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S028: Native Snow NJ, Shawn DeVincenzo
767 Plays1 year ago
The guys sit down with Shawn DeVincenzo of Native Snow New Jersey to talk about their operation, and how they have continued to build their business even after two very low snow winters
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Transcript
Introduction with Steve and Jeremy
00:00:11
Speaker
And we're off and running with episode 28 of the Snow Jobs podcast powered by short iron backblades. As always, I'm Steve. That's right. You know me. And as always, my partner in crime is Mr. Jeremy Lindstrom of Glacier Snow Management. The most interesting man in snow. How you doing, bud?
00:00:36
Speaker
Doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. How about you? Not too bad. Not too bad. We're doing this on Sunday. This is dropping tomorrow morning. So we're doing a weekend episode here. We don't usually like doing those as you might see in a couple of minutes as we start talking to Sean, who's been taking, taking part in some activities. That's it, baby.
Steve's Mishap Story
00:00:58
Speaker
How was your week? Spraying God's juice. Oh, I sprayed a lot of juice and I, I kind of fucked myself. I'm,
00:01:06
Speaker
I got my semi stuck in a dirt road, so that was all driver error, stupidity on my end, thinking I can make it, and I didn't, and shit happens, I guess. We saw the photos, eh, you know what? Well, you know, I got to post everything, good or bad. I like it. Eh, I like it, you know? It definitely does happen. Not all unicorns and rainbows around here. It does happen. Everybody has days like that, and it's good to post them.
00:01:34
Speaker
Oh, what else going on? I think. No, just no. Yeah, just getting ready. Not a great week. Just not a great week, but we'll just move to this week. We'll leave it at that. Yeah. Well, it were a new week dawns tomorrow.
Interview: Sean DiVincenzo on Low-Snow Markets
00:01:49
Speaker
So we're we'll move past it. Oh, so let's see. What do we got tonight? We got Mr. Sean DiVincenzo of Native Snow, New Jersey.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Staying in the Northeast or heading back to the Northeast, whichever you want to say. And he's going to tell us all how to survive as a snow company in a market that has had either low snow or no snow the last two years. And he's still managed to grow while being mostly, he'll confirm this or deny this later, but mostly I believe on per push contracts. I don't think he's got many seasonals. Maybe a couple, but down there in South Jersey, that's
00:02:27
Speaker
That's tough to get seasonal structures. So I'm very interested to hear how he's not only survived, but managed to thrive with two down years of snow. Let's what else? A lot of rum. That's it, baby. That's it. Sean hitting the rum buckets. Oh, so let's get through this week in review and we'll get into what we're showing. But first, what do
Product Promotions: Snow Removal Equipment
00:02:51
Speaker
we got to do? We got to hear from short iron first, right? Got some big news coming up in the next week with short iron there.
00:02:57
Speaker
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00:03:24
Speaker
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00:03:37
Speaker
So the week in review, last week, what did we do?
Off-Season Planning with Brandon Riley
00:03:41
Speaker
We had Brandon Riley from LADC out in Minnesota with us. We just had him back on. The three of us had a conversation about our off-season timelines for our companies. I know for me, it was great to hear how the bigger guys do it and what they got to go through. And it just reinforces to me that I'm happy with my current size and stress level because you guys got some serious headaches. I don't know how you do it. Same as you, just on a little bigger scale.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, you can keep the bigger scale. That's for sure.
Rob's Equipment Fix with Ariens
00:04:09
Speaker
Oh, we have a major, major update. I wish we had the news ticker tape. We don't have that sound, but a big update for you guys. Rob from already outdoor finally got the call from Arians who made an appointment to come pick up his mammoth and make it right for him.
00:04:29
Speaker
I honestly really didn't think they'd call, but Rob said they finally did. So we will keep you posted on how Rob says that goes. How's that Jay? Yeah, that's cool. But what do you mean make it right? What are you, does he know what they're going to do yet or no? I don't know. I assume they will take it from him and try and make it work again. I don't know. I don't know if they're taking it back permanently or if they're just going to take it back and get it right. Can we get them a contract or something or what?
00:04:59
Speaker
That would make it right. That would definitely make it right. Oh, I don't know. I don't know what it is and we'll have to wait and we'll check in with Rob on that and, and see what he says. But, uh, yeah, I think that's, that's really it for the weekend review.
Preseason Slowdown Discussion
00:05:13
Speaker
We really don't have much going on. It's, uh, still not really pre-season yet. Kind of still in the, uh, the early August period. So we're just going to roll with it. So let's hear from Musk oxen hill tip. Then we're going to get into this with Sean. All right. Back in 60 boys.
00:05:28
Speaker
Hey guys, Steve here. We're always looking for ways to save on labor and increase safety for our people.
00:05:34
Speaker
Last year, I purchased a game-changing snowblower from my company that does just that. It's called the Musk Ox. Its patented back drag feature and design lets us get right up to our HOA garage doors and tight spots, clean them all right down to the pavement without scratching. This beast can also scrape hard pack going forward if you needed to. It's truly a dual threat blower. Give Musk Ox a call. Their staff are extremely knowledgeable and have been amazing with us. Musk Ox, snowblowers that back drag.
00:06:02
Speaker
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00:06:32
Speaker
All right, gang, you're back.
Sean DiVincenzo's Business Journey
00:06:36
Speaker
Let's get this going. Let's welcome Sean, Big Sean, DiVincenzo to the show from native Snow, New Jersey. You may recognize him from some of the Snow Jobs Inner Circle videos that are out there. May know the name. Sean, what's up, brother? How you guys doing today?
00:06:53
Speaker
Pretty good. I think you're doing better than us. Fold this man around seven rum buckets deep. So, you know, let's get it going. Seven rum buckets deep. Nice. He's a pro. He's a pro, baby. That's how they do it in Jersey. Yeah, we- Oh, that's great. That's great, man. I need some real. That's true. Why don't you just feed me to the lions? Stuck on my head when I'm drowning. You better lock it up. No, you lock it up. Lock it up.
00:07:19
Speaker
We want to turn it loose. That's right. Let's turn it loose, actually. Let's do the opposite, man. Sean, tell us a bit about Native Snow, bro. All right. Yeah. So Native Snow was established in 2014.
00:07:35
Speaker
Whoa, that was a long pause, sorry. Yeah, that was a very long pause. You don't have to take a minute between each sentence, just let it flow. So it was established 2014 after a year of working with my buddy in the industry and I was shoveling and running machines and fell in love with snow and I decided to buy a truck and go off my own. Dummy.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah. Did you say dummy? I said dummy. What's that? I said he told me not to do it, but I should have listened. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. It is a sometimes ultra frustrating business, isn't it? Sure is. Oh yeah. Oh, so you founded it in 14. So you're almost 10 years old. Yeah. It would be an added for a little bit, a lot of ups and downs, um, a lot of failures, a lot of learning curves.
00:08:33
Speaker
That's good. It was definitely not easy. Had a lot of good- Get all the failures out of the way early. Yeah. Yeah. Had a lot of good support from some buddies in the industry and a lot of family members supporting me, telling me to keep going and we ended up pushing through it. Good for you, brother. Good for you. Yeah, that's a good deal. Probably not actually pushing, according to the last couple of years, what I've heard from you, right? Yeah, the last couple of years has been really tough. We went from
00:08:59
Speaker
our average over the last five years is 16 inches, which is almost impossible to survive. 16 inches, 16 inches a year. Yeah. 16 inches a year. I mean, last year brought our average down a lot with only having two and a half inches over our 30 year average is still 29 and a half inches. So we're still up there, you know, as far as that, but the last couple of years has been really tough. That's crazy.
