Dave Olson
New Member
Hi Walter,
Sure I have spent a lot of money, time, etc., putting this equipment together. Our Red truck is somewhat the result of "Gee wouldn't if be nice if we had/could! We try not to rely on our customers for anything! One thing we do not have is a porta poddy!
Sometimes we wish we did!
The extra space on both of our trucks allows us to put in additional supplies or equipment when needed. The White truck is almost full of supplies and scaffolding (as I write this) for a project that we will be doing at an industrial plant during their 4th of July shutdown. We will also have a vendor of ours deliver a semi full of lift equipment for this job.
We work all year round. Worst I can remember is temperature 15 below zero with a wind chill of 50 below! Our equipment must be enclosed and heated. Because we are in a rural area we cannot specialize like some contractors, we must be able to do a wide range of cleaning projects. Most of our work is industrial and commercial.
My business is also my hobby. Since my kids are grown and on their own, I spend time/money making our equipment better/safer and able to do jobs even better and faster than we did a few years ago. I try to leave nothing to chance.
I have had the pleasure of being in the position of having customers call needing something done. Their questions are usually in this order:
1. Can you
2. How soon
3. Will you be able to… Then they say “I will make up a requisitionâ€.
They know we will be expensive but they also know we will be able to do what we said when we said we could do it!
I have found that if the job was easy they (the customer) would do it themselves in house. When they call their usually in a hurry, they may have already tried themselves and it probably involves putting workers up in the air or inside a confined space. I call these special projects. You cannot predict when they will happen and once it is over, it may never happen again.
A couple of months ago we picked up a new location from one of our long-standing fleet accounts. It was the first time that we had ever been to that location. We did this work on a Saturday when no one was there.
My contact called the following week to draw up the terms of this location and his exact words were, “Dave this is unprecedented, I receive calls from our various locations about vendors work and sometimes they even offer complements. But in this case I have received 3 separate calls complimenting your crew on the work that they/you did! I have never had this happen before with any of my vendors, this is really unprecedented, of course this is what I expect from you guys!†J We clean about 300 vehicles per month for this customer at 4 different locations. We started doing work for them in 1986.
We very seldom receive complaints. When we do, it’s a big deal and I follow up with my crew and the customer right away. Have not had to do that very many times in the last 18 years.
Dave Olson
Sure I have spent a lot of money, time, etc., putting this equipment together. Our Red truck is somewhat the result of "Gee wouldn't if be nice if we had/could! We try not to rely on our customers for anything! One thing we do not have is a porta poddy!
Sometimes we wish we did!The extra space on both of our trucks allows us to put in additional supplies or equipment when needed. The White truck is almost full of supplies and scaffolding (as I write this) for a project that we will be doing at an industrial plant during their 4th of July shutdown. We will also have a vendor of ours deliver a semi full of lift equipment for this job.
We work all year round. Worst I can remember is temperature 15 below zero with a wind chill of 50 below! Our equipment must be enclosed and heated. Because we are in a rural area we cannot specialize like some contractors, we must be able to do a wide range of cleaning projects. Most of our work is industrial and commercial.
My business is also my hobby. Since my kids are grown and on their own, I spend time/money making our equipment better/safer and able to do jobs even better and faster than we did a few years ago. I try to leave nothing to chance.
I have had the pleasure of being in the position of having customers call needing something done. Their questions are usually in this order:
1. Can you
2. How soon
3. Will you be able to… Then they say “I will make up a requisitionâ€.
They know we will be expensive but they also know we will be able to do what we said when we said we could do it!
I have found that if the job was easy they (the customer) would do it themselves in house. When they call their usually in a hurry, they may have already tried themselves and it probably involves putting workers up in the air or inside a confined space. I call these special projects. You cannot predict when they will happen and once it is over, it may never happen again.
A couple of months ago we picked up a new location from one of our long-standing fleet accounts. It was the first time that we had ever been to that location. We did this work on a Saturday when no one was there.
My contact called the following week to draw up the terms of this location and his exact words were, “Dave this is unprecedented, I receive calls from our various locations about vendors work and sometimes they even offer complements. But in this case I have received 3 separate calls complimenting your crew on the work that they/you did! I have never had this happen before with any of my vendors, this is really unprecedented, of course this is what I expect from you guys!†J We clean about 300 vehicles per month for this customer at 4 different locations. We started doing work for them in 1986.
We very seldom receive complaints. When we do, it’s a big deal and I follow up with my crew and the customer right away. Have not had to do that very many times in the last 18 years.
Dave Olson