little corner of the the fast food multiverse here and I I I want to see this list in a couple years I want to see dominoes go up there higher knock out that chick-fil-a cuz chick-fil-a is nothing but overrated
It is overrated
I love it All right folks more fun banter on the other side of the news and we're gonna read your text and we're gonna do a deep dive Into this Monday night edition of nightlight.
Mike Clements is coming up at 6 20
And we'll read some of your texts.
That's all next on Night Late with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
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