00:09:30
Speaker
Oh man. Good thing you salted. Good thing you salted. Made in Salt, New Jersey. They're going to change your name a little rebranding. That's it, baby. So Sean, what type of sites are you guys going after? What do you got in the portfolio there? Right now we're small retail and office buildings. Just the last couple of years started getting into big box stores, trying to pursue some bigger stuff. It's tough to get into.
00:09:59
Speaker
Uh, as you guys know, I'm sure, um, right now we don't, we do, we service one HOA. Um, and like I said, we found our niche in like the one to like four acre sites. We service them pretty good. We have a decent amount of those. Uh, it seems like a lot of the, a lot of the companies over here, there's a lot of competition. It seems like a lot of the companies around here go after a lot of the bigger stuff. So it's a more competitive game.
00:10:28
Speaker
And where I found my niche was just being a reliable guy, shows up, answers the phone calls, always persistent with the customers. And I feel like it's won me a lot of bids over the years because of doing that. You got to be that way. Are there people out there that aren't that way?
00:10:46
Speaker
Don't answer the phone. I talked to the one HOA. I talked to you about last year, Steve, that I won. They're like, yeah, you answered the phone at 8 o'clock at night on a Tuesday. The other contractor, we didn't answer the phone for three days straight. Like, how are we going to hire that guy? Wow. There's a lot of that going around. You got to wait for him to get back from Florida. Yeah. Oh, man. Wow. I'm kind of shocked to hear that. That there's still people out there that don't answer the phone.
00:11:13
Speaker
Jeremy, your phone's on 24-7, right, Infargo? He's on 24-7. Yeah, you're answering the phone all the time. If I don't answer it, I'll get back to you shortly. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's crazy, Sean.
Native Snow's Operations and Future Plans
00:11:25
Speaker
Unfortunately. Yeah, but that's the business, though. You know, people got to be able to, people freak out about snow, especially if they're not used to it, like, you know, in Southern Jersey, where they have had two years of very little snow. You get one inch, your phone's got to be blowing up. Hold on, Steve, just to correct you.
00:11:43
Speaker
I live in South Jersey but our operations out of Central Jersey so we get a little bit more snow than the Southern Jersey boys. I stand corrected. He's in the center of the show. There's no difference. I don't know a thing about the East Coast. Don't worry about it. You're not missing anything. I know the New York troopers don't like us. That's not all I know. Not during speed week, right? Yeah, Sean's with us on the...
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. Sean was with us on that run when we all got pulled over in a convoy. That was pretty interesting though. Have you ever seen four guys get pulled over at once? I've never seen it before. I have a lot of buddies that are cops and troopers and I told him the story. They're like, are you kidding me? He pulled over four cars. I was like, I swear he pulled over four cars. You got, they can't get us all. Actually they can.
00:12:36
Speaker
Oh man. All right. So you're doing, man, that's tough. So how many acres total are you doing? Uh, we're suffering about 65 to 70 acres currently in our current portfolio. Um, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Uh, we're getting a lot of bids out there trying to size up a little bit. Uh, there seems like a lot of competition has fell off the last couple of years due to the lack of snow. So we're trying to, uh,
00:13:03
Speaker
you know, really, really take it and run with it. And hopefully we can, uh, you know, grow a little bit over these last couple of years. It's been tough. I mean, it's tough to grow when you get no snow, but at the same time, you gotta be, you gotta be willing to do it. But you're doing it. I mean, you're doing it two years. Last year you got what? Zero? Uh, we, yeah. I mean, we didn't push once. We had two and a half inches total. That's great. And you're still doing it.
00:13:29
Speaker
That was drinking a lot. Definitely drinking a lot. It's stressful, and you're mostly per push, correct? Yeah. Thankfully, a couple of years ago, I was able to get a couple seasonals with being in the big box store. They have really helped out. I was able to convert one of my long-term customers to seasonal also. It was better for his budgeting.
00:13:57
Speaker
So those two accounts have really covered my overhead over the last couple of years. So it's let us, it's given us the advantage to, to have the low snow years, but to be honest with you, it's still really tough. Like just covering costs isn't, you know, there's no way to do business. Got to be all those sleepless nights of snow coming and not coming. Oh, it's terrible. Yeah. You can come on pushing me anytime.
00:14:24
Speaker
I don't know if you like the way the Jersey boys think I can get anybody to come push for me, but he can. Yeah. You, you put out a text saying, Hey, I got snow coming on Thursday. You'll get 15 guys like come out and do it for free. If that was true, I would love, I would love that.
00:14:39
Speaker
I'm gonna make it open. If we're getting snow, come on out. I'll put you to work. I guarantee if you're getting snow on, say, Friday and you put out an Instagram post on Tuesday, I guarantee you get 10 to 15 guys from somewhere in this country that'll be like, dude, I'll come plow a glacier. Sean, do you agree with that? Come on. They're kind of, you know. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I've seen people do it.
00:15:03
Speaker
If, if a couple of people are doing it, a lot of people want to go, believe me, Jeremy, you're learning great operation out there. I'm sure people would love to just come out there and just check out to see what you guys do. That's a little bit different. You know, always pick up something. So I'm sure you can get guys all the time. I appreciate the kind words. And yeah, we try to try to run a pretty solid ship out here and yeah, that's, I don't know, we enjoy it and it's fun, but I always like to see how other people do it. And I always like to bring people out and you know, show them what we do. Cause you know, everybody can.
00:15:32
Speaker
Megan, look, look, look the way you want on Instagram or TikTok. There's a lot of shit behind the scenes you don't see. And you post a lot of that, too. Like I post a lot of a lot of the the f ups, you know, the tires off the beam. It's part of the game, man. I mean, it is. You don't want it to happen, but it does happen. I mean, I don't know. I personally. I personally love seeing that kind of stuff because it tells me I'm not the only one going through it. You know, we're all going through stuff at different times.
00:16:03
Speaker
You know, you look at that. Look at that. What did I do? The real the other day with the the the church dancing. You know, when you make it when you make it through a whole snow event without your metal plus blowing a single line, that thing's got a thousand views or everybody's laughing their butts off. I mean, everybody's everybody's had blown lines, broken pucks and, you know, damaged trucks and stuff. So I kind of like knowing that we're not alone out there.
00:16:33
Speaker
Everybody's got screwed up stuff. Definitely. What else here, Shawny? Go ahead, Jay. Can I talk to him about his equipment yet or not yet? You know what? Nah, do the Jeremy Lindstrom equipment segment. All right. Let's go, Shawn. I want to know what kind of equipment you're running. All right. On our personal stuff, we're running all Western Ford trucks with Western plows and Western tornadoes or strikers.
00:17:00
Speaker
Um, a couple of salters have the pre-wet system, which we've been getting into the last couple of years. Um, we don't really have a hundred percent use for it, but it's useful. We do have, we do have some of those storms that come in really cold and we get the frozen pavement and, uh, we don't use our, all our pushers are, um, rubber. So we have a hard time with the refreeze over the top. Yeah.
00:17:24
Speaker
You know, the glaze ice. Yep. Yep. So, uh, the pre-wet system has really helped us the last couple of years with that stuff.
Equipment and Recruitment Strategies
00:17:31
Speaker
Uh, but Steve knows rubber edge on everything. Yeah. We don't, we're not high tech with the Arctic shit. We're getting there. They're getting there. Got to get some snow first. No, yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, rubber, rubber is the word.
00:17:46
Speaker
We should work fine out there if the temperatures aren't too cold. Yeah. Like Steve knows that we do get those weak stretches where it goes really cold. The pavement freezes and we do have a hard time de-icing at some point. So all of our, I'm sure we'll get into it, but all of our salt is also treated stuff. No. And then I also pretreat at the hopper if needed. What are you pretreating it with? Just Brian? I have, um, a stuff from Cinetek. It's called, uh, I don't even remember what it's called. That stuff.
