Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S2-97: First Snow Storm of the season thoughts...PA, NY, NJ
903 Plays19 days ago
With winter here, and parts of the country already having multiple events under their belt, The guys bring in Anthony Mann and Scott Lesak to talk about their experience with the large snow storm that hit parts of Pennsylvania, NJ, and NY with over a foot of snow.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: Episode Highlights
00:00:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. Snow jobs nation. We are back bringing you another episode, episode 97 this week of the snow jobs podcast powered by Top Gun Backblades as always. I'm Steve. That's right. You know, who's with me, my snow compadre, the Rick James of snow management or Mr. Jeremy Lindstrom is here.
00:01:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
What's up snow King.
00:01:08
RICK JAMES
Snoking.
00:01:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
You're leading the league in pushes so far, right?
Snow Plowing Stats & Team Morale
00:01:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
How many times you guys push?
00:01:14
RICK JAMES
Three.
00:01:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
Three. So you gotta be three, probably less than three.
00:01:16
RICK JAMES
How many inches we got? How many inches you think?
00:01:20
RICK JAMES
I just looked and said it says four point six, but um we got three and we got three on one.
00:01:21
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
00:01:25
RICK JAMES
So we'll push.
00:01:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
I said pushes, not inches, pushes. You guys are leading the league.
00:01:28
RICK JAMES
Yeah, ah we got three. Well, actually, if we got three pushes. ah Is it one or two cleanups? So what do you want to call it? for Four, four pushes.
00:01:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, the glacier snow chat was active last week. Very active.
00:01:40
RICK JAMES
It was fun. We were back in business. The boys are back in town.
00:01:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's good. That's good. Everybody good.
00:01:46
RICK JAMES
Everybody's great.
00:01:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's awesome.
00:01:47
RICK JAMES
Yeah. We're, we're killing it.
00:01:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
Guys have got to be happy, right?
00:01:49
RICK JAMES
Got some new guys out there.
00:01:51
The SnowJobs Podcast
Guys got to be happy.
00:01:51
RICK JAMES
Yeah. other Everybody's in a good mood when we're out there so far. We got one night, uh, Holland. So that was even, that was fun. So, ah but yeah, it was, it was a good time.
00:02:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
Cool. Very cool, man. Yeah, it's good to see you guys doing what you do, man.
00:02:03
RICK JAMES
We like to have fun.
00:02:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
that's ah It was a long, long down winter last year. Everybody was so depressed. It's good to see all the guys upbeat again.
00:02:13
RICK JAMES
Yeah, we just needed to keep up, keep going. So we'll see what happens.
00:02:16
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's it.
00:02:16
RICK JAMES
But yeah, it's good to be back and good to have the guys back in the shop and talking smart like they always do.
00:02:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's it. So we're recording this Saturday night.
Weather Predictions & Skepticism
00:02:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
So are you guys you guys are supposed to be getting snow tomorrow night too, right?
00:02:31
RICK JAMES
Ah, there's, there's us. Is it size Friday? Isn't it?
00:02:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
Is it Friday? Oh, my bad.
00:02:35
RICK JAMES
Yeah, I think it's right.
00:02:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
Friday. Dude, Thanksgiving screwed me all up.
00:02:36
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:02:39
RICK JAMES
I mean, there's a little, we got a small shot on Sunday.
00:02:39
The SnowJobs Podcast
It's Friday. All right.
00:02:42
RICK JAMES
They're saying, so we'll see what happens to me. I don't know.
00:02:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, we got, uh, we got tomorrow night.
00:02:46
RICK JAMES
That doesn't seem there.
00:02:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
We'll see. I don't trust anybody right now. So we'll see. We got a possibility for tomorrow night for a little bit.
Listener Q&A with Mike & Scott
00:02:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
We'll see what materializes, but yeah, it's been, uh, it's been interesting for us too so far.
00:02:57
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:03:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
So, uh, we'll get into that and we get into it with the boys, but, uh, You know, it's, uh, we do have to, before we get started though, we got to give a shout out to, uh, Mike San Luisito and Scott Lee Zach.
00:03:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. We had them on with us for the third time in four weeks. All right. They came back on with us to answer listener questions that came from those first two episodes of lessons learned for new or younger snow companies.
00:03:25
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, those were great episodes. We had a great time with those, right?
00:03:29
RICK JAMES
Definitely fun, yeah.
00:03:30
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:03:31
RICK JAMES
I always have a good time with those guys. with A lot of knowledge between the two of them. so
00:03:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
Absolutely. Yeah. And just a lot of fun with those guys and a lot of great information that they're willing to share with everybody out there. And, you know, we had a lot of questions. We got to most of the questions, ah but, you know, we were already in an hour and a half. We could have.
00:03:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
Probably turned that into three hours that we went with the, we took the best questions. We, we eliminated all of our little crew, all their little fucking joke questions, limited those and a couple others that weren't really answerable.
00:04:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
But other than that, I think we, I think we got a lot of good information, got everybody's questions answered for those. That was good. That was great. So thanks to Mike and Scott for all their time on those three episodes.
00:04:08
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:04:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
It was great having them both. It's always good to have them on the show and. You know, it's a, it's a nice resource to be able to, to go to the well to, to get that kind of information out of them. And now we're glad we were able to get them done for everybody.
00:04:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
So thanks guys. Appreciate you. What else brother? What are we doing tonight?
Surprising Storms in the Northeast
00:04:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
Tonight we are going to talk about the first big swing of storms, right? For the season for the PA, New York, New Jersey areas that happened last week.
00:04:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, they weren't supposed to be big. You all for, for most of us, they weren't supposed to be big.
00:04:39
RICK JAMES
Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
00:04:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
It was.
00:04:43
RICK JAMES
I see a trend coming here where we're going to go tonight.
00:04:45
RICK JAMES
so
00:04:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, you know, it started out, it was supposed to be elevation based.
00:04:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
And, you know, if you weren't above 2000 feet, it was just going to be maybe some mixing, little rain, little snow, some wet flakes. But shockingly, the forecast from multiple weather companies.
00:05:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, you know, they just a little, you know, oh it's like anything else, I think, brother, I think they got a warm up ah stretch.
00:05:09
RICK JAMES
hey like just a big They gave it their best effort, but hey, they moved on to the next day. They didn't even look past.
00:05:20
RICK JAMES
They didn't even look back.
00:05:21
The SnowJobs Podcast
Not, no, not even a hiccup, not even an, oops, sorry.
00:05:21
RICK JAMES
They just moved on.
00:05:27
RICK JAMES
oops Oopsie.
00:05:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah Oopsie. ah ah Yeah.
00:05:29
RICK JAMES
It's just like any other day. Just like any other day.
00:05:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
But I will say this, it wasn't just one company over another. It was all of them calling for the same thing and they were all wrong on that first one that hit last week.
00:05:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah For me, it was, What were we supposed to get? We're supposed to get a little rain mixing, but we're only at 200 feet here. So they're like, nope, no, no accumulation at all. You know, maybe a spotty coating in some of the hillier spots or shaded spots.
00:05:58
The SnowJobs Podcast
but I think we got certified at like five and a half inches and a lot more came down. It
Handling Unexpected Snowfalls
00:06:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
just was melting off so quick. And we had two inches of rain before the snow came.
00:06:09
The SnowJobs Podcast
So like the roads were super wet.
00:06:10
RICK JAMES
Really?
00:06:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh yeah. And it changed over and. My guy called, I remember him calling saying, dude, it changed over. I'm like, all right, let me know when it starts accumulating. If it starts accumulating, it's not supposed to. Fifteen minutes later, like roads are coming over, dude. You might want to come in.
00:06:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
So that was it. We pushed the button at like 1 a.m. Everybody was plowing by 1 a.m. and we plowed till 8 30 in the morning. We had a lot more than five point five inches. I'll tell you that again. night Thanks a lot to whoever the local spotter is for the National Weather Service.
00:06:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
He's obviously ah you know seeing impaired because it's
00:06:45
RICK JAMES
You need to be the spotter. You need to go take your little class and be the spotter.
00:06:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
I'm going to have to do something too. It was tough. I mean, I get that for the, for the storm totals to to be able to be certified. I get it because like I said, it was melting as quick as it was coming down. And all I know is my guys that were doing the main roadways, of the two complexes push six times and they're pushing an inch plus each time. So we probably had, I'd say probably nine, eight or nine that actually fell.
00:07:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
by the time we scraped it off. So yeah, it's not not bad for wet pavement only, you know, no big deal. yeah ah So we get there, we get to break there.
00:07:23
RICK JAMES
There's snow on the grass area. yeah
00:07:25
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, exactly. Just a little bit on the grass, nothing accumulating. So yeah, just, uh, it's good to be able to start off the year with a ah nice couple of pushes, even if they were kind of, they, I don't want to say they were surprising cause we looked at that
Guest Insights: Anthony & Scott
00:07:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
all the way across the country and it overperformed in every, every market that it hit it overperformed.
00:07:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
So we were kind of expecting that. I remember telling the guys like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to have the plows on. We're going to be ready to push. Cause I have a feeling I just have that feeling. If we, if we take it for granted and listen to the, the weather dudes, we're going to get caught.
00:07:58
The SnowJobs Podcast
And there were a lot of guys around here that got caught. There were a lot of lots not plowed at 8AM. That that's for damn sure. We saw a lot of plows. I think they were just hoping it would melt.
00:08:08
RICK JAMES
Hmm.
00:08:10
RICK JAMES
Yeah, it doesn't.
00:08:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
because it was like, e that was the beauty though. If you had five inches, whatever we got certified at, if you didn't touch the lots at all, it was still all gone by 10 30, 11 a.m. There were bare pavement again.
00:08:23
RICK JAMES
Oh, well, that, that don't happen here.
00:08:25
The SnowJobs Podcast
So, yeah. but
00:08:27
RICK JAMES
It's fucking two degrees right now.
00:08:29
The SnowJobs Podcast
But yeah, I know. But a lot of places did get a lot of snow. The the elevation did have ah you know a lot to do with it. And portions of Pennsylvania, Northern New Jersey, and other places in the Hudson Valley and New York got quite a bit of plowable snow. ah So it's always good to talk about these first storms of the season, right especially especially when they come a little earlier in the season than they have been in the recent past.
00:08:53
The SnowJobs Podcast
Um, you know, so that's what we're going to do tonight. So to help us do that today, we have Anthony man of Anthony winter services and the Anthony group. And Scott Lezak is back with us again of castle rocks back again.
00:09:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
We're going to have to get him his own snow jobs chair for the studio at this rate because he's, uh, that's what that's
00:09:07
RICK JAMES
yeah Yeah, probably. We got some snow, so he's ready to, he's
Memorial Shirts for Eric Estes
00:09:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
it.
00:09:14
RICK JAMES
ready to go.
00:09:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
He's going to they're going to come on. They're going to tell us how the events went for them. The good, the bad, the ugly. um But before we bring in the guys as always, let's hear from team Top Gun. Come on back and do a quick week in review. Be back back.
00:10:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, gang, we're back. So we can review housekeeping, whatever you want to call it. We got some things we need to get out there. So we're going to get right into this. ah The Eric Estes Memorial shirts, they are done and available for sale right now on the Plow Right! Marking Stakes website. So guys, head over to plow-right.com. Click on the button. It's right at the top of the page. And if you can, just grab a few t-shirts. All right.
00:10:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah The Snow Jobs and Storm Gang, we picked up the cost of making the shirts. So every dollar of the shirt sales is going to go directly to Eric's Kids College
Storm Chasing Docu-Series Launch
00:10:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Fund. All right. So if you can do something, do it. ah They're beautiful shirts. Big shout out to Storm for ah joining up with us to do that. And also to Darcy from Storm for coming up with that beautiful back design on that shirt. It really, really looks nice. So ah you know in Eric's memory, pick up some shirts and yeah let's make sure his his kids have what they need going forward.
00:10:53
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. ah Thank you guys all in advance for that. Let's see what else we got. Jay Storm chasing is on baby.
00:11:00
RICK JAMES
Yeah, that's awesome. And we're not there.
00:11:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
As we speak.
00:11:04
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:11:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. As we speak, you guys, uh, you all, you know, this already, but, uh, you know, our video docu-series collaboration that we're doing with our friends from storm equipment, uh, that is on it's, uh, it's going live.
00:11:16
The SnowJobs Podcast
Actually, well, not live, but we are recording. Uh, the crew is in Cleveland this weekend. They're embedded with UD maintenance to follow them through their lake effect snow storm that is happening. What tomorrow is it Sunday?
00:11:29
The SnowJobs Podcast
What is it Sunday?
00:11:29
RICK JAMES
Sunday is what they're saying. Sunday is supposed to roll out. Yeah. So we'll see.
00:11:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
So Zuber said, somewhere's got 18 inches over there now.
00:11:38
RICK JAMES
Yeah. Like 40 minutes from him or something. He said, I don't know, I got below Lake Erie. I think is what I heard.
00:11:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay. Well, I know, I know Buffalo is getting pounded right now. I saw I 90 earlier, the webcam.
00:11:49
RICK JAMES
Oh, Maddie muscles again was yesterday. He was getting, he.
00:11:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
He got pounded. Yeah, he got pounded.
00:11:54
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:11:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
He was not happy.
