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Episode 26: Lessons from David MacArthur
180 Plays1 month ago
David MacArthur, a veteran of the tent industry with more than four decades, shares his journey from Wall Street to the tent business, detailing his experiences with Anchor Industries and Losberger, as well as the challenges and memorable projects he encountered along the way. The conversation delves into the importance of safety in the industry, the dynamics of working on golf tournaments, and valuable advice for newcomers looking to make their mark in the tent rental business.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:01
Speaker
Well, I got up early, got a crew to leave. Sitting up, pulls ropes, that's a lie for me. From a wedding to a fair from the fields with the town. the one you call you need a 10 up or down.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm a 10 red man, I'm working on... Welcome back, everyone. Another new week. I'm excited about our guest we have today. ah Nate couldn't join us. He was having some connectivity issues, but we didn't want to let this one get by us, so...
00:00:29
Speaker
You got just me and our guest today. so this is another episode of Under the Vinyl, a rental management media
Entering the Tent Industry
00:00:35
Speaker
podcast. And I'm excited to introduce our guest, David MacArthur. How are you doing?
00:00:41
Speaker
Good morning. Good morning. Tent world. Yeah. i'm So... You have a long history in the industry, and a bunch of people told us we had to have you on.
00:00:52
Speaker
So you were requested to be here, and I'm happy you said yes, because I'm excited to hear your whole story of how you began in the industry and how you progressed throughout the years. I know you said you just retired in the last few weeks, so this is an exciting episode and kind of good timing to record it.
00:01:09
Speaker
We'll see if it works this time. I don't i don't know if it'll work or not, Kyle. I've tried to retire a couple of times, but it gets into your blood, both literally and figuratively. So we'll see. But i'm ah I think I'm ready.
00:01:23
Speaker
Awesome. Well, let's go all the way back to the start. um How did you get into this crazy industry? Because I know no one grows up and says, i want to be a tent guy. I got into the industry really by fiat.
00:01:36
Speaker
Mother's family is the family that started Anchor Industries. They've been going for forever and ever. In 1970, my dad started selling tents for Anchor up in New England.
00:01:51
Speaker
I think he and my uncle had a good time one night, and my uncle said, hey, we need somebody selling tents up here. Bob, why don't you sell some tents? In 1982, he announced that he was just going to close his rep business because nobody want to do this.
Early Tent Industry Experiences
00:02:09
Speaker
And I was working on Wall Street with AIG, the large international insurance company, as manager of a district down there, New York area. And at the Thanksgiving dinner table, I said, Dad, no, that's a valuable business. You can't. And that's how I got in.
00:02:27
Speaker
i One of the funniest things in my career with AIG was when I departed, I went up to talk to my boss, who was a very senior manager up there. I told him I was going to leave, and he said, well, what are you going to do? And I said, well, I'm going to go sell tents. he said, you're going to go sell what?
00:02:46
Speaker
Because I had a pretty cool career going on, you know, climbing the corporate ladder. And he he he really couldn't believe me. He thought I was pulling his leg. But anyway, um I started in March of 82, traveled a couple of months with my dad just to get the flavor of what is it that he's actually selling and who's he calling on.
00:03:07
Speaker
And in those travels, he imparted an awful lot of wisdom to me. And one of the... things I will always remember was he said, you know, in this business, your customers, your competitors, your suppliers, they're going to become your friends if you stay in it long enough. And I was like, yeah, right, Dad. Okay, okay, Dad, because I'm coming off of Wall Street where it's dog eat dog and
00:03:40
Speaker
Anytime you can get one up on somebody, it's it's a good thing. And it's so different in this industry. It was a breath of fresh air. And that's how I got started. I hit the road up in New England, selling tents to existing and new customers.
00:03:56
Speaker
Had you ever installed one at that point? I didn't know how to spell tent when I came into the business, Kyle. um But we talked a little bit earlier. my first My first tent installation was with Stanford Tent. Steve Frost said, yeah, sure, Matt, come on down.
00:04:16
Speaker
We're putting up a tent this afternoon. It was a 20 by 30 Fiesta tent on a deck on somebody's backyard. And when these guys started unloading all the all the aluminum and stuff, I thought I've made the biggest mistake in my life.
00:04:30
Speaker
I have no idea what all this stuff is, how it goes together. i was I was daunted, really. I didn't know what to do. But I hung in there and started to get to like it. And guys like the McBrides and Newport Tent and all these bigger companies up in New England welcomed me.
00:04:52
Speaker
And they bought a new product from Anchor that they hadn't put up before. I took it upon myself to go out and put it up with them because I didn't know what it was ah all about. and I figured I can't learn about that in a suit and tie.