00:18:16
Speaker
You guys talked about it with Jordan. It was one of the one of the brines that he uses. It's just a brine. It's no not liquid calcium. It's it's brown in color like a magic minus zero. Something like that. Yeah. OK. On that kind of scale. Gotcha. Beach. Ocean water. Ocean water. You got that down there. Yeah. As far as machines were running Bobcat skid steers.
00:18:42
Speaker
Uh, and we have, we purchased a JCB loader 409 a couple of years ago. It's been decent. Um, looking to expand on the equipment side of things where we do a lot of stuff with trucks and then any other kind of equipment that we need. Uh, we, we do sub out a lot of work as far as having subcontractors. We don't give them full reigns. Obviously there are subcontractors working on our sites. We're managing it and everything.
00:19:11
Speaker
Well, if we need extra additional equipment, we have our subcontractors for that. Cool. How many subs are you running? I think we have about four or five companies that are running with us, depending on the size of the storm. How many shovelers do you have? You have a lot of shovel? I should answer a lot of shovelers. Yeah, we have a lot of shovelers.
00:19:33
Speaker
We have between 35 and 55 shovelers, depending on the size of the storm. Um, you know, they're, and they're out from the start to the finish. So they're, they're out there working. Same thing with all the guys in the trucks, but that's, you know, that's easy during the heat and stuff. Well, you gotta have eight less shovelers now, right? With the two snow Raiders you got running around.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, I got the two Snow Raiders last year, spent an arm and a leg and been paying for them ever since with no snow. That's actually how I met you. That is how I met you though. I posted the pictures of them and I said, I don't even have the Snow Raiders anymore, but I got a whole shelf worth of Snow Raider parts and fluids and stuff like that. So I, I just call, I think I DM'd you, right? And said, Hey, congratulations on the machines. They'll do great for you. And if you, you're so close, if you got a need for the, uh, the replacement edges and fluid stuff, have at them.
00:20:23
Speaker
That was it. Yeah, he's good on edges. I think he's good on edges yet. You never know. Released another couple of years. You never know. You got to push all that salt around. That was great. Steve DMed me on Instagram. Followed my business page and then sent me a bunch of stuff and it was awesome. It's been a great friend ever since. They weren't going to do anything for me. And if they helped you out, that's all. Everybody else seemed to be looking for those Snow Raider, what are they called now? Snow Raider mags or? A mag, yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah. So nobody was going for the original ones, but dude, I can't say anything bad about those original Raiders. Those things did great for us. The only, the only thing we wanted to be was more versatile. We wanted to be able to run the brooms and we couldn't do it with that. But, uh, but they were, I mean, those things were beasts for us. We loved them. Can't complain, but yeah, they should, if you ever get snow, they will do a good job for you. Yeah. I'm planning on putting them to use this year. Hopefully the weatherman saying it's going to be a good year, right? Jeremy?
00:21:20
Speaker
Lock it in. Are you pre-billing? I hope you're pre-billing, but basically it's telling. Native always pre-bills. We just start sending them bills though because they're never wrong. If they called for a bad winner, lock it in. We're good. Lock it in. Fuck. Oh man.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, but they'll do good for you if you get snow. And if you don't get snow down there, and we do up here, then put them on a trailer, bring them up. I'll put you to work. We will. We talked about it last year when you had that one truck issue. I said, if you need anything, we're coming. Whatever you need. That one storm, yeah, that one storm. But that thing was such a pain in the butt. It was melting as fast as it was falling. We should have had like 23 or 24 inches, but we didn't make out too well because most of it fell during the day.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, 20 below. Yeah. I mean, I don't think I could pay guys enough to do that. It sounds very cold and I'm definitely not doing it. If they haven't worked in two years, something tells me they'll do whatever you need them to do this year.
00:22:33
Speaker
Oh man. So you guys, I actually already know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask anyway. The rum bucket is in full effect here. I'm fairly thirsty. Oh man. So what are you using? You said you're using treated salt. What are you actually using?
00:22:55
Speaker
Um, I don't know. I get it right from the port of Newark where it comes in on the boat and they treat it right there. I have no idea what it, what it's called. Uh, it's brown in color, but it's not magic. We used to use slicer, Jay. When that's true slicer, that's perfect. Yeah. But when they spray it, what is it? Purple?
00:23:17
Speaker
No, it's brown. Brown. Yeah. So we used to use a thing from Morton. So salt called snow. I think it might've been ice slicer or something slicer and it was purple. Yeah. Ice slicer out here is purple. Yeah. I don't know what it is in the Midwest, but out here it's purple. Yeah. Well, it's my supplier told me it's a different.
00:23:40
Speaker
a different thing, but he told me he didn't know what it was. And that was two years ago and he's had the same salt ever since. Yeah. You guys are on top of your gaming Jersey. Here, just put this down. It should work. It's like salt mixed with horse manure. It works. All I know is it comes off the boat into a truck right to my site. It's nice.
00:24:06
Speaker
Put it down 400 pounds per square foot, it'll work. Open the gate and let it rip. That's it, baby. Hey, listen, when you're not getting any snow, you got to put down salt, get paid. I love it. Yeah. Sean, are you guys using a contractor weather service?
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, we use WeatherWorks. WeatherWorks has been great for us. It works? Yeah, it works. It WeatherWorks. Indeed does love WeatherWorks. It's very expensive, but it's also very good. They're accurate. You can call up 24-7, talk to a meteorologist right on the phone. Hey, what's going on? They'll let you know about the dry slotting if it's coming, so you don't get surprised. The wrap around. Wrap around. The reach around. The dry rounds.
00:24:55
Speaker
Oh yeah. You told me you tried last year, Steve? I did the demo. They were extremely accurate, but they were also extremely high priced. Yeah. I think they were almost three grand for the year. They're right out of Hackettstown, New Jersey.
00:25:09
Speaker
which is about 45 minutes away from me. And they have a lot of meteorologists on their team, so they're literally open 24-7, 365. A lot of landscape companies around here use them. A lot of snow companies use them. It's pretty much what everybody uses around here anyway. And they answer the phone when you call? I've never called and didn't have them answer the phone. Two, three o'clock in the morning.
00:25:35
Speaker
I call up, I'm like, hey, it was supposed to start snowing an hour ago. They're like, oh yeah, the storm pushed back two, three hours. It's going to start snowing at three o'clock in the morning. I'm like, okay, perfect. This way you can start sending the guys out. Well, that was the pretty cool thing about it is you were the one telling me, I think, when we started that demo that they're going to send you a text an hour before it starts precipitating. They were dead on. They were plus or minus five minutes.
00:26:05
Speaker
I mean, it was, it was pretty good. I, like I said, I would, I would probably go with them, but they were just way, way too high for what I have budgeted for weather. It was 20. I want to say it was close to three. It was like 20 between 25 and 2800 for the year. Yeah. I get all the bells and whistles onto my service with the, um, the winter outlook and all that stuff. And it's about $3,500 for the season for the area codes that I cover. Um, but with that being said,
00:26:35
Speaker
It's worth it for my operation being as we are kind of spread out and all of our stuff isn't in like a five mile range or whatever. We're not where I live and where I service is two different places, where my shop is and where I service is two different places. So, you know, we got to make sure that we have everything covered and WeatherWorks has done that.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah. Listen, they were awesome. I can't say a bad thing about, I think they gave us 60 days on the demo and it was actually the 60 days where we had most of our snow. That was the second half of February and all of March. And they did a, they did a phenomenal job. I mean, and we, like we, we got to be fair where we bash the weather guys when they're, when they're off, but you also got to be fair when they, they do a great job, you got to call it. And the weatherworks did a great job on that demo the entire time.