00:11:58
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:11:58
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, man, first storms are always fun. First pushes are on new sites are always fun. um But yeah, storm chasing, it's it's live. It's ready. All right. The YouTube page for storm chasing is up. ah You can check out the trailer. The official trailer is up on the YouTube page. Check that out. All right. And as always, you can find information on storm chasing on either the Snow Jobs podcast or storm chasing Snow Jobs Instagram.
00:12:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. So the weight is almost over guys. All right. We're going to keep you
Snow Jobs Nation Store Promotions
00:12:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
posted on that as we go forward. Uh, apparently we have to apologize to Christian leftley of Wynwood.
00:12:34
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:12:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
00:12:35
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:12:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
yeah ah Apparently, when we were doing our equip expo review, we left his name out when we were going over who we saw there and who we were hanging out with him and he was feeling left out enough.
00:12:36
RICK JAMES
I got in trouble for that one, apparently.
00:12:48
RICK JAMES
Yeah, I guess so. Even though he hung out with us the for a full day, we brought him bottom hole supper. I mean, he drove me around in his pickup. I mean, I got a massage in his pickup.
00:12:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
Apparently he was, ah ah apparently he was feeling so left out that he had to call us out on another podcast about, about missing dirt bags.
00:12:59
RICK JAMES
He had a massage in his seats.
00:13:08
RICK JAMES
Yeah, that's okay.
00:13:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Is it dirt bag now?
00:13:11
RICK JAMES
That's okay.
00:13:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
Is it just dirt bag?
00:13:12
RICK JAMES
Derp. I think it's still dirt bags, but it's and one dirt bag now.
00:13:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
Dirt bags. Okay. There we go. Well, we apologize, Christian. We are sorry. All right. He wanted his shout out. So there you go, brother. Sorry about that. We were a bit exhausted recording that one. I think we did that the day after we got back, right?
00:13:31
RICK JAMES
Yeah, be sure to.
00:13:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
That was yeah, ah I got sent somebody sent me a clip of that of the dirt bags podcast like Okay, we did the cool thing is we did get a new term for our ah for our crew though from him Alright, he said our group were a wild bunch of snow bandits.
00:13:50
RICK JAMES
wild bunch of snow.
00:13:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah like I Kind of like that one.
00:13:53
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah that That's funny. All right, but the funny thing about that dirt bags episode though Jeremy i I don't know if you caught this, but I did. You probably have one. ah He was talking about he's given out hundreds and hundreds of hats of these windwood hats.
00:14:09
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, I don't seem to be one of the hundreds who got a windwood hat.
00:14:11
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:14:13
RICK JAMES
That's a Christian saying.
00:14:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right.
00:14:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:14:15
RICK JAMES
Yeah. he He said, he's got a pile of stuff that he's going to send to me sitting by his door. That's been sitting there for like six months. It hasn't been sent to me yet. So.
00:14:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
I'm just going to say, maybe if I was wearing a Wynwood hat while we're recording this, I would have remembered to mention them, you know, while we're recording the equip episode. Maybe I would have remembered to mention them on that. So I'm just kidding.
00:14:33
RICK JAMES
Maybe.
00:14:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
But that was ah yeah, that was funny. We love Christian. that That's pretty funny. I'm sorry. We heard him, obviously. not shouting them I thought we did.
00:14:42
RICK JAMES
Sorry.
00:14:43
The SnowJobs Podcast
I swear we did.
00:14:45
RICK JAMES
Obviously we didn't.
00:14:46
The SnowJobs Podcast
Maybe it didn't make it through the editing. Maybe Sean said something over it or something. I thought we did.
00:14:51
RICK JAMES
Maybe.
00:14:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
I definitely thought we did. Oh well, but sorry about that Christian. We definitely were with Christian Leffley of Wynwood at Equip. There, it's been rectified.
00:15:02
RICK JAMES
No, he was with us.
00:15:03
The SnowJobs Podcast
Alright, he was with us.
00:15:03
RICK JAMES
He was with us.
00:15:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Whatever you want to say. yeah We were in the same area.
00:15:07
RICK JAMES
That's what we want to say.
00:15:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, what else we got here? ah The Snow Jobs Nation store, guys. It's open and stocked for all of your Christmas gift giving needs. It's like Santa's workshop in Jeremy's office.
00:15:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. He is ready. He's going to put his little elf shoes on and fill everybody's orders for Christmas.
00:15:22
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:15:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
So get them in.
00:15:26
RICK JAMES
Yeah. 25. Uh,
Preparation for Future Storms
00:15:28
RICK JAMES
we're doing 25% off until like what, December 1st yet on the store right now. Oh, this, this will be over on it.
00:15:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Jeremy has lost his mind sale after sale.
00:15:35
RICK JAMES
I know.
00:15:38
RICK JAMES
I want to get the shit out of here.
00:15:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, I know you do get your orders, but you keep ordering more.
00:15:42
RICK JAMES
I keep ordering more of them. Hopefully we got a new, a new one coming soon. So.
00:15:48
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, let's hope man. So get your orders in ASAP guys. All right. So that way you have them for Christmas and what could get you more into the holiday spirit than a, your girl is on my plow list t-shirt.
00:16:00
RICK JAMES
I know, I know a couple of guys were on Thanksgiving and they were told they're not Thanksgiving entire, but I don't know why not.
00:16:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh,
00:16:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Really?
00:16:06
RICK JAMES
But yeah, it that's what, uh, Kyle told me anyway, Kyle Mitchell, both.
00:16:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
I don't know.
00:16:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Really?
00:16:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, Mitchell Mitchell can't he has to be told what to wear, right? He's not allowed to pick his own clothes.
00:16:21
RICK JAMES
Yeah. I'll stay quiet on Mitchell.
00:16:25
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, but the your girl is on my playlist shirt. They are back in stock. The demand for them has been quite high, actually. It's been on fire since Andy Broughton modeled them for a city quip.
00:16:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, they're back in stock. They're ready to ship. So get them while they last. All right.
00:16:41
RICK JAMES
and the car hearts.
00:16:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
Jay and the car hearts, their car to their their back. You got more.
00:16:46
RICK JAMES
Yeah, I got more, I'm more on order, but yeah, those have been some pretty good, honestly.
00:16:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yes, they have. It's getting colder, getting colder wearing one right now.
00:16:52
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:16:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, you got anything else buddy?
00:16:56
RICK JAMES
Nope, I get started.
00:16:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, then let's hear from our partners guys and we're gonna be right back and we'll bring in the boys
00:19:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, gang, we are back. So we're going to bring in
Storm Challenges & Equipment Issues
00:20:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
Anthony and Scott. How are you guys? What's up? What's new?
00:20:06
Scott Lesak
Man, I'm fantastic. How you doing?
00:20:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, everything's good. Everything's good. How are you, Anthony?
00:20:11
Anthony Mann Jr
I'm doing great. Can't complain, Steve.
00:20:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good.
00:20:13
Anthony Mann Jr
Thanks for having us on.
00:20:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
No problem. No problem. All right. So boys, we, uh, we've all pushed, right? We've all gotten first pushes, all four of us.
00:20:22
RICK JAMES
Mm hmm.
00:20:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
So let's, uh, let's hear about it. How much snow did you get? We'll go around the room. We'll start with, uh, I think Anthony was the big winner. ah do How much did you get Anthony off that first one?
00:20:32
Anthony Mann Jr
um I want to start off by yeah You know, giving my condolences to the plowwright family the Plowright community and Eric's family. That was a horrific um situation that happened. And it, you know, it needs to be needs to be talked about. He was such a good person, um you know, and he's definitely going to be missed in this snow community. So are my condolences to his family.
00:20:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
Absolutely, absolutely.
00:20:58
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh, um, but, uh, yeah, talking about the storm. Um, yeah, we had a pretty crazy one. We had, uh, areas that were supposed to have four to five inches. It only had a dusting and we had areas that were only supposed to have five to six inches that had 22 inches at our highest point.
00:21:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
Ah, that's a minor detail.
00:21:17
Anthony Mann Jr
Yeah. and
00:21:24
Anthony Mann Jr
i Have to say I had an hour and a half conversation with Rob right before the storm ah And he he kept telling me listen, this one's harder.
00:21:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
u huh
00:21:32
Anthony Mann Jr
It's all ah it's within a half a degree Whether you're gonna have snow or not. It's gonna be elevation driven You know you could any called it you can have snow in one spot in a mile away You might not have any now Yes, they weren't perfect.
00:21:47
Anthony Mann Jr
But he did admit it that you know, this was a hard one to call. So I think a little bit of reprieve on this one.
00:21:52
RICK JAMES
They're always hard to call.
00:21:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah they're always hard to call
00:21:57
RICK JAMES
Okay. Now I want to know when there's an easy one to call and then I want no excuses because that's why, oh, that was a tough one to call.
00:22:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
Not just, listen, they're all, all, all the main weather companies that guys, you know, in our industry use the three or four main ones, they all had the same, they had to all had the same call.
00:22:04
RICK JAMES
That was a tough one to call. They're all a tough one to call.
00:22:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
So, I mean, they were reading the information they had, but something was a little off, you know, with, with what they use to determine their forecast. Cause they all, they all missed on that first one.
00:22:25
RICK JAMES
But what do you guys expect us to get my slack? Because now you're going to happen on this show.
00:22:29
The SnowJobs Podcast
No, no, you're on the wrong show for slack, bro.
00:22:32
Anthony Mann Jr
but ah
00:22:36
RICK JAMES
I mean, come on.
00:22:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
What would have been better is ah what would have, what would have been.
00:22:37
RICK JAMES
oh I'm going to maybe push you. I'm going to maybe push you a lot tonight or maybe not. We'll see what happens. You just got to be happy with it.
00:22:45
Anthony Mann Jr
Alright, let's just give it to him
00:22:48
The SnowJobs Podcast
What would have been great is if that storm last week happened a week earlier and it was before they did the winter outlook. Because that would have been that would have been a lot of fun that episode. that would have ah We had a great time with them. but It would have been a lot more fun. But yeah, know they're tough to call. But I don't know, man, the elevation based stuff, you know we were 200 feet and we were getting six inches, seven inches, whatever we actually got. We got certified at five and a half or whatever.
00:23:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
and ah We're at 200 feet. Like that's, that's your little off. You know, if you're saying it's only going to be above 1500, 2000 feet to get accumulation, that's a, that's a problem well for me.
00:23:24
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah
00:23:26
Anthony Mann Jr
Yeah.
00:23:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's a problem. But, uh, Oh, well, I mean, listen, I would think it's pretty easy to call a major elevations are probably going to get snow out of this.
00:23:28
Anthony Mann Jr
Well, for you, grant you may be a little bit harder to recall to my area.
00:23:33
RICK JAMES
i mean
00:23:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
That that's gotta be the easiest thing to do.
00:23:38
Anthony Mann Jr
Yes. Yeah, we always get snow.
00:23:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
like Absolutely.
00:23:42
Anthony Mann Jr
I read that one area where we always get snow. I mean, last year, everybody complained we didn't have snow. We we we charged overages last year for some of our seasonals.
00:23:51
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, I bet.
00:23:52
RICK JAMES
ah I mean, it's tough to call snow where I'm at too.
00:23:53
Anthony Mann Jr
No.
00:23:56
RICK JAMES
Once it comes over the mountains here, I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to, it's hard to predict.
00:24:01
Anthony Mann Jr
You have mountains out there?
00:24:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
Those mountains are 2,500 miles away.
00:24:02
RICK JAMES
all All the lake of all the lake effect and mountains I have here, all the lake of effect and mountains. It's just unbelievable.
00:24:07
Anthony Mann Jr
but
00:24:07
RICK JAMES
it's It's a tough job.
00:24:09
The SnowJobs Podcast
Fargo's got pond de effect snow.
00:24:11
RICK JAMES
Oh, I love, I love you Nick and Rob.
00:24:11
Anthony Mann Jr
but da but Cornfield effect.
00:24:14
RICK JAMES
Mark, just giving you a hard time.
00:24:16
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yes, corn effects snow.
00:24:19
Anthony Mann Jr
That's going to be a new term for the weather weather pros.
00:24:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
oh
00:24:19
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:24:21
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh man.
00:24:21
Anthony Mann Jr
Cornfield snow storms.
00:24:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
You know what?
00:24:24
RICK JAMES
Oh boy.
00:24:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
The, the great thing about them is they can take it and they they'll give it right back.
00:24:24
RICK JAMES
here Yeah, I know.
00:24:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
It's fun.
00:24:28
Anthony Mann Jr
Yes.
00:24:29
RICK JAMES
I hope so.
00:24:30
The SnowJobs Podcast
It's a lot of fun.
00:24:30
Anthony Mann Jr
um he's got an ney Of course he can take it inches And it was a small small area and and it's funny I have two driveways that I still do and they both of of the driveways I do are big commercial accounts the owner so we have to do them and
00:24:32
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:24:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's it.
00:24:32
Scott Lesak
Yeah.
00:24:33
The SnowJobs Podcast
You guys is Emmy. Uh, but anyway, so you guys, what did you get? What was the highest total you had? 22. Wow.
00:24:42
RICK JAMES
Thanks.
00:24:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
And now
00:24:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
And they're at the top of the mountain, right?
00:24:56
Anthony Mann Jr
Right. And one of them at the bottom of the driveway had no snow. It was raining. We got to the top of the driveway and there was four inches.
00:25:04
The SnowJobs Podcast
Really?
00:25:05
Anthony Mann Jr
Yes.