Company Evolution and Career Progression
00:05:07
Speaker
So at that time, what was the name of your rep company? ah The name of the rep company was MacArthur Associates. We kept that name until my dad had retired and I had hired a couple of ah people, one of whom was the infamous Stephen Bellevue.
00:05:28
Speaker
I think about the time that Steve came on, we decided that MacArthur Associates was great, but we had the idea of starting a catalog for selling stuff that you know people couldn't find normally.
00:05:42
Speaker
And that started with pluggers and demolition hammers that don't break. the Tar plugs. And we decided to change the name to Tent Wears.
00:05:54
Speaker
So I think that name change started in about, I would guess, maybe 1990. nineteen ninety s And then the the rep group has remained that way. They bought me out of the group in 1993 when I moved out to Evansville to join Anchor on their executive team.
00:06:12
Speaker
Okay. So did you build out the whole, i mean, I know a bunch of guys who used to work for Tentwares. Were you kind of, obviously you started it with Steve, but did you help progress and add all those other salesmen back then in the 90s as well?
00:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, hired every one of them. My first hire was a fellow that I worked at AIG with. His name was Howard Jaslow. ah he He took over... New York and New Jersey. I kept New England.
00:06:37
Speaker
And then I hired another guy who had gone to grade school with named Gary Mertens. At that time, I moved down to Pennsylvania. He took over New England, and my dad really stepped out.
00:06:50
Speaker
I took on Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic. And then one of the big guys at Anchor said, you guys are going gangbusters. We need you to cover more territory all the way down through Virginia and so forth and that's when that's when I hired Steve.
00:07:08
Speaker
That's also a funny story at the first meeting of MATRA. It was a bunch of guys sitting around drinking a beer talking about insurance and lousy fire marshal ideas.
00:07:19
Speaker
As I was packing up my car Steve walked up and said Hey, Mac, do you think we could talk for a minute? Steve was the operations manager for my biggest customer in Philadelphia called Van Tent.
00:07:34
Speaker
And I looked at him and I thought, oh, my God, he's going to ask me for a job.
00:07:40
Speaker
And sure enough, he did. Long story short, I talked to his boss. His boss said, you you better hire him because I don't know if Van Tent is going to be in existence in six years six months. And I did. And it's just the progression was I hired people that were better than me, and they hired people who were better than them, Danny Dalton, so many other guys that have come through the doors at Tentware's.
00:08:10
Speaker
and are still in the industry. Still in the industry. that The Tentwares group ah was disbanded when Anchor decided not to use commission reps anymore, but the the name stayed.
00:08:24
Speaker
ah The catalog broke off, and that catalog is now called the Tentwares Catalog, as you know.
00:08:32
Speaker
So did you become an inside Anchor rep when the They brought their reps in. Obviously, you stepped away in 93 to join the executive team. But when they brought all the commission sales reps in-house, did you go as well?
00:08:46
Speaker
i had been I had left Anchor prior to that. Okay. I left Anchor in the year, oh gosh, nine right at the end of 1999, 2000, and and was out of the industry for three years.
00:09:04
Speaker
I owned a golf course construction company, and that's how I got to know the people down at Augusta National, and eventually I sold Augusta National tents when I came back into the industry. ah when i When I came back it was because I got a weird phone call from ah buddy that I knew in Germany named Matthias Raff, who is now their general director.
00:09:26
Speaker
And he said, why don't you come back into the tent industry and work with us? And I did. and So I was with Anchor for, I don't know, I guess about 10 years as a rep and six or seven years as their executive in charge of marketing, sales and new product development out here in Indiana.
00:09:43
Speaker
And then in 03, I joined Loesberger, from which I retired in, don't know, 18 2019, I think.
00:09:56
Speaker
Okay. So when you joined Loesberger, was your first job? Just a sales rep? I was a national sales manager. Okay.
Memorable Projects and Innovations
00:10:05
Speaker
Right to the top. I like it. I had, yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, no, excuse me. Pat Mohan was national sales manager at that time, and I was i was like an assistant national sales manager. And then the the the GM, Doug Remsburg, left fairly soon after I came. Pat was promoted to GM, and then I was their national sales manager.
00:10:29
Speaker
So that gave me the opportunity to travel a lot, both nationally to see see our accounts, develop new business, but also overseas. yeah At that point, what was your structure, knowledge, or experience?
00:10:44
Speaker
About the same as it was when I saw my first Fiesta tent. Really? I had tried to convince Anchor to partner with Loesberger and failed. Loesberger finally said, we don't need anybody in the United States.