00:27:26
Speaker
You would call them. They'll do it for you. I told you, I don't, I'll bash them, but if they work, they work. That's it. If they work, you know, anybody, you gotta be fair. I'll own it. You got to call them and see if they're in North Dakota. I know they've been adding places every year. They got the market. So if they're not in North Dakota, then obviously it's not going to work for you. But if they are in North Dakota, I can tell you, I would like to hear how they work out there. I mean, they're very good here, but you know,
00:27:55
Speaker
Here and there is two different animals. Well, good news. The snow jobs weather's out here. It works out here. So you got the snow job will work anywhere. Anytime the weather rock, the weather rock does order it and we'll send it your way for a low.
00:28:16
Speaker
That's it, baby. Oh, man. And I don't know if you know this, Sean, but Jeremy Lindstrom and Glacier are the market in North Dakota. They want on board. You create a market for them. Oh, I'm very aware that they're the market. I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. Amen. Nobody knows me.
00:28:41
Speaker
Everybody knows Glacier, baby. But, you know, Weatherworks was great. Their demo was great. And like I said, it was just, you know, for how much more it was going to cost. We use weather pros. We've used them for seven, eight years. You know, they it was just not not worth making a switch. I couldn't justify making a switch for that much money extra.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, but you weren't happy with them last year. No, no, I was not happy and I've talked to them and hopefully we've got it figured out. There were a couple of events that I was not happy about and a couple times where the phone didn't get answered when I said that's kind of why I'm paying.
00:29:19
Speaker
You know, and nobody got back to me in what I would call a timely fashion. But I will say last year was not an anomaly because the previous six years I've been with them, it was awesome. You know, I had nothing, nothing to complain about, no problems whatsoever. So, you know, everybody, like we say with the equipment, any manufacturer can have a bad batch of equipment. It's all about what you do to make it right. You know, as long as you're standing behind your stuff and you know, you're willing to make it right, you know,
00:29:49
Speaker
I think they'll be just fine. They're constantly tweaking their system. What's that, Jay? Maybe they'll send you a basket of rum. I don't drink rum. Let's move it over.
00:30:00
Speaker
Man, but not like I said, you know, you got to give everybody can have a hiccup here and there That's it That's it and they're constantly tweaking their system. They're constantly trying to upgrade their stuff I know they got a couple things in the works this year So I'm excited for them to see, you know where they go and and how they improve
00:30:23
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, like I said, well, we'll stick with them. Everybody can have a bad, uh, you know, bad couple of weeks or what you're only as good as the people doing it. So we'll give them a, we'll give them another shot. Um, so Sean, how many guys you have on on total during a storm? You got, you said 45 shovelers. Uh, yeah. So between, uh, like I said, in the 30 to 40 range for a shoveling.
00:30:48
Speaker
And then we add on probably another 15 to 20 guys for plowing purposes, machine purposes, subcontractors. It's a decent amount. We run 60, 70 guys. Now, here's my question, because I know everybody that just heard that is thinking this. Where the hell are you finding 30 to 40 shovelers? How are you getting them? That's a great question. So I got one kid. It comes with the salt. He doesn't know how you just grow up.
00:31:19
Speaker
They come in on the boat. They come with the salt. Every 100 yards you buy, you get a free shoveler. I got one kid that's about 24, 25 years old now, and he's been working with me the last four years, and he pretty much gets me all of his high school buddies or college buddies or whatever they are.
00:31:42
Speaker
And they come out and shovel. Some of them are not great and some of them are great. And we kind of divvy them up with put the good with the good and the, or the good with the bad, you know, and we try to divvy them up like that. So they all work and work together. And it's hard. It's not easy to get the guys. And then sometimes I'm making a 2 AM Facebook posts.
00:32:03
Speaker
Hey, who wants to come shovel, make some money? Do those work? Yeah, they work. I mean, I got a couple thousand friends on Facebook. Thankfully, I grew up on a one square mile town, so everybody's kind of like friends and sisters and brothers and cousins and whatever, and people come out and they work. You were so close to getting hit with the Ron Burgundy again. A couple thousand friends on Facebook.
00:32:32
Speaker
Oh man. So you guys, you know, since you guys need a hell of a lot more guys out there than I do, apparently, would you say the colleges are a good place to, to hit, you know, during the winter? Yeah. 100%. Sean, you agree with that? Uh, so like I said, everybody's a friend of a friend. So a lot of them are college kids and or high school kids or kids just doing nothing. And they just want to come out and make a couple of dollars, you know, um,
00:32:58
Speaker
Some kids work in restaurants as like waiters in their clothes or whatever, you know, whatever they do. I don't care. Was it you or somebody else that said they had a kid that will work for weed? So I had a kid. I had a kid that was working and my main shoveler calls me up. He's like, Hey, this guy wants to go home. I was like, well, I'm about two hours away from you. And unless he wants to Uber, he ain't going home. Like I'm not, I can't drive him home right now. I'm busy.
00:33:29
Speaker
And so the kid calls me, he's like, Hey man, I made enough for my eighth of weed. I just want to go home. I'm like, but you realize like, you're not getting paid right now. Like you're, you're on the books. You're going to get paid in like a week. So the eighth of wheat is no good. You might as well stay and get an ounce. Oh man, everybody's got different motivation out there, you know?
00:33:56
Speaker
I couldn't remember if that was you or somebody else that told me that. He just came to work to shovel to make money for weed. Oh my God. Hey, listen. Whatever he does with the money, that's up to him. As long as he shovels everything, you need him to shovel, right? Yeah, exactly. I can't drive you home now. You can Uber, but I can't come get you. My guy's not going to leave the site to just drive you home.
00:34:19
Speaker
Jeez, that's so funny. If his emergency is totally different, you know, but like a lot of our shovel or cruise, they go with the plow truck drivers or have some shovel trucks and you know, the labor trucks, they all pile in one truck and they go out and they go from site to site. Cause like I said, we're, um,
00:34:38
Speaker
You know, want the like four acre sites. So can imagine how much sidewalks they have. Some of them have a lot of sidewalks. Some of them don't. So one truck might have six or seven, uh, two trucks, six, seven guys, they're doing like five or six sites in a route. And, uh, you know, they're, they're going like that. And I'm like, my guys are not leaving to drive you home. Cause you've made enough money for your eighth happening. Isn't that great?
00:35:06
Speaker
and leave when you buy a bail. Oh, man. So as far as. You know, you guys in Jersey, there's there's a lot of like you said, there's a lot of competition down there. Who are you competing with? Like, I mean, you don't have to give names, but are you competing with like big national, you know, type companies or, you know, you compete with monsters or you find that a lot of like one truck wonders that are underbidding you. Who is your main competition?
00:35:33
Speaker
So that's a good question. So on the big sites, the big box stores, which are mainly seasonal and stuff, the ones that are hard to get, there are a lot of national. The nationals, obviously, as we know, they don't want to pay what it's worth a lot of the times.
00:35:49
Speaker
and we're not willing to accept it. Um, you know, if it's a fair price, we usually will deal with one or two nationals, but we don't deal with too many of them. Uh, there's a couple of bigger companies in Jersey, as some of you guys might know, I know Steve knows a couple of them. Um, they're not, they're not really in my, in my area. So we're dealing with, uh, bigger landscape companies. Um,
00:36:16
Speaker
But that's why I found my niche in that one to four acre site size. It seems like
00:36:21
Speaker
those properties have the one truck wonders that want to go out there and underbid, but then they don't perform or they break down or something. And it seems like our prices when we talk to the clients are always like a little bit higher or a lot higher, significantly higher, whatever. And they're like, well, you answered the phone, you showed up, you showed up in a brand new truck. Like we rather use you than this guy because we failed the last four winters that we actually had snow.