00:25:05
RICK JAMES
oh
00:25:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's interesting.
00:25:06
Anthony Mann Jr
That's how high of elevation change his driveway is. The other one was in that area. We got to 22 inches. I was not expecting it. So I just put the plow down and rolled into this driveway.
00:25:19
Anthony Mann Jr
Rookie mistake. Cause I got stuck you and didnt get stuck.
00:25:21
The SnowJobs Podcast
Really?
00:25:23
Anthony Mann Jr
I almost got stuck. Truck went sideways.
00:25:25
RICK JAMES
Oh, yeah.
00:25:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
Wow.
00:25:28
Anthony Mann Jr
Yes.
00:25:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
Do you have a V plow on that?
00:25:30
Anthony Mann Jr
No, I have to wire that on that truck.
00:25:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh yeah. That is the reason why I went to V plows, not straight blades or wide outs.
00:25:37
Anthony Mann Jr
We have two V plows just in case, because we do a lot of community roads, you know, six, seven miles, 30 miles, five miles. um And that we need them just in case we get that, you know, Northeastern to two to three foot.
00:25:50
Anthony Mann Jr
And, you know, sometimes you don't hit those back roads every time and you get builds up.
00:25:53
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yup.
00:25:54
Anthony Mann Jr
So I've kept two V plows in the fleet. My son absolutely loves the V plow. um So he's rocking that this year. Last year he had a straight blade. um This year he wanted that V plow real bad.
00:26:06
Anthony Mann Jr
So we gave it to him.
00:26:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
Being up on a mountain, I wouldn't have anything on the mountain, but V's being able to sweep it back and and, you know, make a purchase through. That's a, that's sometimes the only way you're going to get it done.
00:26:18
The SnowJobs Podcast
Like we get the heavy wet shit around here and we're going uphill. Sometimes if you don't hit it and it's got eight, 10 inches, you're doing it after the storm.
00:26:22
Anthony Mann Jr
Yep.
00:26:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's a lot for a pickup.
00:26:27
Anthony Mann Jr
Yep.
00:26:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
You know, if you if you're using a straight blade, especially if you got wind rows already from previous storms, that snow's coming right back down into your track.
00:26:36
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah Well, and there were no win rows no driveway markers, so I went into this driveway blind
00:26:42
RICK JAMES
hu
00:26:43
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, nothing than like a good first time out. Oh man, Scott, how much did you guys get?
00:26:47
Scott Lesak
You're here to tell the tale, little man. ah We got 19 inches at our highest.
00:26:53
RICK JAMES
oh
00:26:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
Wow.
00:26:55
Scott Lesak
Yeah, it was a 1.2 million square foot distribution center.
00:26:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
And 19
00:26:58
Scott Lesak
We got 19 inches.
00:26:59
The SnowJobs Podcast
inches.
00:27:00
Scott Lesak
And the client was kind enough not to have any of our loading zones opened up. So we have piles everywhere and got a crew in there tonight actually relocating those piles now because we had nowhere to go with the snow itself.
00:27:06
RICK JAMES
Oh, oh nice.
00:27:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
On T and&M, I bet on T and&M.
00:27:10
RICK JAMES
Too bad.
00:27:11
Scott Lesak
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:27:11
RICK JAMES
Too bad he gets to pay for that now.
00:27:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
i Oh, yeah.
00:27:12
Scott Lesak
Absolutely. That wasn't our fault.
00:27:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
of Oh, my God.
00:27:14
Scott Lesak
That wasn't our fault. They're paying for that one.
00:27:16
RICK JAMES
I want those.
00:27:19
Anthony Mann Jr
What town was that in, Scott?
00:27:21
Scott Lesak
Goldsboro Yep Yeah, so that was about 1900 Yeah, it's up there.
00:27:22
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh, yeah, okay, yep.
00:27:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
What is the elevation of Goldsboro? Okay, so you're up there.
00:27:31
Scott Lesak
So we
First Push Experiences & Teamwork
00:27:32
Scott Lesak
we had that one and then down the mountain in Tannersville on the southern side. We have some other sites and Two miles from that site there would have been serviceable We got to the bottom and it went up six seven degrees and was all rain That was ah the one at the top of the mountain was the only one that got snow for us out of that.
00:27:50
Scott Lesak
I
00:27:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's interesting.
00:27:51
Anthony Mann Jr
ah Tony from SNS has a couple right there. I was talking to him earlier tonight. He said he got about 18 to 19 out there was come on cooky Jeremy
00:27:57
Scott Lesak
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
Wow. And that wasn't powder either. i was Yeah.
00:28:01
Scott Lesak
It actually was really, it was nice to know for how how early that one was, man, that the stuff yesterday sucked, but that 19 inches by the middle of that, it was that was decent snow.
00:28:03
RICK JAMES
Concrete.
00:28:11
Scott Lesak
It was heavy, but not not sloppy.
00:28:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
actually Okay. Well, that's a good thing. Oh, so everybody got. So Jeremy, were you the first time you got what they said? What was your forecast for two to four?
00:28:25
RICK JAMES
Uh, yeah, two to four, they're pretty close. We got about, we got three, a little over three, I think it was.
00:28:29
RICK JAMES
And so, yeah, so it was, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was a good push, but some new guys got some new guys in.
00:28:29
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, perfect.
00:28:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nailed it.
00:28:36
RICK JAMES
So it was, it went pretty good and said some loader issues and deaf shit, you know, got to deal with that.
00:28:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
Deaf, I'm shocked.
00:28:43
RICK JAMES
Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
I'm shocked.
00:28:45
RICK JAMES
Still still still having issues with them, but whatever.
00:28:48
The SnowJobs Podcast
oh yeah guy Well, that's, ah I mean, that's actually a good segue. Uh, did we have the three of the four of us? Did we have any problems first time out early season snow?
00:28:58
RICK JAMES
Oh, fuck.
00:28:59
Scott Lesak
Of course.
00:29:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
00:29:02
Scott Lesak
ah
00:29:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
Perfect. We all did. So we we might as well talk about him. Uh, let's Anthony. What, uh, what problems did you have?
00:29:08
Anthony Mann Jr
Let me get my list.
00:29:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, Jesus. Here we go.
00:29:11
RICK JAMES
Oh, ah holy.
00:29:11
Anthony Mann Jr
I've got it written down.
00:29:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. This is going to be a two episode, two part episode.
00:29:13
Anthony Mann Jr
but
00:29:14
RICK JAMES
ae i would have a I would have a novel.
00:29:14
Scott Lesak
that's why your drink That's why you're drinking that wine, right?
00:29:16
Anthony Mann Jr
Yeah.
00:29:18
Anthony Mann Jr
oh So so we we actually didn't do bad.
00:29:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
What were your main ones?
00:29:22
Anthony Mann Jr
We had a couple couple breakdowns. We blew an axle. One of the rookies blew an axle in the truck. I don't think it was his fault. um we had A new guy, I took Riley, you guys know Riley, I took him out of the loader, he's never plowed in a truck, he's only been in the loader.
00:29:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
no
00:29:40
Anthony Mann Jr
Put him in a truck this year because he's on our um leadership team and I wanted him to be able to go around and do saltings and be mobile instead of just being tied to one lot. So I put a new operator, one of our dirt operators, I put him in the loader, he's pretty good you know during the summer.
00:29:56
Anthony Mann Jr
But he's never used a metal plus before and our harness somehow Dragged down and we chewed up all the wires so we had no wings on our wing plow We had one open and one closed when it broke um So we battled through with that we had the the axle go
00:30:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
artist
00:30:16
Anthony Mann Jr
um let's see ah but but but And then last night during the second storm one of the guys actually was the young gun Riley was um on his trying to fill his app out and He said that the truck just he thought it was in park and it started rolling.
00:30:34
Anthony Mann Jr
Well, this was my um GMC Denali it took the driver door the passenger door and half the bed out I'll send pictures later.
00:30:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, Jesus.
00:30:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, Jesus.
00:30:42
RICK JAMES
Oh no, no.
00:30:42
Scott Lesak
but man
00:30:45
Anthony Mann Jr
It's probably $10,000 worth of damage.
00:30:45
RICK JAMES
ah
00:30:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, man.
00:30:48
Anthony Mann Jr
I
00:30:49
RICK JAMES
Damn, that sucks.
00:30:50
Anthony Mann Jr
Yeah, um that's an avoidable problem.
00:30:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's an avoidable problem.
00:30:55
Anthony Mann Jr
um Again, the rookie mistake I made going into that driveway at thinking I had four to five inches and there was 22 inches. um You know, but besides that I'm very impressed with my crew for the first one we have You know, we lost our number one um so my son stepped it up.
00:31:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yep.
00:31:15
Anthony Mann Jr
He's running operations this year for the snow division and I'm kind of you know, I'm still overseeing everything but I'm letting him do his thing me and him have had meetings um Basically every day for the last three weeks or two weeks getting ready for this We had a lot of young guys, a lot of new guys in seats, and they did an amazing job.
00:31:36
Anthony Mann Jr
um We were a little bit behind the gun. and we didn't No one thought we were getting this much snow. So we had two two machines that weren't on sites yet. We had one of our loaders, our 938, and one of our backhoes that weren't weren't on the sites yet.
00:31:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good.
00:31:49
Anthony Mann Jr
um So we were doing those with trucks. um We got it done. We won truck, wasn't ready yet. um It could have been ready, but we were like, yeah, it's only a four inch storm.
00:32:01
Anthony Mann Jr
We're fine. Next time that truck will be ready. No.
00:32:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
Amen.
00:32:07
Anthony Mann Jr
ah um Let's see. What else did we have? ah to do Oh, we had a big problem with cell phone service.
00:32:16
RICK JAMES
Well, you said that.
00:32:17
Anthony Mann Jr
The power went out and all the towers were down.
00:32:17
The SnowJobs Podcast
Really?
00:32:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
Ah, yeah, that'll do it.
00:32:21
Anthony Mann Jr
And we couldn't communicate with each other. Once in a while we could get a text to go through and once in a while the phone call would pick up and you'd get but but but blow for about 10 seconds and it would drop. So trying to find out who needed help where guys were at that made it a little bit difficult.
00:32:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
i
00:32:35
Anthony Mann Jr
It was like we were back in 1990s planning snow again. I wish we had radios.
00:32:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:32:42
RICK JAMES
Hah!
00:32:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
No backup generators on towers in Pennsylvania.
00:32:44
Anthony Mann Jr
Apparently not.
00:32:46
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, interesting.
00:32:48
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh.
00:32:48
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. Oh man. We got a cell tower on the property. The generators to power this thing in an emergency is bigger than the tower itself. It's incredible. Huge.
00:32:59
Anthony Mann Jr
Clear.
00:33:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, what about you, Scott problems?
00:33:02
Scott Lesak
oh yeah we had not many here we did it overall it actually went really well um we had had a couple um got there the the site that got the most snow uh had a relatively green crew on so i went out to that one for the first half of the storm just to do some training and The guys blew my mind.
00:33:22
Scott Lesak
it was ah It was a group of guys that I never met before. I didn't have any any contact with them. I was running a wheel loader for a while and I'm watching the shovelers and like they were just shoveling directly to our SOPs and everything was like spot on.
00:33:36
Scott Lesak
I'm like, that's pretty cool to see because that's one of the first groups that I didn't train that was like spot on doing stuff really well.
00:33:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice.
00:33:43
Scott Lesak
um So I got really excited about that and you know half of them decided to leave halfway through the storm because they got wet and cold. so that was a problem that was problem number one.
00:33:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
Really?
00:33:53
Scott Lesak
um But luckily we, everybody in the Leah Valley, we didn't have any snow in the Leah Valley so we had plenty of people to call and we had another crew up there within about an hour and a half and it wasn't that big of a deal.
00:34:05
Scott Lesak
um The other challenge we had, one ah one of our brand new K621s went down, had a hydraulic leak on it. It's got a little 90 degree connection just above the transmission right at the articulation point. That seems like the hydraulic line might be a little bit short on it.
00:34:24
Scott Lesak
And ah it loosened up and pissed out hydraulic fluid. Case was absolutely awesome though. They they were out there. that That happened. It's about two and a half hours from our dealer.
00:34:35
Scott Lesak
And they got another dealer up in the area to come out. And we had somebody on site within 45 minutes. They fixed it up, got us all the hydraulic wood needed.
00:34:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice. Good for.
00:34:43
Scott Lesak
I know it happened to one of East Coast facilities machines as well. So hopefully it's not a common issue that's happening. But it's a super easy fix now that we know where it is and what happened there. so um New machines are going to go down.
00:34:55
Scott Lesak
I mean, I'm not going to hold that against case.
00:34:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:34:56
Scott Lesak
ah And the service was phenomenal that they got out there that quickly.
00:34:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nope.
00:35:00
Scott Lesak
So we were really happy with that.
00:35:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
They made it right.
00:35:03
Scott Lesak
They did.
00:35:03
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's all you can ask for.
00:35:04
Scott Lesak
and They made it right fast too. but So that was really nice.
00:35:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's great.
00:35:07
Scott Lesak
And the biggest challenge we faced was our client didn't have the trailers moved from our loading zone. So we had no place to go with the snow ah on the whole backside of the facility, which was About 750,000 square feet.
00:35:21
Scott Lesak
So we had a whole lot of snow that we were blocking trailers in and just kind of stacking it where we could. we We stayed where the loading zones were supposed to be and just kept it in the parking lot and wound up having to block some trailers in and actually i have a crew up there tonight moving that snow, getting it out of their way and cha-ching.
