Mark my word...

Acp

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Bjorn Marshall
I think the sweet spot is the small multi truck local company, maybe 3-4 trucks. No high stress running something that size, overhead is not very high compared to many businesses where u need a storefront, and you can still be pretty personal with your customers

I would never want to run a 10-15 truck shitshow
 

Brian H

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I think the sweet spot is the small multi truck local company, maybe 3-4 trucks. No high stress running something that size, overhead is not very high compared to many businesses where u need a storefront, and you can still be pretty personal with your customers

I would never want to run a 10-15 truck shitshow

It doesn't need to be a "shitshow" unless you want it that way.
 

steve_64

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Look at the youtube video of "The battle of Leyte Gulf"
Gennys dad was a sailor on the Leyte. I dated a Filipino from Leyte too.
I haven't seen the video but have watched some PBS stuff about it.
 

Brian H

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Gennys dad was a sailor on the Leyte. I dated a Filipino from Leyte too.
I haven't seen the video but have watched some PBS stuff about it.


I have studied that battle quite extensively. A great victory for the U. S. Navy but, save for a few destroyers, destroyer escorts and escort carriers, it could have been a major disaster.
 
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The Great Oz

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Had an employee that used to work at Stanley San Diego. Six days a week from 7:30 am to past dark. Said he made a lot of money, and had no time, or energy, to spend it. No complaints, he left because he wanted to find a girl and settle down.
 

steve_64

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I think the Stanley here is a single van that changes hands every few years.
 

Larry Cobb

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Had an employee that used to work at Stanley San Diego. Six days a week from 7:30 am to past dark. Said he made a lot of money, and had no time, or energy, to spend it. No complaints, he left because he wanted to find a girl and settle down.

They had 50 trucks when I visited them several years ago.
 

Acp

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Not even close.

not that many trucks because they kind of backed off of residential wall to wall service and are mostly a rug shop, their facilities are pretty amazing though. The one down on Leary in Seattle is huge, I would say at least a 30,000sqft building and the real estate aint cheap there.

They do rug repair, construction, etc. Anything we come across that looks risky we send the customer to them
 

Acp

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There is a Coit here that might be a corporate outfit but they have at least 50 trucks for the standard coit services and another 20 or so superior restoration trucks

pretty big operation
 
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The Great Oz

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There will come a time when the franchises and Hagopian sized companies will all have CRBs and high performance swivel wands..
How will you OOs compete when it will come down to personalities, speed of service and price, rather than results?
Little guys need to do whatever they can to emulate the big guys in any way they can. Big guys understand quality AND efficiency, have the discipline to not lose their ass trying to be a hero, and know the difference between tools that work and the latest fad product that sucks money out of your wallet better than anything else. There's a lot to learn from them.

Little guys have some advantages, including the ability to be more mobile (moving out of business unfriendly towns), don't have the costs of having government agencies in all of your pockets, and can run their business using a few hundred dollars worth of apps. In other words, overhead is way lower. Little guys treat every customer as if they're very important, and can have a personal relationship with their customers. It's easier to be likable. As a multi-truck company, we do everything we can to emulate the little guy. There's a lot to learn from them.


Doesn't DA Burns have something close to that?
You're thinking of Hagopian.

Mikey P said: ↑
Not even close.
not that many trucks because they kind of backed off of residential wall to wall service and are mostly a rug shop, their facilities are pretty amazing though.
Thanks Bjorn. We have 15 trucks. That's more than a lot of rug plants run, way less than many large on-location cleaners. About 40% of our business is residential installed carpet, so that's still an important division.

The local COIT is a company office that operates as cleaning/restoration firm and as a show facility to sell franchises. They take trucks in from failed franchises and resell them to other franchises, storing them at that location. They aren't running everything in the lot, and not everything in the lot runs, but they are doing a healthy bit of business.
 

Acp

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oh gotcha, I think it was an employee of yours a long while back that told me you guys arent as focused on residential carpet and more rugs
 

Brian H

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oh gotcha, I think it was an employee of yours a long while back that told me you guys arent as focused on residential carpet and more rugs

It doesn't mean that D. A. Burns isn't focused on residential cleaning it's just be a matter of where the market is shifting. There are a lot more area rugs in the market now and less wall to wall carpet.

We had a competitor with a similar sounding name to ours try and say something along those same lines to their customers. They said that that since we sell rugs that we aren't as focused as them when it came to cleaning.

My answer is "Yes we sell rugs and we also have more than 10 times the amount of people dedicated to just our cleaning division then their entire company. "
 
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