00:36:47
Speaker
Yeah. Absolutely. That's the key thing. Jersey, we might only average 16 inches the last couple of years, but we do have those winters where we get 24, 30-inch storms in one storm, and you got to be able to cover that. That's where your company makes it, right? Yeah. If your company can't handle a 30-inch snowstorm,
00:37:05
Speaker
and you fail miserably, well, it's going to be hard to get the work back. And those nor'easters were there. The nor'easters were there, no joke. When they come in off the ocean, they come in and they're dumping two, three, four inches an hour, and you can barely keep up with them. Yeah. Yeah. And they're sitting and rotating. Yep. And you're like, what is going on? I was just going to say it. I was just going to say the old wraparound.
00:37:28
Speaker
Well, call me up shot. I'll come out for a nor'easter. See what that's all about. All right. Yeah. So get the low boy down there, bring some machines. Uh, he can do that. He'll road him. He'll road him on out.
00:37:40
Speaker
See you in two and a half weeks. Oh, man. But yeah, that's you know, that's we've talked about that before, Sean, when we're just shooting the shit like would you rather have one highlight reel site that's maybe worth one hundred and fifty grand max with high liability and a lot of mandatory equipment on site? Or would you rather have eight one to four acre sites within a half a mile of each other that you're making twenty five to fifty thousand on those sites?
00:38:09
Speaker
and you're banging them out in a half the time you would for the highlight reel site. I'll gladly take my low liability sites and you know, all that stuff. No, Jay, I disagree. No. What's that? Who? Yeah. What's a highlight reel site? Oh, the everybody wants the, you know, the Amazons, the Walmarts, the, you know, all that stuff. Sites are going to make you money. Exactly. Well, that's what I'm saying. But, you know, I know you're saying that. Yeah.
00:38:36
Speaker
We don't ever look at anything for a highlight reel. We're looking profitability-wise, you know? But how many guys have DM'd you? Oh, I know what you're saying. I'm not fighting it. I know what you're saying. People want to put something on. Oh, we're at an Amazon or whatever. Yeah, we plowed this Walmart for 30 grand, but it looks awesome on Instagram.
00:38:54
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. Do us any good, though. I want to slip and falls. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like machines are not there. You get a real snowstorm. You can't keep up with it. It's just it's not a it's not good to look for the highlight. Real stuff, you know. You know, the couple of guys said there's big big box stores in the Midwest that are going for fifteen to twenty thousand dollars for a big box store. You kidding me? Like who's taking that? And if you are taking that, how are you not dying? You're an idiot.
00:39:24
Speaker
It's not, I don't know, it's not smart. I mean, if you hold out and nobody in that area picks it up, then they're going to have to raise their rate and give you a decent wage for it. But yeah, that's neither here nor there. That's just, uh, we got a little bit off topic topic there, but, um,
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it's frustrating sometimes. Like all these guys seem to be DMing or reaching out when they talk to you like, Hey, how do we get an Amazon? How do we go about getting, you know, a Walmart or Sam's club or Costco or anything like that? Like I'm like, I'd be the wrong guy to ask cause I don't want anything to do with those types of sites. You know, anywhere where, you know, people are high, high propensity to go down and slip and fall just to make a quick 10 or 15 grand. I want nothing to do with those sites.
00:40:08
Speaker
You know, that's somebody you guys can have all them. Yeah. To put it in perspective. I had a national company call me up last year for targets in New Jersey and they were literally the target by, by our main route. I was like, Oh, where is it? There's so many address. I googled it. I was like, yes, send me over, you know, what you got. It was like nine grand for a nine acre site. First storm and really season for the season. And I'm just like, God, that is.
00:40:38
Speaker
insane. And then it was like another two grand for sidewalks. So the total was like 11 grand for the season or 12 grand or 13. It was under $15,000 for the season. That is insane. I'm like, and then I go, I go by, you know, last year we didn't get no snow, but I go by it on a salt event and there's, you know, snow built up on the sidewalks and the, and the thing. And there's an old truck in there with an old Meyers plow beat up rusting away. And that's the type of person they got the services. And that person made money last year cause it didn't snow.
00:41:08
Speaker
Until the one slip and pull. Until it snows. That's ridiculous, man. Do you say you run a lot of perp pushes out there? You don't do hourly? Yes, our contract structure. What I hear you guys don't do much hourly out there, right? No, we... Yeah, no hourly. Unless you're pretty much the guys that work hourly or working for somebody.
00:41:31
Speaker
So my subcontractors are all hourly. Other than that, it's all per push, a per push or tiered event price. Yeah. One to three, four to seven. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. Or like a per push every time you visit the property every two to three inches. And then we have a couple of seasonal. I know some guys are running like a tiered seasonal situation thing now.
00:41:57
Speaker
I'm still trying to learn that game, but the seasonal is very hard to sell to the customers. I got customers like, yeah, I'll take the gamble of it, not snowing and then saving my budget for landscape in season. And that's what they do. Like, yeah, they do that. They're like, oh, if the bad winter, I just cut back on the landscaping. And then I just recoup after a year.
00:42:17
Speaker
I mean, eventually, eventually it's going to bite them and we're going to get three, four bed winters in a row like we used to get. And they're going to go back to seasonal. But right now, uh, I have a couple of buddies in the, you know, in the area and they're all saying the same thing. Like nobody wants to go seasonal right now and everybody wants a break. Everybody wants this. They want that. And we still have to have the same amount of equipment, you know, it doesn't.
00:42:39
Speaker
your site doesn't change but i can see that with with too low snow years in a row how are you selling somebody on. Top dollar seasonal contract whether it snows or not i mean you could probably do it by putting a decent size floor.
00:42:55
Speaker
you know, where you're doing something like that, where you're giving a decent amount of money back. If it doesn't meet the minimum that you set, that's probably something you could probably try and work in there. But, you know, I don't blame these, these guys to a degree for, for doing that, but you know, when they'll change their mind the first time they get sued.
00:43:13
Speaker
First time they get a slip and fall that they got to spend 50 grand in lawyer fees because they're wanting to fight it. Then they'll be like, well, you know what? We can't do this per, per push stuff anymore with a mediocre company. We got to get somebody in here that's reputable. So on your decent years.
00:43:29
Speaker
You know, what 29 inches will you have it? How many times you guys average going out and like, how many pushes you getting them? Like, that's a good question. Yeah. So that varies. Um, it's weather works report. When I, when I pay for the report and see what our average events are, it says, uh, you know, between 10 and 15 pushes, which I would say that's probably down. So is the average winter though. Uh, I'd say the less.
00:43:58
Speaker
the last five years with it being a 16 inch average, I bet we only go out like three times a year, four times a year pushing, and then we probably get about 15 to 20 salts in on a good year. It depends on what the weather wants to do. If it's going to be sleeting and raining a lot and then dropping down into the freezing, we might salt 30, 40 times.
00:44:19
Speaker
I'd say we'd probably get 15 pushes and 25 to 30 salts on a decent year. On an average year, we might be a little bit more, a little bit less, give or take. You do get those. You do get those in New York, New Jersey, that tri-state area where it's 37 degrees and raining.
00:44:40
Speaker
And then it's dropping 20, 22 degrees in the course of two hours. And then it's all freezing up. So you do get those salt events like that where you can go out and salt the crap out of it. Yeah. We'll saw on something like that. We'll saw two or three times possibly, you know, depending on how, and how much it is. Amen. Don't laugh. Amen. Hey, listen, whatever it takes to make the property safe, right?