00:35:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
Ch-ching.
00:35:38
Scott Lesak
That's it. That's what we do it for. The seasonal contract keeps you in business. The additional work makes you money, man.
00:35:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yes sir.
00:35:44
Scott Lesak
that's that's the way it works' say It's a good night.
00:35:45
RICK JAMES
Yep, yep, yep.
00:35:46
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yes sir. Yes sir.
00:35:48
Scott Lesak
um But yeah, that was those those were our main ones. And then yesterday's sloppy one that we had. We had a we had a coupler hydraulic coupler on a skid loader.
00:35:59
Scott Lesak
One of the metal pluses wouldn't engage. It got stuck open and we couldn't get that on. So we're we're down a metal plus because of that. um It was a known problem that we had before, so we just have to replace a coupler.
00:36:09
Scott Lesak
So that was again another, you know, two and a half inches of slushy snow. No big deal without having that running. Um, and yeah, I mean, those were, those were the major ones.
00:36:19
Scott Lesak
So overall, they went really well. Client told us that the site has never been serviced that well before. So, I mean, they're really happy with what we did. And we always liked that when we see all these misses that we have and go back and say, what can we do better?
00:36:27
RICK JAMES
Nice.
00:36:30
Scott Lesak
And the client comes back and says, it's awesome. You know, that's good.
00:36:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:36:33
Scott Lesak
That's what we want to hear. So it's gonna be better next time.
00:36:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. When you had like a six, yeah, when you had like a 65, 70% night and they're thinking it's the best thing they've ever seen.
00:36:38
RICK JAMES
Sounds
00:36:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's, that's really good.
00:36:41
RICK JAMES
great.
00:36:42
Scott Lesak
Oh, just wait.
00:36:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:36:42
Scott Lesak
Oh, just wait.
00:36:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, exactly. Been there. Absolutely. You, so you, you had sidewalk guys quit. They, they like, or did they come back when they got dry?
00:36:51
Scott Lesak
no they didn't they didn't quit they got fired but uh they didn't quit they just got they got cold and had a leave in the middle of the storm cold and wet and you know whatever and uh we didn't even know about it until they left and we're like where'd those guys go and uh they were like oh they left and uh so that doesn't happen you you don't do that on our crew so they're not invited back to play that was their first and last time with us and uh
00:36:55
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:36:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
00:37:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, geez. Nope.
00:37:17
Scott Lesak
You know, whatever, they're good guys, but we got them replaced already. We have a list of reserves, so we got other guys ready to rock and roll, and next time they'll be there.
00:37:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice.
00:37:26
RICK JAMES
nice good oh god yeah yeah now we are
00:37:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
Very cool. How about you, Jay? Problems?
00:37:33
Scott Lesak
ah
00:37:35
Anthony Mann Jr
Glacier doesn't have problems, they have solutions.
00:37:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh they always have solutions for them.
00:37:38
RICK JAMES
Yeah. No, we, we, yeah, I've always got a solution for the problem, but yeah, it's, uh, no, we had, you know, like I said, we had about three machines with deaf issues. Uh, one was, uh, I fixed, I fixed it on a spot with the old, uh, kill switch turned off, turned on.
00:37:51
RICK JAMES
She, she, uh, took off for the night. It was good to go. I don't know what that, what it did, but she was in limbo, but I had no, no other choice and that's what happened. But just yeah some deaf stuff still dealing with some, um, I don't know, some,
00:38:04
Anthony Mann Jr
Was it because of the temperatures?
00:38:07
RICK JAMES
I don't know. I temperatures weren't that bad here.
00:38:09
The SnowJobs Podcast
yeah
00:38:09
RICK JAMES
I mean, they weren't that women that cold.
00:38:10
Anthony Mann Jr
Okay.
00:38:11
RICK JAMES
Yeah. Like to it's starting to get cold now, but it was still like it was in the twenties or teens. So it wasn't bad, but I don't know.
00:38:16
Anthony Mann Jr
okay
00:38:17
RICK JAMES
We had a lot of, I mean, our sidewalk crews, they go up for an hour and they come back with shit hanging everywhere. I mean, it's just but stuff they, they break more things.
00:38:27
RICK JAMES
And I mean, not you say it's all operator error, but I mean, There's so many, so many things that you can't even imagine what the shop guys just cringe every time there's an event.
00:38:40
RICK JAMES
Cause they're over and out the sidewalk bay for two days repair and putting back Humpty Dumpty, you know, it's together. It's just, it's from, uh, blades to brooms to tractors themselves.
00:38:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, yeah.
00:38:51
Scott Lesak
Ha ha ha.
00:38:53
RICK JAMES
is I don't know. dude It's just, they just take a beating out here. So.
00:38:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
That heavy duty green paint.
00:38:59
RICK JAMES
Yeah. Yeah. John Deere. Yeah. I don't know. It's just, it's, it's mind boggling what goes on. And even like some liquid sprayers we have that just fittings are cracked or broken or I mean, brand new stuff we bought.
00:39:11
RICK JAMES
And this is, I don't know.
00:39:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:39:14
RICK JAMES
Yes. You know, first time out, you got to work all the kinks out and hopefully you'll get better. I mean, whatever it is, what it is, you just, you just gotta fix it and go and move on.
00:39:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
Sure.
00:39:24
RICK JAMES
So.
00:39:25
The SnowJobs Podcast
You know, you can, you can always say that our worst day is better than most people's best day. You know, we say that all the time, like our worst, like let's just fly by the seat of our pants and kind of do what we do.
00:39:31
RICK JAMES
No.
00:39:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
And and we we say it all the time that our worst day is definitely better than most people around here's best day. So. Um, you know, the, uh, the sensor issue that Anthony was asking about.
00:39:45
RICK JAMES
Right.
00:39:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
So I was talking to a case mechanic the other day about my own machines that are down. And he said there, are he believes there is up to 22 individual sensors that are all drawing, uh, power during the startup, the initial ignition.
00:40:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
And if it's below if the battery is drawn is giving you a below 11.4 volts, that you're going to get error codes ah that you can clear after the machine is up and running and your voltage is back up, you do another restart and it's got more than 11.4 volts, you can get rid of the codes.
00:40:11
RICK JAMES
Yep. Yep.
00:40:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
Or if you have a code reader, you can you can get them rid of them yourself. um We actually invested in that. we bought We bought a code reader. I bought a code reader as a mechanic. i'm like Dude, just I can't afford to have because you bring a dealer out and it's not under warranty to reset a code That's a voltage issue and it's not a real trip.
00:40:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
You're still getting hit for 300 bucks 400 bucks every time out, you know and It's it's a real thing But yeah, there's so many sensors drawn and they have to have voltage to be able to get accurate readings Otherwise they put you into D rating and limp mode and all that other happy horse shit.
00:40:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
So 1200 bucks so it's
00:40:56
Anthony Mann Jr
How much was the code reader? All right, so so four so four four visits paid for.
00:41:02
Scott Lesak
Oracle.
00:41:03
The SnowJobs Podcast
Listen, if you got if you got machines out on site, even if they're plugged in in the cold and they're out there for three, four months, you're you're you're going to pay for that code reader in one season.
00:41:12
Anthony Mann Jr
Yep.
00:41:13
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:41:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
Guaranteed. Guaranteed.
00:41:16
RICK JAMES
No, we had a but one of our deaf issues.
00:41:17
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
00:41:21
RICK JAMES
they They said they had the partner be here next day. I call, it's not, not here. Am I, what's going on? And then, all right. It was a big rig and we're, you know, i was it was, it was, uh, no, it was supposedly, I don't know.
00:41:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
Supply chain.
00:41:34
RICK JAMES
I was pretty upset because they said it would be fixed and it wasn't. So the tractor loaders still sitting on the lot. And then finally got home on what's going on. They're like, Oh yeah, this is the part that'll fix it, but we're not going to cover that for warranty.
00:41:47
RICK JAMES
because they want a new part number. There's a new part number for it. We'll only cover that one for warranty. So if my loader load is still down because they won't put this part in because Kat's not going to cover that warranty part, but they'll cover the new warranty.
00:42:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
trees.
00:42:00
RICK JAMES
I'm like, oh, when's the new part? Oh, it's on backward. Oh, when's that coming? I'm like, I don't know. It was just round and round and we went. So moral of the story is I went and got a little boy, i brought the thing right to their shop and said, I think it's going to get fixed this week finally.
00:42:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:42:15
RICK JAMES
So.
00:42:17
The SnowJobs Podcast
There you go.
00:42:17
RICK JAMES
I dunno.
00:42:18
Scott Lesak
and I love it.
00:42:19
Anthony Mann Jr
Sounds like the case is the way to go.
00:42:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, I'll tell you, since we were just, we were only getting rain, you know, we, yeah.
00:42:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
We were only getting rain. We were only getting rain, no accumulations on pavement. But I think, what was that, Thursday night? Was all that coming in Thursday night and the Friday or Wednesday night and the Thursday night? I don't even remember when it was.
00:42:38
Scott Lesak
Birthday and
00:42:39
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, so um Wednesday, during the day, I said, just in case, boys, let's freaking fire up everything, make sure everything's running, everything's hooked up to plows, everything's got you know what it's supposed to have.
00:42:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
I don't think we need to move them down into the village yet but because even if we drive them from the shop it's a 10-minute ride with the machine and we're where we need to be um so we didn't but we we fired them all up we ran them around the yard we hooked them up we got the the tires you know made sure the snow tires were on everything so we're ready to go uh one machine after an hour Uh, the same machine that had the, the fuel injector pump last year had, it went into D rate and it was, it was like sputtering and doing all sorts of create
Equipment Reliability & Support Networks
00:43:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
ATS failures coming up on it. All sorts of codes looked like a Christmas tree in there. So we shut that down. We're like, all right, well, this is going to be out of service. We'll have to get this down to GT mid Atlantic. Um, and then we're like, all right, we can, we can be down one machine. No problem. Even if we get snow, we're good to go.
00:43:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
Then one of the one of the one year old ones ah that my guy calls me over says, I don't know what just happened. I'm running the machine. I'm driving it around and it just stopped dead and went from full, full throttle, full throttle rather to back to idle. And I can't get it to idle back up. And then it shut me off after two minutes, killed the engine. I'm like, okay, now we're down to.
00:44:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
Sent them both down to ah to Jersey there, to GT, and those guys have been once again freaking phenomenal. They are they tore them both up. they're chasing The ones got an electrical issue with the computer chasing gremlin codes around, but they figured it out. it was a yeah It was a wire that had a bad it had a little bit of ah a rub in it. And there was every time you go up and down on the seat, it was I don't know why you run wires under the seat, but the seat was knocking it and throwing ah making it throw the code and killing the engine on you. So that one's good. And the other one was ah it we got a I don't know. He either got a batch of bad fuel or somebody might have sabotaged the fuel.
00:45:00
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh, boy.
00:45:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
I guess we don't use off-road diesel and the diesel that they showed that they took out of the tank was red and gum, like red gum.
00:45:01
RICK JAMES
ah Oh boy.
00:45:07
Scott Lesak
interesting
00:45:09
The SnowJobs Podcast
So I'm like, boy, what do you think that would be? They're like, if we need our guests, maybe Kool-Aid. Jesus. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but yeah, i'm I'm having a sinking feeling that somebody might've messed with the machine.
00:45:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
That was the one machine we had out on the site.
00:45:28
Scott Lesak
interesting who would you piss off and who do we have to look
00:45:29
Anthony Mann Jr
Did you have some jealous people about you, Steve?
00:45:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
i Don't know I mean you always try and do the right thing pay it forward, but you know you never know Yeah, it could have been one of my own guys. Just didn't want to work like how that's my machine.
00:45:41
RICK JAMES
oh
00:45:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
I don't want to come in
00:45:44
RICK JAMES
You're accusing your own guys, wow.
00:45:46
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, you dude, you never know with that crew, man. Everything's a practical joke, but, uh, yeah, so it's a really bad, I don't know, really bad batch. It was a lot of, a lot of shit in there. And we also found out that the gas cap might've been leaking. So we had a really good amount of water in the, uh, in the tank as well. So um all those things put together equals no fuel flow. So what do you got, Jay?
00:46:11
RICK JAMES
Well, if you're putting gas in there, that's your problem. You just said gas cap.
00:46:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
I'm sorry, diesel, whatever, gas cap, diesel cap, fuel cap.
00:46:16
Anthony Mann Jr
I know what's wrong with Nick,
00:46:18
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's it.
00:46:19
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:46:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
So, but dude, GT is great. I had the tow company pulled them both onto the trailer, got them down there. And the guy called, said, yeah, they're dropped. They're good. They're like, who are you? I'm like, I don't know. Why? Who am I? He's like, dude, there was like an army of guys came out as soon as those machines showed up. Like they're, they've been absolutely great. GT Mid-Atlantic's been phenomenal. So if, if they're your dealer, you're pretty lucky to have them and be closer than I am. Cause for me, it's a track. It's an hour.
00:46:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hour and 15 minutes, I think by low boy down there with machines. So that ain't cheap, but well, it's far for me when I, I have a dealer 15 minutes away, but I won't use them.
00:46:52
Anthony Mann Jr
that's not far they're not a real dealer that's why
00:46:59
The SnowJobs Podcast
So. there They haven't been for me. So they haven't been for me. So GT Mid-Atlantic will get my money. But yeah, Joe's been great. And his guys have been great. And I didn't even realize that the service manager that that helped me last year, he he just passed away. Stan was his name. And he was awesome. I'm sorry to hear that. I want to put my condolences out to the GT Mid-Atlantic family.
00:47:25
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's a shame to hear that because he was ah he was a really good dude and he did right by us last year. But you know Joe is the new guy and he's picking up right where Stan left off and they're just phenomenal. ah really ah They really do the right thing by the machine. So if you've got case machines and you're down there in one of their branches, you're you're pretty lucky. um But yeah, that was it. Everything else, no broken blocks, no nothing. We pushed pretty good and everything worked. I think we had one spinner.
00:47:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
I think we had one spinner motor go down on one of the pickups for a 11 year old tornado, 10 year old tornado, which that's the first time that's happened. So, uh, then, you know, you called.
00:48:03
Scott Lesak
what I'm paid for.
00:48:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, exactly. That thing's been paid for itself long time.
00:48:06
Scott Lesak
i
00:48:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
So we, uh, got gene on the gene on the horn said, Hey, can you overnight me a spinner motor? Done. So those storks again, they're awesome. They got everything in stock. That was phenomenal.
00:48:18
Anthony Mann Jr
Well, you made out better than we did with the Western tornadoes this storm.
00:48:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh yeah, you had some going down.
00:48:24
Anthony Mann Jr
Two brand new ones, brand new, were throwing codes for no connection.
00:48:29
The SnowJobs Podcast
Joe, reload them now.
00:48:31
Anthony Mann Jr
No, there was no connection.
00:48:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:48:34
Anthony Mann Jr
um And I have to go out to the back, unplug it, plug it back in, and then it works. They're clean, they're dialetic greased. I mean, I don't know what's going on last, year I bought them last year.
00:48:46
Anthony Mann Jr
They replaced one of the,
00:48:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
Loose ground.
00:48:49
Anthony Mann Jr
Modules are ready under warranty. They said all this they had a bad batch of Modules so they replaced it on the one that one I'm having issues with the other one I think I'm having issues now.
00:49:00
Anthony Mann Jr
They're gonna warranty that that module You know that one I'm both brand new at the same day, you know asked about not even they're not even a year old and
00:49:03
The SnowJobs Podcast
That makes sense. We bought at the same time, the same problem that exists.
00:49:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, they've been, I mean, shit, this is the really, uh, other than the, uh, the vibrator motors, you know, the vibrators, they go down all the time. You know, those things are what, like a one year, maybe two years, get out of them before they get watered past the seals and they're shot.
00:49:24
Anthony Mann Jr
We don't even have biogriders on ours.
00:49:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
We do on the big ones we don't on the, on the one and a half, but we do on the two and a half.
00:49:30
Anthony Mann Jr
but Okay.
00:49:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
um But yeah, they, they've been pretty bulletproof. So, uh, uh, you know, what, $150 spinner motor, uh, once in 10 years, I'll take that every day. They've been, they've been ultra reliable for us.
00:49:41
Anthony Mann Jr
That's not bad.
00:49:42
Scott Lesak
That's not bad at all.
00:49:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Can't, can't say anything bad about the Westerns. The tornadoes have been great.
00:49:48
Anthony Mann Jr
I love the soliders, I love the design, but two of them issues, it was like, I can't have this.
00:49:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, that's a problem.
00:49:54
Scott Lesak
Yeah.
00:49:56
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah
00:49:56
Scott Lesak
Yeah, we're running all.
00:49:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
This gene is storks, your dealer.
00:49:59
Anthony Mann Jr
He's not our dealer we have a local dealer we deal with who's great I'm They they take us in the middle of the night. They'll fix us up um They were not open the night of the storm. So and they're not open on Monday. So Tuesday. I'm taking them in and Hopefully they'll just change out those two Whatever they're called the modules and we'll be back up and running
00:50:22
The SnowJobs Podcast
Cool.
00:50:23
Scott Lesak
It was awesome.
00:50:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good to hear.
00:50:24
Anthony Mann Jr
so We order pork from storks when we need parts because we're all 100% well besides two fisher salters or fisher plows, the V plows and one salter, we are 100% Western.
00:50:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
What else?
00:50:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:50:38
RICK JAMES
No?
00:50:40
Scott Lesak
Yeah, we're 100% Western, too.
00:50:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yup. Yup.
00:50:41
Scott Lesak
We're all marauders and strikers for our spreaders. I think we're 12 marauders and four strikers or something like that. And then all of our plows, every plow is a 9 foot 6 MVP 3.
00:50:52
Scott Lesak
That's what we were on. They don't let us down.
00:50:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:50:54
Scott Lesak
We had one plow that had a real funky issue with that got resolved in all the years we've been running them. That's like the only major problem we've had with any of this stuff.
00:51:04
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, we haven't had any problems with the Westerns have been great. The Plaza been great. We haven't had any issues with that. The only issue we had this year is the the headlight. um The actual module inside the the rear housing actually fell out.
00:51:17
The SnowJobs Podcast
It was hanging by the wire. they They, you know, those little plastic fly clips that the, the lens pops into the the housing. They just get brittle, you know, they're they're tiny and they're very thin plastic.
00:51:24
RICK JAMES
ah
00:51:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
They get brittle and they break over time. So this was, uh, this was the time for the one plow.
00:51:34
Anthony Mann Jr
We had we had low beams go out on one of our wide outs we had high beams, but no low beams So that's under warranty that'll get fixed on Tuesday as well
00:51:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
like
00:51:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:51:44
Scott Lesak
It's all right for you.
00:51:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
00:51:45
Scott Lesak
it Sucks for everybody else on the road, but it's all right for you.
00:51:46
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah
00:51:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to think if we had anything else go down. um No, minor stuff like we had a couple. um I don't know how it even happened because we we.
00:52:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
like really greased the crap out of them before we put them away and we desalt them and everything. we had um One of the SSVs had like a frozen hydraulic coupling where you just couldn't you couldn't get it unfroze. It was just corroded. I don't know how how it was missed or how it got corroded, but yeah, it was like seized up. so Just gave a call to JNR sheds there, Jimmy. I think I had them literally then literally by 4 p.m. the next day I had a box of the hydraulic fittings and a spare throttle cable, because that's the only thing that ever broke. So I said, you know what? I'm not getting caught with this again. If that's the only thing that's ever broken on any of our SSVs, give me a spare throttle cable just in case.
00:52:42
Anthony Mann Jr
Listen, having that stuff in your shop during a storm is huge. we we if we When we order a new part for something, we always order two and we have it on the shelf because it's priceless during the storm to have that part on the shelf.
00:52:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yup.
00:52:47
RICK JAMES
Yep.
00:52:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yup.
00:52:52
RICK JAMES
Mm hmm.
00:52:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
100 percent.
00:52:55
Scott Lesak
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
00:52:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
100 percent. But yeah, it's I'll tell you, it makes life a lot easier, though, when you know that you can get stuff fixed or get parts you need in one phone
Team Performance & Leadership Development
00:53:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
call.
00:53:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
Like if you have that network like, OK, I got the heavy equipment covered. G.T. Middlelands got that. I got, you know, Western covered. I can literally get any part and under the sun that that goes into any Western from storks.
00:53:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
He's got it on the shelf. I guarantee he's got 10 of them.
00:53:22
Anthony Mann Jr
Yep.
00:53:22
The SnowJobs Podcast
You know, as so you call Jean, he's got it. Jimmy's got everything Ventrac. He's the same way with Ventrac that he's got every part known to man, even on discontinued stuff. So it really makes, makes the stress level go down when you, uh, when you have a network like that.
00:53:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
So try and build that guys. If you don't already have it, if if you can't get stuff done when you need it, that's a, that's the first thing you should be looking for.
00:53:42
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah
00:53:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Who can, who can take care of me?
00:53:44
Scott Lesak
Yep.
00:53:45
Anthony Mann Jr
Make relationships with these people, guys.
00:53:47
Scott Lesak
Yep.
00:53:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:53:47
Anthony Mann Jr
It is more important to make relationships with the client sometimes.
00:53:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
Absolutely.
00:53:52
Anthony Mann Jr
Because if you don't have them, you can't you can't perform during the storm.
00:53:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
Absolutely.
00:53:56
RICK JAMES
Mm-hmm.
00:53:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, Jeremy does that out in Fargo a lot. He's got good relationships with a lot of his guys that he's got to get parts from and stuff.
00:54:01
RICK JAMES
Well, have to.
00:54:03
The SnowJobs Podcast
So it's, uh, never, yeah, you have to, you have, especially if you've got a ah ah good size fleet, you know, there's a lot of the bigger, bigger, the fleet, the more shit can go wrong with it.
00:54:11
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
00:54:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
You know, it's a crazy.
00:54:14
Scott Lesak
Yeah. Yeah, this, this year's the first time we have a, we have an in-house fleet team, uh, just kind of like formed itself.
00:54:14
RICK JAMES
yeah
00:54:21
Scott Lesak
The guys just saw that they needed to start working on stuff. The operations manager took it by the horns and like he really started managing the fleet and got another guy for it. So two of them are, have been working on this stuff since August.
00:54:33
Scott Lesak
And I'll tell you what, they had our everything out on sites. Uh, you know, everything, everything that's ready, everything is a hundred percent ready and we have all the parts and everything.
00:54:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's awesome.
00:54:43
Scott Lesak
And. after that first storm, in one of the guys just reached out today and said, hey, we knew about that coupler on that metal plus. We have it. It's going in on Monday. No problem. And, you know, just it's really nice having that in the house now, too.
00:54:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, that's awesome. How much did you grow this year, Scott? How much of did you expand over what you were last year?
00:55:02
Scott Lesak
We more than doubled our snow division. We went from about 6 million square feet to about 13 million square feet.
00:55:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Wow.
00:55:06
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh.
00:55:08
Scott Lesak
And we're still selling a couple contracts. We'll probably land around 15 million square feet that we're servicing this year.
00:55:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
Wow. Good for you, dude. Good for you.
00:55:15
Scott Lesak
Oh, awesome.
00:55:16
The SnowJobs Podcast
How did all the new case machines work? You like them?
00:55:19
Scott Lesak
Besides that, that one fitting that came loose, I'm not even going to call that an issue.
00:55:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:55:22
Scott Lesak
That was a fitting that came loose.
00:55:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nope. It's not.
00:55:24
Scott Lesak
Besides that, there was not a single issue. Those 621s, I have run cats, I've run deers, I've run them all. Those 621s are hands down the nicest wheel loaders I've ever spent any time in.
00:55:37
Scott Lesak
They're comfortable. You can see everything. They don't regen. I don't know how they do that, but they don't regen. So they're just running all the time. and that I have nothing nothing but good things to say about that. That's the only machine i I personally spent time in, but everybody else was loving the SV-280s, the 321s, everything. I mean, they're phenomenal. They're great.
00:55:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
The two eighties are awesome. As far as snow pushing skids, that is the right weight to torque ratio. You put them in behind an Arctic or I don't even know what you guys are pushing on them, but when you put a 10 foot Arctic behind those things, those things will push all day long.
00:56:02
Scott Lesak
Yep.
00:56:11
Scott Lesak
We're running, wait we run eight 30, 13 standard edge metal pluses on all the skids and case.
00:56:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
It's a, it's incredible.
00:56:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
00:56:18
Anthony Mann Jr
Metal plants mafia.
00:56:19
Scott Lesak
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We bought the first one, but two or three years ago, got 42 of them now. So,
00:56:26
Anthony Mann Jr
but
00:56:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
Kool-Aid drinker.
00:56:28
Anthony Mann Jr
Woo.
00:56:29
RICK JAMES
is ah but Hopefully got a hat with those 42.
00:56:30
Scott Lesak
um,
00:56:30
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
00:56:31
Scott Lesak
um No, I didn't get a hat.
00:56:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
yeah no
00:56:34
Scott Lesak
I got the Storm equipment with Metal Plus on it.
00:56:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
No?
00:56:36
Scott Lesak
I don't have anything directly from Metal Plus after all that.
00:56:37
RICK JAMES
ah okay
00:56:39
The SnowJobs Podcast
What?
00:56:40
Scott Lesak
ah Storm takes care of us, though.
00:56:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
Canadians.
00:56:42
Scott Lesak
They're good.
00:56:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh man.
00:56:45
RICK JAMES
cheap
00:56:45
Scott Lesak
No.
00:56:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, that's good. I'm glad they worked out for you. I got to tell you though, you have a problem with a machine and they're there in 45 minutes and have it fixed. That's a minor inconvenience. That's not even a problem.
00:56:54
Scott Lesak
now we We didn't even miss it.
00:56:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's like.
00:56:56
Scott Lesak
Didn't even drop a beat, man.
00:56:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's great.
00:56:57
Scott Lesak
It was it was nice.
00:56:59
Anthony Mann Jr
Scott, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to rename metal plus just storm equipment now.
00:56:59
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's awesome.
00:57:03
Scott Lesak
yeah i think so i think so
00:57:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, yeah, absolutely.
00:57:07
RICK JAMES
Oh boy. You'll be hearing from their lawyers.
00:57:09
Scott Lesak
yeah
00:57:12
RICK JAMES
ah They, they get but heard about stuff up there and guarantee that I'm sure I hear about this right now.
00:57:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh man.