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's properties got to be safe. That zero tolerance is not really a thing, but it is kind of a thing. There you go. It's got to be safe.
00:45:14
Speaker
And is that mostly, even though you're doing per push, is that like most of your sites are like a zero tolerance? Yeah. So when I sell the per push, I always tell the customer like, listen, we're, there's no dictation on when we saw, when we don't, we got the weather reports. We'll forward them to you. If you don't want to salt this event because we salted too much, then you're going to have to sign this, uh, you know, waiver, uh, smart, you know, of liability wave. And you know, we don't, we're not liable for anything, uh, held harmless.
00:45:43
Speaker
Oh, Claus. And that's it. And a lot of the times the customer's like, okay, yeah, we'll sign it. And then they'll call us up like an hour later. Oh, can you come saw? Because it's icy. Well, we told you it was going to be icy. So we get, we get a lot of that, but, uh, yeah, our professionals, exactly. That's, I try to tell them that when we're selling it, I'm like, listen, you know, this is, this is what we do. We don't,
00:46:07
Speaker
We're not Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Yeah, we're not Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. We're not going to play games with you. This is what we do when it needs to be serviced, we're going to service you. We're not going to be out there when it's 37 and raining, salting, like there are some people that do that. But when it drops below freezing and weather work says to go, we're going to go. Amen. And that's why we pay a lot of money for that weather service because it has backed us up a lot.
00:46:35
Speaker
Good for you. Sean, I wanted to ask you real quick because I just spoke to a couple guys from the ASCA this week about some of the lobbying and legislation they're trying to get passed for certain states.
ASCA Membership Benefits
00:46:47
Speaker
You are a member, right? I am, yes. And that's, in your opinion, they're the organization to be involved with.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, they're a good organization. I know last year they had a big thing out in Pennsylvania with their storm clause. And New Jersey also just passed something. I don't know if the ASCA was involved in that or not. I believe they were. I believe they had something to do with it. I know it was probably in the works before them, from what I was gathering. It was happening before them, but they really pushed for it. I know the Pennsylvania thing was huge.
00:47:24
Speaker
I follow them from state to state. I think they got some out in Chicago with a storm clause also. Illinois, they got it done there. They've done a couple good things for the industry and it's definitely good to watch. New Jersey has a held harmless clause now. I don't want to call it held harmless because the way they worded it.
00:47:44
Speaker
When I was reading the article, I'm like, well, this doesn't define an ice storm. It doesn't, it defines just a snow storm and any lawyers going to pick it apart. And there's got to, you know, there's always going to be some kind of loophole, but New Jersey pretty much has a 48 hour window right now to clear all parking lots, to make it safe, as long as the contractor is making the best attempt to clear it. So we can't just not show up for 48 hours and have 27 simple falls. But if we're on site clearing it and somebody gets out of their car and they're just like, Oh yeah, we're going to step on the icy patch.
00:48:15
Speaker
A court case just got reviewed and they won. Last month, I posted the article on my Facebook and I believe on Instagram. They're definitely doing good for the industry. Did you do their certification that they offer through the company? I did not. I am working on the SEMA right now. Going on CSP? Yeah. After I do SEMA's, I will be on the ASCA.
00:48:42
Speaker
10-4. Good for you, man. I don't know what it really does for us, but, you know, it's one more thing you can pull out of your bag in court, I guess. I don't know. I'm not even doing it for court purposes. I'm doing it for bid purposes. And, you know, after talking to Steve, it's like, all right, you show up, you show up and you meet up with these customers and you're showing them something different that you are, that the other person is not in a competition driven market in New Jersey.
00:49:09
Speaker
And we're not like a big name out there. You know, we're still getting our name out there. As you know, it takes a long time to get your name out there with the marketing and everything. So, um, being that we're not a big name, I feel like pulling this stuff out of my ass could be like, Oh, wow. This guy's good. Even though we're, we're subpar. No. Yeah. Forget about it.
00:49:37
Speaker
Unimaphia. Snowplow mafia? Sure. That's pretty odd to call him that. That's a non-answer answer. Look at that shaking smile, honestly. Forget about it. He already told you the answer. Forget about it.
00:49:54
Speaker
Oh, man. Yeah, no, it does. That is one thing I know we've spoken about it before. And you asked how how we do it. And I've shown you and it works. It definitely it definitely gives you a leg up over the what I would call the questionable. Like if you're meeting with a board and they got they loved you, but you're 20 percent higher than the next guy that they that was acceptable.
00:50:19
Speaker
You know, he was acceptable, but they obviously have a question about him or something about the proposal. Otherwise, they wouldn't even think twice about it. They'd give it to him and you at 20% higher would not have a shot. But, you know, this gets your foot in that door and lets you allow them the ability to pick the better guy, for what it's worth. I totally agree. At least on paper. Then it's up to you to back it up. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think it gives you that one leg up.
00:50:48
Speaker
Uh, anytime you can one up the competition, it's better. I mean, we know one complex, the lawyer, their lawyer actually told them to go with us. Like, yeah, this guy's a little more expensive, but that's going to, you know, if you've got something happens and we have to go to court about something, you know, we can, we can point to that, that this guy has some form of training that this other guy doesn't have. So, um, so we're at that, that time here, the five and five.
00:51:18
Speaker
You want to take it, Jay? Yeah, you bet. Well, Sean, are you five deep in your room tonight? Seven. Seven deep. Seven little chipmunks twirling on a branch. What do you see that made of snow in five years? What do you guys want to grow to? What's your goals, I guess? Well, I'll say this jokingly, hopefully not bankrupt because of no snow in each other.
00:51:43
Speaker
Uh, with that being said, um, we, I plan to hopefully be, um, as crazy as this sounds double the size, uh, looking to grow every single year. Um.
00:51:57
Speaker
trying to really put a footprint into our area. Hopefully, we didn't really talk too much about it, but I serve as a wide range of areas where I got a south section, a central section, and a north section. I would like to consolidate that into the central slash south-ish section and give up some of the other stuff.
00:52:19
Speaker
and hopefully take our acres and double the triplet and take our machinery and staff and, you know, grow it. Yeah. Very cool. Now, what do you think your biggest advancements and, you know, as far as your growth in the last five years, especially with two years of low snow or no snow, what's been the biggest thing you've done for the business? Biggest jump in the last five years? Precisely, yes.
00:52:48
Speaker
Besides meeting the big deals. That's one big deal, one nobody. That's me. Honestly, I will say proudly, hiring my mother to be my office manager and take care of all the billing and contracts and stuff. She has really turned my company around since she's been doing it for the last
00:53:09
Speaker
Two years. I don't think we'd be here right now if it wasn't for her, to be honest with you. I don't think so. I don't think so. She's really done a wonderful job of doing it, and I'm glad that I had the conversation when everyone was like, listen, this is my weak point of the business, the books and all the contract stuff and the budgeting. I was like, I'm a full sender. Anybody that knows me, I'm like,
00:53:35
Speaker
Yeah, sure. We have a potential of getting an $80,000 contract. Let's spend $150,000 on equipment this year. Yeah, you do. You are that way. I'm more of a full sender, and she's more of a like, hey, relax, and let's build this out and budget it and see if this is going to work. And it's really helped me out along the way. It helps that we had a decent winter with her right before it started, so she was able to see what the business does.
00:54:05
Speaker
compared to low snow year. So she's able to be like, all right, yeah, we're good here. We just got to get some snow now. As we've gotten to know you pretty well, I keep picturing the Wolf of Wall Street with Jordan being one way, being the wild man and his father sitting in the office telling him, no, you can't do this. I said that over and over. I sent her. She never seen that movie. And I sent her to the YouTube section when they're in the office.