00:57:17
RICK JAMES
So everybody, everybody's teams.
00:57:18
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yup.
00:57:19
Scott Lesak
That's all right.
00:57:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
Absolutely. What else? What else about the storms? Anything else? Okay.
00:57:25
RICK JAMES
I know you guys, you know, Scott said your team, team did fantastic. but Everybody, everybody's teams do well in a lot of new guys and stuff.
00:57:30
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:57:31
RICK JAMES
They do good.
00:57:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good.
00:57:34
Scott Lesak
Yeah, there.
00:57:35
Anthony Mann Jr
We had a, we have a fairly, you know, we lost our number one, like I said before. So we have a fairly young crew this year. Um, we move guys around that were in loaders in the trucks. And so this was a great first storm because we didn't get snow everywhere. So we were able to teach. We are it like, like Scott said before, you know, this was a great learning experience, watching new guys get in the seat and take control and do what they got to do. Um,
00:58:02
Anthony Mann Jr
you know I'm really impressed with what our our new guys did this storm and I'm excited to see what they bring the rest of the season.
00:58:11
RICK JAMES
Good.
00:58:12
Scott Lesak
Yeah, I'd say the same thing, just you know seeing seeing the new guys doing great, seeing some of the old guys that are moving up in leadership too.
00:58:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good for you.
00:58:20
Scott Lesak
We're up to, we have eight different zones now, so we have eight zone leaders. And we're starting to do nightly calls as we're getting the true weather forecast coming through at 6 o'clock, doing 615 calls after that, and letting the zone leaders say, what are you guys thinking after that forecast? What are your calls for tonight? And ah you know we have the season guys in there to say, well, what about this? What about that? And just do live coaching with it. So we're we're building that thought process and making sure other guys are making the right decisions and not micromanaging it, but coaching through it all at the same time. and
00:58:54
Scott Lesak
I'm excited. if We actually haven't had a single one of those calls yet. We're going to be doing those, um probably starting next week, but I'm excited to get those going. and And we've been having those on phone calls, just helping the guys figure out what to do.
00:59:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice.
00:59:07
Scott Lesak
That's the hardest part. you know That's hard. I've been doing it for 20 years and that's a hard call to make sometimes. Like what are we doing tonight? What should we look at? There could be a little puddle there. you know That's a hard call to make.
00:59:17
Scott Lesak
So helping other guys learn that is is really a good skill.
00:59:21
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yep, absolutely.
00:59:21
RICK JAMES
Yeah, definitely.
00:59:24
Anthony Mann Jr
It's nice seeing these young guys come in with the intensity and the the motivation, you know, because snow can be drowning on people, you know, and these young guys coming in and wanting to be there, wanting to do it.
00:59:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
00:59:33
Scott Lesak
Yep.
00:59:37
Anthony Mann Jr
You know, we had one skid steer, one of our brand new skid steers. The door broke and it was at Bobcat. We were getting the new door and we didn't have it for the storm. And I had one of my guys, you know, he wasn't happy, but he sat in there and pushed through that storm with no door.
00:59:52
Anthony Mann Jr
Um, You know a little couple complaints and some of the other guys two of the other guys actually switched out and said here You jump in the truck for a while stay get dry get warm and I'll jump in there So between the three of them it wasn't like oh you're stuck in there. You know my team worked as a team They helped each other out, and that was really cool to see
01:00:10
Scott Lesak
That's awesome.
01:00:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Cool.
01:00:11
RICK JAMES
good I Yeah, we have a bunch of new guys.
01:00:12
Scott Lesak
That's awesome.
01:00:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
Very cool. Yeah. Jay, do you have a lot of new guys? You guys, you guys got a bunch of new guys.
01:00:20
RICK JAMES
and they They perform really well. I mean, for our first snow really sucked because it came at, the I think we started rolling out at three or four in the morning.
01:00:30
RICK JAMES
So it don't it doesn't give you a lot of time before everybody's streets are full on shit. So it was it was not a good timing event for us. I mean, not for your first first storm.
01:00:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yep.
01:00:40
RICK JAMES
That'd be nice to go out like at 10 o'clock at night and not three or four in the morning when we were going. And after everything done by six, seven, just and and it was still snowing and it was, I don't know.
01:00:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
yeah
01:00:50
RICK JAMES
And everything we do is rail work. So we're cruising around, you know? So, so yeah, it was a, it was a little. busy there for a while, I could say, just trying to keep shit moving and keep shit opened up.
01:01:02
RICK JAMES
But yeah, they didn't did, they did really good though. A lot of, you know, I, I spent the two days before the snow just driving guys around from morning till 10, 11 o'clock at night, showing them relative stuff. So it was a busy few days, but glad to be back in it.
01:01:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. Very cool. Yeah.
01:01:18
RICK JAMES
How about you?
01:01:18
Anthony Mann Jr
I tried to do that, we ran out of time.
01:01:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
We didn't.
01:01:22
Anthony Mann Jr
So we were doing it on the fly.
01:01:22
The SnowJobs Podcast
We had, yeah, we, we definitely, we had not done any of our normal preseason stuff that we normally do as far as, uh, you know, taking guys to sites and stuff, but we didn't have, we had a one new operator, but he's not a new operator. He's run our machines before. He just now is going to run them every storm with us. So, uh, he knows what he's doing. Uh, Danny does a great job. Um,
01:01:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
You know, we had, we had our normal crew, you know, we had, you know, Matt, the Matt's a truck plow ninja, probably the best truck plower I've ever seen. It's it's amazing what he can do with a truck plow. Uh, he handles, he handles things so quickly and and so cleanly.
01:02:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
and is done with things long before I expect them to be. And it's nice when you're you know you're you're not expecting him you're expecting them to call and have one site completed. And he's got all three of them that he went out out that way to do. And they're all done. um And they're all done with quality. That's the the biggest thing.
01:02:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
So when you have guys like that, when you have the same guys in the same seats over and over and over, we were missing my right hand man.
Community Support & Proactive Approaches
01:02:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
He's out with a back injury right now. So he's out. Uh, we were missing our head sidewalk guy in that storm. And again, next man up because we have the same guys year after year after year, the, the one young, he's a young kid and he has his own crew. He had all five of his guys and he had a little huddle with him.
01:02:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
Show them the map and boom that was it they went off and they didn't miss a trick there was not one ounce of snow they they shoveled out our Achilles heel on that one site has always been that the the dumpster area gets done after like everything else like the driveways and in that way.
01:03:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
they do the dumpsters generally last. Well, last year we learned that nothing is going to stop an 85 year old woman in a for in the middle of a 14 inch blizzard from taking her garbage out at 6.45 in the morning.
01:03:23
RICK JAMES
but
01:03:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. So the first thing they did was they shoveled and salted those dumpsters and they got them clean before they started on everything else. And I thought that was really super heads up because I didn't say it.
01:03:39
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's just something Brandon learned from last year. So he got that done with his boys before they set out on their little routes and they crushed it like they did the time.
01:03:42
RICK JAMES
That's good.
01:03:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
And that was not that was not light stuff. And they got their stuff done with quality. And that's the benefit of being able to put the same asses in the same seats year after year after year.
01:03:59
RICK JAMES
Oh, yeah.
01:04:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
um
01:04:02
Scott Lesak
that.
01:04:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
Even though nobody really I think guys were kind of half thinking I was crazy because I did tell them the day before like Expect to be fucking plowing tonight. I don't care what the weather is that I'm sending you the weather reports I don't care what they say. I don't care that they agree expect expect that that because it's us we're gonna be plowing tonight because I don't want to and sure enough That was it, 1 a.m.
01:04:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
I don't know, did you see my little Instagram story? This looks a little bit more than web payment there, Nick.
01:04:33
RICK JAMES
here are
01:04:33
The SnowJobs Podcast
Fucking two inches.
01:04:33
Scott Lesak
ah saw
01:04:34
Anthony Mann Jr
Nick was a little butthurt over that by the way.
01:04:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, two inches in fucking an hour on the road.
01:04:39
RICK JAMES
you
01:04:39
Anthony Mann Jr
he was Nick was a little butthurt. I talked to him.
01:04:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
He could be butt hurt. He could be butt hurt. He knows I'm busting his balls. Oh, man. But yeah, it was good. Glad we got one out of the way and it wasn't a three inch an hour freaking nor'easter like it was last year.
01:04:57
RICK JAMES
Yeah,
01:04:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
I think the first one we got last year was gangbusters.
01:05:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
So, it's good.
01:05:01
Scott Lesak
say we went pretty gangbusters.
01:05:02
RICK JAMES
yeah.
01:05:04
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, you guys did.
01:05:05
RICK JAMES
yeah you guys yes
01:05:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
How was the snowfall rates though? Was it ridiculous rates? Did you get like 20 inches in three hours or was it over a long period of time?
01:05:14
Scott Lesak
no it's Yeah, it started about six o'clock Thursday evening and it it was probably 24 hours worth of snowfall to get that 19 inches.
01:05:16
Anthony Mann Jr
Now it was over a long period of time.
01:05:18
The SnowJobs Podcast
not
01:05:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.
01:05:25
Anthony Mann Jr
I clocked 47 hours in. Now I started at seven o'clock in the morning on Thursday getting ready.
01:05:29
RICK JAMES
Yeah,
01:05:32
Anthony Mann Jr
um We started pre-salting at seven, eight o'clock PM.
01:05:32
RICK JAMES
you guys.
01:05:40
Anthony Mann Jr
went on And I didn't finish until 4 a.m. Saturday morning. Now, I also had to do 475 hard workouts during this storm because I had a 40, 47-hour shift.
01:05:52
RICK JAMES
Yeah. like
01:05:54
Anthony Mann Jr
So I was on, I finished yesterday my program the program, so I'm enjoying this nice bottle of wine tonight as we speak.
01:05:54
RICK JAMES
yeah
01:05:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
oh
01:06:02
Anthony Mann Jr
um Thank you.
01:06:03
RICK JAMES
Congratulations.
01:06:04
Anthony Mann Jr
But I...
01:06:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Which I think I saw upturned.
01:06:05
Anthony Mann Jr
listen
01:06:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
I think I saw it tipped. It's empty.
01:06:08
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh, it's empty. It's empty.
01:06:09
RICK JAMES
yeah
01:06:12
Anthony Mann Jr
But I had to do four workouts during that storm. And a lot of the times I'll go to my gym's open 24 hours. I'll go and we plow it. So I go in, I'll plow it, and then I'll usually one o'clock in the morning get my one of my first workouts in.
01:06:12
The SnowJobs Podcast
In an hour and six minutes.
01:06:26
Anthony Mann Jr
I wasn't up in that route. So I was down, I was covering down in what we call the hole down in Milford and then um in Jersey, I was at. So I was doing, I was just getting out of the truck, stopping the truck at two o'clock in the morning and walking um around one of my sites.
01:06:43
Anthony Mann Jr
Like whatever building I was at, whatever site I was at, I just start walking in the snow and we got it done. So, you know, the 75 hard is not easy and you had, you know, you had a 47 hour shift.
01:06:56
Anthony Mann Jr
It makes it very difficult, but you know what?
01:06:56
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:06:58
Anthony Mann Jr
It also makes it very rewarding.
01:07:00
Scott Lesak
You hear that ladies and gentlemen, there is no excuse.
01:07:00
RICK JAMES
Yeah, definitely.
Mindset & Resilience Discussions
01:07:04
RICK JAMES
Yeah, no excuse.
01:07:04
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
01:07:04
Anthony Mann Jr
Absolutely no excuses that And you said something before about do better that's our new word this year is do better Everybody can do better.
01:07:06
Scott Lesak
but
01:07:07
RICK JAMES
It's all mindset.
01:07:13
Scott Lesak
I love it.
01:07:15
Anthony Mann Jr
I don't care how good you are if you're a hundred percent you can still do better And that's what we're preaching this year um to everybody in all aspects of our company is listen we can do better Let's be the number one person the number one team out here and just do better.
01:07:19
RICK JAMES
Mm hmm.
01:07:19
Scott Lesak
Yep.
01:07:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:07:31
Scott Lesak
We do it.
01:07:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
Amen.
01:07:31
Scott Lesak
So in our debriefs, we'll go back in and say, hey, that was the best job we ever did.
01:07:33
Anthony Mann Jr
I
01:07:36
Scott Lesak
What are three things you can do better the next time? Every single time.
01:07:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. Oh, 100%.
01:07:39
Anthony Mann Jr
There you go.
01:07:39
Scott Lesak
Everybody's got to bring three things. I used to do that in the fire department and after we get done with fires and I brought that over to our company, what are three things we can do better? Can be the best.
01:07:47
The SnowJobs Podcast
Absolutely.
01:07:48
Scott Lesak
No mistakes.
01:07:48
Anthony Mann Jr
We just adapted that after hearing that Scott.
01:07:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
and
01:07:51
Scott Lesak
Awesome.
01:07:51
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. And if you know, and if you, if your guys know they did a great job, they, it's not picking on them.
01:07:52
Scott Lesak
Love it.
01:07:52
Anthony Mann Jr
Love it.
01:07:58
The SnowJobs Podcast
If they, you just had a really good storm. That's the time to do that. Like we know we killed it guys.
01:08:01
Anthony Mann Jr
Yes.
01:08:03
The SnowJobs Podcast
That was awesome. You guys crushed that. What do you think like off the top of your head, what are two or three things that we think we could approve on or do differently to increase our efficiency?
01:08:10
RICK JAMES
Thank you.
01:08:13
The SnowJobs Podcast
And because they know they just did a great job, they're going to be more likely to look at their own work critically and not be offended by it.
01:08:19
Scott Lesak
Yep.
01:08:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
If you're asking them that after they just screwed the fucking pooch, you know, on a storm, then that's a that's probably not going to go the same.
01:08:27
Anthony Mann Jr
The mindset is 100% of everything in this game.
01:08:29
Scott Lesak
It's different if they know that question is going to come, like it changed the whole thought process.
01:08:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yes, they're thinking about it, the whole storm.
01:08:33
Scott Lesak
It changes that mindset. What can we do better? what can Oh, I just messed this up a little bit.
01:08:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:08:37
Scott Lesak
I can do this better. There's one of my answers and you know, having that thought process through everybody, it it changes your team.
01:08:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, 100 percent. I love it.
01:08:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
It is. It's in most things, and not just snow. it's in It's most things. Mindset is, that's one thing I'm trying to teach my son right now with hockey. It's all mindset, dude. Like, it's supposed to be hard.
01:09:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
If it wasn't hard, everybody'd fucking do it and be great at it.
01:09:03
Anthony Mann Jr
Steve, just tell them to do better.
01:09:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah i look It's tough, man. Coaching a nine-year-old like mentally, that's a tough game, man.
01:09:08
Anthony Mann Jr
but
01:09:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
you got I don't remember what I used to think when I was nine. So it's it's tough, but you know, he's,
01:09:16
Anthony Mann Jr
I know what I was thinking at when I was nine.
01:09:18
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. He's, uh, he's, he's, he's getting there. He's getting there, but, uh, let's, uh, let's let these guys get a drink. Let's let Anthony get another bottle of wine. We'll do some commercials. We'll come back and we'll ah finish this up.
01:09:30
RICK JAMES
He's on 75 bottles now.
Equipment Updates & Snow Management Improvements
01:09:32
Scott Lesak
that so
01:10:35
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, gang, we are back. We are back. We got the boys back. Everybody's unmuted and ready. So what was the, we kind of touched on this a little bit, but see if anything else sticks out. The newest thing to your fleet, newest piece of equipment that impressed you. I think Scott, you said the 621, that you were kind of impressed with all of them, but the 621 really stood out to you.
01:11:00
Scott Lesak
The 621, the machine itself, but i would I would have to say out of all in the 321, that's our first time running that class and out there. And just the amount of production we got out of that machine really blew my mind.
01:11:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. Oh yeah.
01:11:11
Scott Lesak
So that that was a good machine.
01:11:12
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:11:14
RICK JAMES
What do you run on that, Scott?
01:11:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
it doesn't look like it's got as nu It doesn't look like it's got as much balls as it does.
01:11:18
Scott Lesak
Nah, they're crazy. We're running a live edge 1036.16 on it and just keeping keep an employee lots open and the road coming in.
01:11:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
01:11:24
RICK JAMES
Oh, wow.
01:11:29
Scott Lesak
We have a production rate on that one for about 250 to 275,000 square feet is what we put it and it's it's pretty spot on to that.
01:11:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice. Very cool.
01:11:38
RICK JAMES
Good for you.
01:11:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
What about you, Ant? Any new equipment that you got to use for the first time?
01:11:44
Anthony Mann Jr
Um, no, we didn't, we didn't purchase any new equipment this year. Last year was our big year. We invested heavily last year.
01:11:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
01:11:52
Anthony Mann Jr
Um, but we did, you know, art We used our big brine sprayer for the first time this year. weve We had the 305s last year. At the end of the season, we picked up a 500 gallon. um So we had that out this this storm, and it went flawless. that you know The liquids has been a big big game changer for our company. um We invested three years ago, four years ago, into the equipment. and We didn't market it. We basically went with liquids, practicing on our seasonal sites, using it for pretreatment and then the first two years. Then last year we used it for some post storm and the sidewalk post storms with the sprayer. We signed our first commercial or HOA last year.
01:12:42
Anthony Mann Jr
where we do not do the plowing we only do the uh... pre and post treatment because the condo complex was having a problem with the the snow contractor with the salt spreaders it was killing their grass they were put too much salt to the edges uh... so they brought it the snow contractor uh... brought us in and we did all their spraying form we're still doing it this year form so that five hundred gallon up to our games to be able to you know not have to refill as much uh... we use it on a couple of our big sites and uh...
01:13:12
Anthony Mann Jr
worked out really, really well.
01:13:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
Cool. That's awesome.
01:13:15
Scott Lesak
That's awesome.
01:13:16
The SnowJobs Podcast
What about you, Jay?
01:13:16
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah
01:13:17
The SnowJobs Podcast
Glacier got anything new this year?
01:13:19
RICK JAMES
Um I mean, yeah, we we we built another we built a bigger brine truck So we we're we've been brining a few more lots So I think that one pretty god flow meter wasn't working right away.
01:13:29
RICK JAMES
Jordan got that replaced pretty quick but uh, otherwise, I think that thing was did did pretty good the you know, brine brine's working good and then we also uh tommy from vroom vroom he we got those hill tip uh
01:13:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
Sweet.
01:13:44
RICK JAMES
brooms and they, they were, they, they spun on our 3000 series John Deere's, but they were pretty slow and it was, wasn't great. Well, we knew that when we got, yeah, they were maxed out.
01:13:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
Hydraulic system is not enough.
01:13:55
RICK JAMES
We knew that we got them, but we just wanted a hydraulic room over those John Deere crap ones.
01:13:59
The SnowJobs Podcast
Sure.
01:13:59
RICK JAMES
So, so we, uh, uh, Tommy retrofitted as a vroom broom. Um, PTO and front PTO and stuff on there, his hydraulic system on there.
01:14:10
RICK JAMES
And those things change those brooms completely completely.
01:14:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
No shit.
01:14:14
RICK JAMES
Oh yeah, they're just throwing snow like you wouldn't believe so. So yeah, those are only really two new things we got. So yeah, they they both work.
01:14:22
The SnowJobs Podcast
Do you have any of the actual room rooms on anything?
01:14:25
RICK JAMES
No, they're coming. He's, he's, he's right now he's retro here. He's finishing up the hitch for the 1585s.
01:14:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
OK.
01:14:32
RICK JAMES
So I got two, two of them coming for that. And then maybe another one for 3000 we'll see, I think, but at least two for 1585 John Deere, we got coming. He was just finishing up the hitch. I mean, the brooms all the same.
01:14:43
RICK JAMES
He's just got to do the hitch system.
01:14:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Sure.
01:14:44
RICK JAMES
So, so he had one last year.
01:14:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Does Mitchell have his yet?
01:14:49
RICK JAMES
So.
01:14:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
He got one before you did. Oh, interesting.
01:14:53
RICK JAMES
Well, yeah, he, he, did he had, well, he has got that videographer and stuff.
01:14:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
Interesting.
01:14:57
RICK JAMES
So Tommy getting one so he could do some videos and stuff for him last year.
01:15:00
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
01:15:00
RICK JAMES
and But I don't think they even got much snow out there. They haven't really got anything out there. mitchell's just Um, know no, I don't think so.
01:15:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
Uh, yeah, he sent, didn't he send the video or something? A clip that, that they had snow on the ground or something today. Wasn't it today? No. All right.
01:15:15
RICK JAMES
Cause they were, he was, I think today at least on our Snapchat group, he was, uh, he was talking about staking and there was green grass everywhere.
01:15:16
The SnowJobs Podcast
I thought it was in the group chat.
01:15:23
RICK JAMES
So.
01:15:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
Okay.
Tax Implications & Regional Differences
01:15:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
Could've been wrong. I saw a lot of people posting the snow pictures today in that group chat when I glanced at it. All right.
01:15:31
RICK JAMES
How about you?
01:15:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, new for us this year.
01:15:32
RICK JAMES
Anything new for you? No.
01:15:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
I don't think so. No, no, I think we pretty, we stayed status quo this year.
01:15:42
Scott Lesak
Kool-Aid power, Kool-Aid powered flux capacitor. that's That's what your new one is this year, man.
01:15:49
The SnowJobs Podcast
You need that. You need the the flux capacitor.
01:15:50
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:15:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
You have to have it.
01:15:54
RICK JAMES
You don't, you don't run a red diesel.
01:15:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
yeah now no no off-road no on-road only um yeah but uh you're you're not in north dakota when you're in the northeast here they'll stick your tank what they they stick your tank here oh well
01:15:55
RICK JAMES
you You just, you just run really, but don't you like paying taxes or what?
01:16:10
Anthony Mann Jr
Hahaha, yes they will!
01:16:12
Scott Lesak
they will
01:16:13
RICK JAMES
Not in your, on your equipment. I'm talking your equipment. Why can't your equipment run red?
01:16:17
The SnowJobs Podcast
The equipment I, the equipment I got, I got one tank, I got one tank and everything gets filled out of it.
01:16:18
RICK JAMES
Why can't you run red? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
01:16:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
So I'm not.
01:16:24
RICK JAMES
No, they stick our diesel around here too, but I'm talking about your your work equipment, and all your loaders and stuff.
01:16:30
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, but I got one, I got one tank that I fill everything off of. So I i can't really do two.
01:16:34
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:16:36
The SnowJobs Podcast
So I just do the on road. It's probably stupid.
01:16:38
RICK JAMES
Oh.
01:16:39
Anthony Mann Jr
We do the same thing Steve, it ain't worth it.
01:16:39
The SnowJobs Podcast
I probably should do it. Yeah. i I probably could do it, but it's kind of like, yeah, I don't know. I should. But, uh, yeah.
01:16:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
Um, no, as far as equipment, no, we're, we're status quo. I don't think I have anything. I don't think I have anything new this year. No, we, uh, yeah, we, so we remain.
01:16:59
RICK JAMES
Not yet. You got something new coming.
01:17:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
What's that?
01:17:03
RICK JAMES
You got something new coming.
01:17:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
Do we, what do we got? What do we got?
01:17:07
RICK JAMES
raise Razorback prototype.
01:17:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
We got a Razorback coming. We do. Yes. The Arctic boys are, uh, the Arctic boys are letting us do a demo program for the Razorback, which is going to be freaking awesome, man.
01:17:19
Scott Lesak
That's a cool plow.
01:17:19
The SnowJobs Podcast
The prototype. Yeah.
01:17:20
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:17:21
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's going to be awesome. I can't wait. I can't wait.
01:17:23
RICK JAMES
New headgear.
01:17:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
It's going on my yeah new head gear. That's going on my 3,500.
01:17:28
Anthony Mann Jr
Okay.
01:17:28
The SnowJobs Podcast
And, uh, I can't wait to to to see that thing, but, uh, yeah.
01:17:32
RICK JAMES
I'm pretty excited. Yeah, we got one coming too.
01:17:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
I saw it at Equip and I was like, the headgear was sick. like they They got it. They dialed it. it's It's efficient as hell.
01:17:41
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:17:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
It's clean as hell. Under the hood is clean as hell. It's it's a total minimalist ah under the hood. What is it? One wire? One wire? like It's like...
01:17:53
RICK JAMES
yeah, I wanted to go split the two, but I believe so.
01:17:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
And then, yeah, it splits.
01:17:56
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:17:56
The SnowJobs Podcast
But it's like it was
01:17:57
RICK JAMES
So yeah, i mean it's so it's so small. I mean, it's it's pretty sweet. So.
01:18:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, Blake's a genius. it's a It must be tough coming up with these revolutionary products all the time. It must be such a drain.
01:18:08
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:18:08
Anthony Mann Jr
Uh oh.
01:18:10
The SnowJobs Podcast
But yeah, no, he crushed it again. that The redesign wings looked good at Equip. So yeah, I'm excited, man.
01:18:18
RICK JAMES
ye
01:18:18
The SnowJobs Podcast
I'm excited. were ah We'll definitely put it through its paces. I know exactly where we're going to go with it, too. So I can't wait. Um, but yeah, that's it. Other than that, I mean, we got, we got one new truck, but it's a, like a sidewalk truck. It's not, uh, not doing any plowing, nothing like that. Um, yeah, everything's pretty much the same. We didn't take on any, we didn't take on any more sites where we were staying status
Strategic Contract Negotiations
01:18:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
quo this year. We took on like two little ones, maybe I think, uh,
01:18:46
The SnowJobs Podcast
And, uh, one of the fire departments built a brand new station. So that was, uh, that was it. It was like triple the size of the, uh, the old one. So now we're doing three, three stations, because we're still doing their old station and, uh, their new one, which is gorgeous. Um,
01:19:01
The SnowJobs Podcast
But that's it. Yeah, we're, we're pretty much status quo. I don't think anything's in our future either. Maybe next year, but nothing this year and we're, we're getting it done. Even we, we, the nice thing about last storm is we proved it to ourselves that we have a plan B. If like we were down to machines, like we were, we have a plan B and it worked perfectly.
01:19:23
The SnowJobs Podcast
Cause we were actually, we actually didn't put all the trucks on the road either. Cause we were down guys and, uh, we, we still got it done. We still got it done. We just, you get out early, you know, you get on top of it early and you keep going.
01:19:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
You don't take any time off. If the storms, well, uh, yeah, I mean the, my weather man was my number two that said, I'll give you a call.
01:19:39
Anthony Mann Jr
Well, when you got weathermen that know what they're talking about, you can get out there early, brother.