00:54:32
Speaker
And he's like, $470,000 on dinner, Jordan. What the fuck did you buy, Jordan? And I sent her that. And he's like, hey, it was a steak and it was a lobster's. And we had some sides. Yeah, sides. Sides. $47,000 in sides, Jordan.
00:54:52
Speaker
That is exactly what I pictured though when you told me about how your mom is doing your books and how good she is at it. She's looking for work? She's looking for more work? She's always looking for work, so if anybody's listening, she's going to let you buy a Razorback? A what? She going to let you buy a Razorback? Oh, I don't know. Maybe. Depends on how many machines I want to buy. Oh, man. Good for you, brother. Yes. No, she's really turned it around and has done well.
00:55:20
Speaker
That's awesome, man. I couldn't thank her enough for all that. Very cool. So what would you say your biggest lesson that you had to learn maybe the hard way has been so far for you and Native?
Learning from Mistakes and Industry Challenges
00:55:34
Speaker
So there's been a lot. My first truck that I bought was a used plow truck and I paid $14,000 for it and I put $30,000 into it. That was a big lesson.
00:55:49
Speaker
Also, don't take on too much at once. Know your growing ability, which I know that happened on the podcast. That's talked about on the podcast a lot, but I personally went through it. I hooked up with a guy that had a bunch of equipment and he told me he could do this, this, this, and that. I took on some accounts that I was weary about, but because he can get the manpower and had the equipment,
00:56:13
Speaker
You did it, and they failed. We definitely failed a couple of times on some sites. I talked to you about it off the air, Steve. I won't go too much into detail with it. Nope, but I'm good.
00:56:24
Speaker
You know, they definitely were not good. Uh, did not make me feel good as a person or a business owner. And I kind of took the step back instead of trying to fill in jobs where I can hire all these people and, you know, look, look like the Hollywood guy with all this YouTube stuff. It didn't work out. It's not worth it. Don't do it. Grow at your own pace. Learn the business, learn the sites that you're doing, learn your production rates before you start jumping into more stuff.
00:56:53
Speaker
That's the key. That's the key. There's always guys out there like Steve, myself, Jeremy, other guys that are way bigger and better than myself. Anybody ever has any questions, you just, you know, DM me and I'll be a straight up shooter with you. I'm not going to lie. Very cool. Yeah. We didn't, I'm going to circle back a little bit here. What do you use? Are you using GPS systems or what do you use it for software or well, I guess we didn't even talk about that.
00:57:22
Speaker
Yeah, so we're using site photos. Yeah, site photos, which incorporates into that snowbitter and property takeoffs, which property takeoffs measures your sidewalks or whatever you need them to measure. Even for landscapers, they do all the bushes on the website, on the site, I should say. They'll send you the overhead picture with everything mapped out.
00:57:49
Speaker
So that has really elevated us to actually know the square footage of the sidewalk, square footage of the site. The site photos has helped us for preseason and post-season inspections. And this year we're gonna try out Yeti Snow, or Snow Yeti, whichever one, however you say it. I think it's Yeti Snow. Yeti Snow, so they seem very good. The guy Bert, we did the demo with, he was awesome.
00:58:15
Speaker
Um, it looked like it fit us very well, uh, being a snow only company. I don't think like Ella man, any of those companies really fit us. We're not really in the green industry and we're not, we're not big enough. So I don't think those are the right softwares for us, but we're going to try to get a snow this year and we're going to continue with site photos and we'll see how it goes. Very cool.
00:58:40
Speaker
I got one more question for you, but before that, let's take 30. Let's let Sean get back into his rum bucket and we'll hear from Hilltip and Frost back in 30 boys. Make your business more profitable with Hilltip spreaders and sprayers equipped with our H-track two-way GPRS tracking and control system. To learn more, visit www.hilltipna.com. Take on winter's worst with the world's best Hilltip.
00:59:05
Speaker
As you've heard in several of our episodes, Frost Solutions Mini Weather Stations not only give you images of your sites 24-7, but also provide custom forecasts, alerts, and records for slip and fall lawsuits. Whether you're a team of 1 or 1,000, the Frost System is an affordable solution that will save you time and money. Book your demo today at frostsolutions.io. All right, we're back. We are back. Sean has emptied his rum bucket. Emptied his rum bucket.
00:59:30
Speaker
He's now out. I got a little thirsty there during the break, Steve. That's all right. That's it. Listen, man, it is what it is. Got a little bit of juicing, yeah. He's got the happy juice. He's been going on the happy juice for a while. He got some sun today, right? You're out at the pool all day. Yeah, I'm at my mom's house. All my cousins are over and I'm out at the pool hanging out. They're still here hanging out in the backyard. So as soon as we're done here, I'm going to continue to party.
00:59:57
Speaker
Very cool, brother. We will wrap it up for you very shortly. The one thing I did forget to mention in the first part of the show here, Jay, was to correct the name from last week. Those markers, they're Plowwright. Plowwright. Plowwright is the name of the company. The guy actually reached out and thanked us for the mention. But yeah, I said I would correct the name because I think we called them
01:00:21
Speaker
I don't know, done right or something. I forget what Brandon said. I was like, something right. I was like, I think they're talking about flower, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to text Steve and I totally forgot the text. Yeah. They seem pretty cool. I'm going to buy a couple batches and see how they work. Yeah. They look good. It's a, I was always skeptical of them because they're, they're plastic. It seems like a lot of, a lot of, a lot of you sticking out of your rum bucket. Yeah.
01:00:45
Speaker
But we use the discount snow steaks, the fiberglass ones. They're pretty good. We like the black ones. The black actually show out really good in the snow. I think if you don't fiberglass, the discount snow steaks and low cost markers dot com are kind of hand in hand. I actually I think might be the same company. I mean, they're selling the same steak. So yes, is what it is. I hate steak.
01:01:09
Speaker
You hate snakes or stakes. Yeah. I hate snakes too, but I hate, I hate check. I don't, we already talked about this. What kind of stakes are we talking about the stakes that we had up at the, those are good stakes. Those are good stakes, man. Oscar. Are we going to equip? Yeah, Sean's going. He's driving down. As long as everybody's going, I'm I told, I told the wife already, I was like, I'm going. She's like, okay, whatever.
01:01:38
Speaker
Oh, that's actually, I got to get one booked here. You need me to pick up some more stakes. You want me to bring Oscars down.
01:01:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not. I'll bring them down. That would bring them down. Epic. I think me and Steve are going to drive together. Yep. I just drove to Kentucky in July last month and it wasn't too bad. It was like nine and a half hours. So I think, what is this in Louisville? So it's about 10 and a half hours from me. I don't know, but I'll be driving. So I'm not, I'm not going in your three days. Well, you know, you don't want to drive in the, in the Ford. No, I don't want to drive in 98 miles an hour. Oh, we're good.
01:02:15
Speaker
Man, I was doing 75 after getting pulled over there, and you dusted us. I don't even know where the hell you were. You were gone waiting on us by 15, 20 minutes on a two-hour trip. When I stopped to use the bathroom, which was like, I passed Rob, and then Rob passed me, and then I passed him again. And then I was literally sitting there like, where are these guys? Am I ever going to get here? That was such a good time. I'm so glad we did that. It was such a good time. Yeah. Sean, I got one.
01:02:44
Speaker
What's that? Should have followed Mitchell. Hashtag. Should have followed Mitchell. Yep. I got one more for you, Sean. So what are you in your market or in your mind as a business owner down there? What do you feel are the biggest issues facing the snow management industry right now? Oh, I think we just took care of one of them with all the slip and falls. I think that's a big thing in New Jersey in the tri-stated area.
01:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. It seems like everybody and their mother wants to go out in high heels and walk and look pretty in the snow. I think it's cool to do on TikTok or something, but it's definitely not that it's cool to do in real life. Yeah. That is one of the biggest things that I've had complaints about.
01:03:26
Speaker
And the other thing is just the underbidding from the nationals and the bigger dogs in the industry, just coming in and undercutting everything and taking away a lot of good potential sites that used to be from what I gather. I mean, I haven't been in the industry that long, but when I talked to some guys that have been around for a long time, they're like, yeah, this used to go for 400,000. Now it's going for like
01:03:52
Speaker
$89,000 and they're just, it's not good. PMs have definitely cut the, uh, cut the value of the contracts down. And it seems like they're still getting that money from what I understand, but they're just taking it and taking it bad there. You might as well just, yeah, I don't even want to say it. We're on air, but you know, well that you're right though. That is a, that's probably the biggest issue in the industry right now, besides the slip and fall stuff.
01:04:21
Speaker
Oh, all right. So any funny stories you want to throw out there? Yeah. So I got, I got a bunch cause we fell the bunch and, uh, we've also succeeded a bunch. Give me the best one, but I will give you the one when my daughter was born February 3rd, uh, 2021. You had to, you have to think about 2021. So we get, uh,
01:04:46
Speaker
All summer, I'm like, we're going to get a blizzard during this. We're going to get hammered. It's going to be the worst winter ever. Well, it turns out to not be the worst winter ever, but it turns out to be the biggest storm New Jersey's had in like eight years. We got like 30, 28 inches of snow or 27 inches of snow over a two-day period. February 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. My wife's getting induced into labor. February 3rd, all the shovelers quit.
01:05:16
Speaker
The guys that are in the trucks are like, fuck this, we're going home, we're tired. And I'm like, dude, my wife's about to have a baby. I go up to check on one of the subs and I drive up there by myself and it is an absolute nightmare. I'm like, what the fuck? There's three foot drifts on the sidewalks. This guy's supposed to have five shovelers up there for me. He has zero. He has one guy that's sitting in the truck.
01:05:44
Speaker
And I'm like, what is, I'm like, you guys got to go home. Like, I don't even want to deal with you. So they go home. I go back down south. I grab, I grab a crew of guys. I switch trucks without a salter. I grab a giant 26 inch snow blower. I'm on the snow blower. The other guys are doing, uh, sidewalks with the shovels.
Personal and Professional Balance in Snowstorms
01:06:06
Speaker
We're up there for like eight hours. My wife's going into late or going to get induced at 7 PM. It's like.
01:06:14
Speaker
Two, three o'clock in the afternoon. Snow stopped, right? We're just doing sidewalks. And I'm like, this is a nightmare. Almost everybody went home. My number one guy, Rich, which is like a brother to me, also the godfather of my daughter, Giovanni. I go to the hospital, take my wife to the hospital after we're done with all that. And he calls me up, he's like, dude, he's like,
01:06:40
Speaker
We need to do sidewalks. He's like, how much were you paid? He's got my brother, his brother-in-law and my friend that's a cop. He's like, how much were you paid these guys? I was like, whatever they want, just have them come. I don't care. They just do. I'm getting phone calls. I'm in the hospital. This is a long story, but.
01:06:55
Speaker
we're in the hospital and I look at my wife and I'm like, I got to go. And she's like, what do you mean? I was like, you're induced. So the doctor said 24 hours before you even think about having a baby. I was like, they just broke the salter, the other salters down the snowblower. I was like, I got to go. And she's like, I swear to God. She's like, well, whatever you got to do for your business, go do. She's like, if I'm going to have the baby, I'll call you.
01:07:21
Speaker
And I left the hospital for like 10 hours. God sent of a wife. She's awesome. Good for you. And I went out, we banged out sidewalks and the guys are, they still laugh about it this day because I had my, I had a F-250 6.0 and I had it deleted and all that stuff with the whistle and it has, you know, the turbo. So all they hear is that thing screaming down the street.
01:07:45
Speaker
at like two o'clock in the morning and they're like, are you out of your mind? You're not with your wife. I was like, listen, this, this thing got to get done. I'm not losing my
Accommodations for Crews During Big Storms
01:07:52
Speaker
customers. Thankfully it was a weekend and we had time to do it, but it was, it got bad. And when guys leave after a long time and they don't want to come back, it's, it's not going to hurt. No, you don't get them back. No, they don't let them go home. You don't get them back. I didn't even let them go. They just left. They're like, yeah.
01:08:08
Speaker
uh see you later i don't blame them they were out for a long time i think we talked like 60 hours in that storm for shovelers that's a lot i told you i told you well we did that last that big the supposed big storm where we could see up to 30 something inches last year you did a hotel right i got hotel rooms for them like right outside the sites and yeah okay there you go you need a break go and get a break i started doing that um two years ago after that if we got a big storm coming i'll just book like four or five rooms
01:08:36
Speaker
Yeah. If they don't get used, it is what it is. It just goes into the expense. Exactly. Exactly. It's worth it. It's going to cost you, what, $130 to let a guy go feel human again. Get a shower, change his clothes. It's worth it. And I try to get him as close to the sites as possible. So these guys don't have to drive anywhere. You know, a site supervisor or myself can just. You guys do that too, Jay? Oh yeah. We do that quite a bit. Nice. You guys have cots and stuff at Glacier? No, we get them hotels. You do? Yeah. Interesting.
01:09:07
Speaker
I was going to say like a warehouse that big. Nice. I said I was going to say like a warehouse that big. You could put a bunch of people just put a bunch of cots in there. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:18
Speaker
No, we get them. We get them. A lot of guys are a lot of times we get rooms.
Podcast Participation and Gratitude
01:09:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah. That's I mean, because you can't drive right when that wind's blowing. Like you tried. Who are you trying to rescue last year, Aaron? Snowballs. Yeah. Yeah. That was that was impressive as hell. Watching the videos you were putting out like I'm thinking, how tough is this to get to this guy? And he's posting the video. I'm like, holy.
01:09:40
Speaker
Shit. That's the first time I've never, that's the first time I ever could not make it to somebody. Dude, that's as legit as it gets. I mean, you know what? Post those again tomorrow when this is dropping. Post those again on Monday or Tuesday. Those videos of the wind and what it looked like. That was crazy. That was Valentine's Day, yep.
01:09:57
Speaker
All right. Jay, you got anything else for Shawny? No, I don't think so. Let's let Shawn get back to his pool party and get back in that realm. Let's not let him lose his buzz. Absolutely. I'm starting to lose my buzz already. All right. Well, we don't want that. So. All right, Sean, buddy. Thanks very much for coming on, man. You know, we love you. It's great to talk to you on here. We finally got you on. And I think that was it. Right. We've gotten the rest of the everybody else on. Sean was kind of shy. Didn't want to come on.
01:10:26
Speaker
Thanks for having me guys. And yeah, I was I very definitely podcast shy. I'm like, I don't know. No, it's not a big deal, man. Just not just talking to everybody out there listening. That's the beauty. Nobody that's not a snow person is listening to this thing. So no Nancy Housewife, you know, in Florida is not finding this by accident. So it's all snow guys. They know what they know what the deal is.
01:10:49
Speaker
But thanks for coming on, brother. Appreciate you taking time out of the getting out of the pool there and empty in a rum bucket for us. And we hope you get some snow this year. Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me, guys. I'll talk to you guys soon. All right. All right, guys, that's it. We're going to see everybody next week. Thank you for listening and all your continued support for me and Jeremy. Everybody have a safe week out there. Keep pushing.