01:19:49
RICK JAMES
yeah yeah We got a bookend we had a book in this this podcast. We started off with hammering. We've got to end by hammering them, right?
01:19:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's it.
01:19:57
Anthony Mann Jr
No.
01:19:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
That's it. I don't know. It was snowing here. Uh, it was snowing here for an hour and a half today and nothing was on the, uh, nothing was in the forecast. So, you know, it must be lake effect.
01:20:04
Anthony Mann Jr
no
01:20:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
I'm sure it's like a reach around the lake effect band or something.
01:20:10
Anthony Mann Jr
Sidewinder
01:20:11
The SnowJobs Podcast
Got in the, well, you know, we weren't counting on the ultra mesosphere being two degrees cooler than, you know, the earth's core at that point. And, oh my God, all the crap.
01:20:21
RICK JAMES
Yeah. It snowed for like three days here in the last couple, you know, a couple of days and nothing was really, they just said flurries and it kind of piled up.
01:20:22
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah
01:20:28
RICK JAMES
It was just that air fluffy stuff. It was probably the prairie dog, side winder thing or something.
01:20:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah, absolutely.
01:20:34
Anthony Mann Jr
The prairie nachos
01:20:34
The SnowJobs Podcast
Prayer prairie dogs at fault.
01:20:35
Scott Lesak
the per on arts
01:20:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yep. Prairie dog farts.
Growth & Strategic Acquisitions
01:20:39
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yep. Brought it in.
01:20:40
Anthony Mann Jr
So I have one good story from the storm.
01:20:41
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh man. Go ahead.
01:20:44
Anthony Mann Jr
So we've all been talking about how these people have been waiting and waiting to sign these contracts.
01:20:50
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh yeah.
01:20:51
Anthony Mann Jr
So 1130, I started negotiation on contracts for a very large site. My office manager working from home, she was emailing, getting contracts signed.
01:21:00
Scott Lesak
The pretty darn fart feelings.
01:21:02
Anthony Mann Jr
you or not Actually, we didn't even sign the contract till the next until two days later. um But 1130, negotiation started. We told them what we wanted. They were a national and we were very upfront on how we did not trust them and that we needed payment before we had to go out to the site. um We had very specific stipulations that we wanted in order to work for this company. They said yes to everything um and we mobilized. So 11.30 at night was the last communications I had till 2.30 in the morning.
01:21:40
Anthony Mann Jr
Um 2 30 in the morning. I get a phone call saying hey, what time what's your eta to this site? I said well, we don't have an eta to this site. We don't have a contract signed yet 4 30 a.m.
01:21:52
Anthony Mann Jr
I get a call from the vice president of the company and I'm not going to mention this company and She says to me what's it gonna take?
01:21:59
RICK JAMES
I will
01:22:02
Anthony Mann Jr
To get you out there. We need you and I said it's gonna take this this this and this I said I also talked to your other person you guys ghosted me last night So i'm not real happy with you right now, and I shouldn't even show up to your site But we want that site. It's in our it's right in our wheelhouse and Um 4 30 in the morning. I got a verb or a written email Basically stating this is the amount. This is what you're going to do. This is this buth blah blah blah blah blah Mobile eyes guys by 7 a.m They pulled their people off site because they had their own crews on site, which they made an absolute mess um Some of these bigger companies have people that in plow trucks that should not be they were driving around a Giant retail parking lot with the plow in v-blade Just making windrows The stupidest thing I ever seen I told them to get all of their equipment and trucks off the site and that we would take over from there We did and they did the right thing
01:23:01
Anthony Mann Jr
and you know, we told them we wanted a retainer fee and Well, we don't do that. and I said well then I don't work for you and We took the last month's payment and told them we wanted that before we started and they negotiated that down with this Friday and They did the right thing. I will give them that So we picked up another real big site that we were, you know, I told, you know, in some conversations we had, you guys knew I lost about three sites this year.
01:23:31
Anthony Mann Jr
We picked up seven new sites this year.
01:23:31
RICK JAMES
Yep.
01:23:33
Anthony Mann Jr
So we we did have some pretty good growth. And this site ended up being an $85,000 contract.
01:23:40
RICK JAMES
Good for you.
01:23:40
Anthony Mann Jr
you Yeah, so we are, we're back, you know, we're back plus the growth. Um, but it was, it's just pretty funny how, you know, it's November 30th and these people don't have contracts yet for these major, major retail, you know, people.
01:23:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice.
01:23:52
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah Best time to negotiate with nationals when it's already snowing.
01:23:58
Anthony Mann Jr
Oh, damn right it is. And she said to me, she goes, you're one of the best negotiate or one of the hardest negotiators from my end that I've ever worked with. She goes, you got more out of us than I've ever given.
01:24:07
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. Well, because we know it's nothing you got no choice here.
01:24:10
Anthony Mann Jr
And I said to her,
01:24:13
Anthony Mann Jr
and I said but listen you will have a clean lot by tomorrow morning and They sent one of their supervisors out there and there was not one complaint they could find So hats off to my young guns that went out there pulled off of a zone that didn't get snow and You know, they had about an inch in that zone.
01:24:24
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good for you.
01:24:31
Anthony Mann Jr
So I went and took over for them there I was able to handle by myself and we sent ah three trucks in a machine up to that up there to help them clean it up and we got it done and
01:24:42
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good for you.
01:24:42
Anthony Mann Jr
you know now we're Now we're gonna mobilize some loaders with some bigger push boxes up there. ah now that Now that the money has ah has been received, we will we will mobilize equipment.
01:24:42
Scott Lesak
so far.
01:24:54
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, you received enough money to get you to do it.
01:24:55
RICK JAMES
go good figure yeah There you go
01:24:56
Anthony Mann Jr
Yes, yes.
01:24:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
ah Hopefully. Hopefully it keeps coming.
01:25:01
Anthony Mann Jr
We'll do an update on these guys at the end of the year.
01:25:04
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:25:05
Anthony Mann Jr
So it was pretty funny.
01:25:05
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right.
01:25:06
Anthony Mann Jr
They threw some big names out there. I'm not going to say that name either, but they said, oh, well, we know your friends with this guy and this guy. And I said, but I know this guy doesn't like the clown club. So it was it was interesting how they threw that in my face, um you know, and I and I told them literally straight up.
01:25:24
Anthony Mann Jr
I said to them, I don't trust you guys. I never thought and ever that I would work for you guys, but I'm going to give you this chance and I want you guys to prove that you're not whatever, you know, cause you look online and you know, still play them off yet. 50% of the people say they're a great company. 50% of people say that they're horrible and don't work for them. Um, you know, but we want growth. So we're, we're, you know, we're going to give them the benefit of the doubt. And if they fuck up, well then we're going to call them out.
01:25:55
Anthony Mann Jr
And if they do right by us, we're gonna let everybody know that they did right by us. So, you know it was it was pretty good feeling though to sign that contract at 4.30 in the morning and get crews out there and get that site cleaned up and opened up.
01:26:10
Anthony Mann Jr
And you know Black Friday today, we were out salting this morning for them. We salted actually, we salted three of our six zones this morning.
01:26:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
Yeah. Yeah. We got to go out now.
01:26:21
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:26:22
Anthony Mann Jr
Refreeze, yeah, we got guys out now.
01:26:24
Scott Lesak
Yeah.
01:26:26
The SnowJobs Podcast
Well, well, good luck. Good luck. I mean, if there's one, if there's one contract, they probably don't want to screw up on it. It's probably this one now that they, now that you set it on here and you know, you're going to do, you're probably guaranteed you're getting paid.
01:26:36
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah
01:26:41
Anthony Mann Jr
yeah and they know who you guys are too by the way We had another site that we got a call two days after the storm saying, oh, you're supposed to service this as part of your original agreement.
01:26:44
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, I'm sure they do. I'm sure, you know, we take everything on a case by case basis. So, I mean, I'm sure they know who we are.
01:26:50
RICK JAMES
yeah
01:26:59
Anthony Mann Jr
And I said that we signed this contract two years ago, or yeah, two years ago, this is a three year deal. That building was not part of this site. Then they just finished it. Well, you guys did it last year said, no, we did not.
01:27:10
Anthony Mann Jr
They hide the, that company hired their own plow company to come in. We tried to get the contract. Now you want us to do it. We have to charge you. We cannot just add. a You know, it's a big shopping center and they had some you know It's new and they had some outposts lots that haven't they still have three that haven't been built out So every year this is contracts just gonna get a little bit bigger um but it was like no like that wasn't part of our original site maps you guys need to pay and They approved it and we took care of it for them Most of it melted by the time they approved it and we got out there.
01:27:31
The SnowJobs Podcast
hu
01:27:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
Nice.
01:27:43
Anthony Mann Jr
So when for us
01:27:44
Scott Lesak
Even
Conclusion & Future Plans
01:27:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, well. Yeah. Oh, well.
01:27:45
Anthony Mann Jr
and
01:27:45
Scott Lesak
better, even better.
01:27:46
RICK JAMES
Yeah, win.
01:27:48
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, boys. Anything else? Anything with the storms that we didn't get to?
01:27:52
RICK JAMES
Well, it's excited for the season.
01:27:53
The SnowJobs Podcast
Are we good?
01:27:54
Scott Lesak
Ready for the next one.
01:27:56
RICK JAMES
yes i
01:27:57
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right, cool. All right. Well, nobody's got anything else. We can wrap it then.
01:28:02
Anthony Mann Jr
Appreciate you having us on Steve Jeremy.
01:28:02
The SnowJobs Podcast
Good.
01:28:04
Anthony Mann Jr
Thank you guys and scott it's It's nice to be a guest with you know you you're the rock star now on this podcast So to be able to be up here with you man, like come on
01:28:04
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, no problem. No problem.
01:28:05
Scott Lesak
Yeah, thank you, guys.
01:28:05
RICK JAMES
Yeah. Yeah.
01:28:06
Scott Lesak
Pleasure as always.
01:28:06
The SnowJobs Podcast
No problem.
01:28:11
Scott Lesak
Yeah.
01:28:13
Scott Lesak
I don't know. I guess so, man.
01:28:14
The SnowJobs Podcast
yeah We're to have to get Scott of Snow Jobs backdrop there for him, too.
01:28:15
Scott Lesak
that's
01:28:19
Scott Lesak
Yeah, yeah. I need one of those fancy write-up ones.
01:28:20
The SnowJobs Podcast
We'll have to do that when we get the, uh, when we get the backdrops made for, uh, for the spring season there for our travel season. Again, we'll have to, we'll have to make an extra one.
01:28:28
Scott Lesak
ah
01:28:29
Anthony Mann Jr
I'm going to need a backdrop too, Steve.
01:28:32
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right. Well, we should, be we should just do a green screen design that we can save and send the guys so they can use it.
01:28:35
Anthony Mann Jr
There you go.
01:28:38
The SnowJobs Podcast
I brought, I gotta do that for what Jay?
01:28:39
Scott Lesak
That would probably be a lot easier and cheaper.
01:28:39
RICK JAMES
or what we're not even we're not even nobody sees these videos so okay I'm always up for it
01:28:45
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, they will episode 100. We're going to do it right away.
01:28:48
Anthony Mann Jr
Nice. About time.
01:28:51
The SnowJobs Podcast
what We're gonna do one for the anniversary. I think I i think I figured it out i think i figured out how to do it ah So if Jeremy's up for it, we'll we may do a video 10 for his Rick James man.
01:29:08
The SnowJobs Podcast
He's Rick James. He wants to show off the hat collection. Is there a Wynwood hat back there Jeremy?
01:29:13
RICK JAMES
oh Yeah, it's right there.
01:29:15
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh See so you got a win with that so it's your responsibility to remember to shout them out then I don't have anything Wynwood so
01:29:17
RICK JAMES
Yeah.
01:29:20
RICK JAMES
That's from like three years ago, probably.
01:29:22
The SnowJobs Podcast
I don't have anything for three years ago. So, you know, I don't even have that.
01:29:25
RICK JAMES
ahh
01:29:27
The SnowJobs Podcast
But all right, boys. Well, listen, Anthony Scott, thank you guys so much for coming on. We appreciate it as always and glad you guys crushed it the first time out and ah good luck the rest of the winter.
01:29:37
The SnowJobs Podcast
All right.
01:29:38
Anthony Mann Jr
Thanks, snow gentlemen. Thanks, snow.
01:29:40
The SnowJobs Podcast
Oh, I think we're, yeah, I think we're there. We're already, we're already good, already good to go off to a good start. Hopefully we can get Jeremy some steady snow, get his episode filmed and get pick up some more in Pennsylvania, get another episode knocked out of there.
01:29:55
The SnowJobs Podcast
Where else do we got to go? We got to go Chicago, Minnesota, right?
01:29:58
RICK JAMES
Minnesota, yep think so
01:29:59
The SnowJobs Podcast
Shouldn't have any problems getting those two done, but yeah, that's it. So, uh, we're going to wrap it here, guys. Thanks to Scott and Anthony. Jeremy, you got anything else before we go? All right. Then that's it for this episode of the snow jobs podcast. Again, as always, couldn't do it without these guys coming on, giving us the time. Nine o'clock at night. say Hey, who wants to come on? Let's do this. All right. So thank you guys. We, uh, we will talk to you soon. That's it guys. Everybody be safe out there. All right. Have a great week. Keep pushing.