00:11:00
Speaker
They sent Matthias Raff over here for a year. He started developing the market. And... ah When I joined, I knew nothing about structures. Anchor was poo-pooing structures until the day I left.
00:11:15
Speaker
I had those things, you know, they cost $12 a square foot. Nobody's going to spend $12 square foot. those Those days are long gone, by the way, right, Kyle? Yeah, exactly. I wish they were $12. Yeah, yeah.
00:11:28
Speaker
And we were we were definitely behind the eight ball. Joe Hawker, by that time, had really done a great job of selling equipment to Chattanooga and American Pavilion, Bruce Wadesky. And i just he had done a really good job of bringing structure in. And I think...
00:11:49
Speaker
He and Matthias, oh gosh, Heinz Roeder, these guys all opened our eyes to the benefits of getting into the structure business. And it took me all of about two installs to realize, oh yeah, this makes so much more sense in so many more cases than putting up pole tents.
00:12:15
Speaker
There wouldn't be a golf business today if it weren't for structures. yeah you know Do you remember what your first structure you installed was? I do. The first structure I stalled installed was an anchor fast structure that's the that's that had the curved eaves.
00:12:33
Speaker
It was in Killington, Vermont. um I think Vermont Tent Company bought it, and they were renting it to to Killington for some event.
00:12:46
Speaker
um I remember it very clearly because... Back in 19, that was about 1985 or 86. Safety, whatever.
00:12:58
Speaker
Nobody wore any safety equipment at all. And my partner, Howard Jaslow, was carrying a base plate and dropped it on his big toe. And he was he was really hurting for ah couple of months. I think he broke his toe.
00:13:14
Speaker
And that was the first time that I realized, oh, man, I need to get steel-toed shoes. And then it came to hearing equipment once we started, you know, using the heavy equipment, you know, the pan jars and so forth for state drivers.
00:13:28
Speaker
But, yeah, that was my first install. The second one was at University of Pennsylvania in State College. the I spent more time at Home Depot than I did at a job site because holes were drilled wrong and I needed tools. It was only a four-beam structure.
00:13:46
Speaker
We got it up, you know, it's a can-do business. that was ah That was a big experience. It took Anchor a couple of years to to figure out how to do that structure right. And by that time, the clearspans coming out of Germany were really, really getting their feet on the ground.
00:14:06
Speaker
When you joined Loesburger, what's ah like a memorable project you did in your early years? Yeah.
00:14:15
Speaker
Kyle, i I sort of like doing new stuff and... So a memorable project for me early on with Loesberger was I sold an Arkham to the Morgan Creek Country Club in Roseville, California. They needed an event center.
00:14:37
Speaker
And ah I believe that that was, ah I think it might have been the first real Arkham that was sold in the United States for Loesberger. I had great support from pat Mohan who came out and helped me do the installation because none of us knew about the structure. It's kind of fly by the seat of your pants when you get a new structure.
00:14:59
Speaker
that was That was an interesting and new project. It seems that I... I go for the new stuff. We sold a revolution building, which is a building that has to be lifted with a crane and then the feet fold down and so forth. I sold that to a conference center in South San Francisco.
00:15:20
Speaker
i didn't even know there was one in the States. I've seen videos of that. Yeah, yeah. There are actually two. I think... Align down in Florida has just a small one. I think he's got a 10 by 20 meter. He was the first one to bring it into the United States, and then I sold a pretty good-sized one to this conference center, and they're still using it today. it's It's a very cool building.
00:15:43
Speaker
The palace structure, a double-decker that Anchor came out with several years ago, I was the first one to sell a palace structure in the well in North America. I sold it up in Canada to a singer.
00:15:56
Speaker
named Gregory Charles and Alex. Man, I'll tell you, he was he was so helpful at Fiesta Tents that I asked them to do the installation, and he had a connection with those people at the at the singer, you know, Gregory Charles. and That was memorable but because one whole container of glass that came through, they opened the back of it, a lot of the panes were broken, and it wasn't the little pea pebbles that you see when you open a container and see tempered glass.
00:16:29
Speaker
It was big, strong, pointed shards of glass. The ah purchasing department at Loesberger forgot to specify tempered glass. So we had to put this glass up on the second floor and worry about some kid coming by concert night and throwing a rock at it.
00:16:51
Speaker
The town people agreed to let us put a coating on both sides that would prevent the glass from breaking. That took Maybe another two days to install that. So, you know, time, time, time, time. The event's the event's coming. We got it all done.
00:17:11
Speaker
And that was a memorable experience because we thought that the the whole thing was going to go down the tubes. And Loesberger was great. They sent a whole new container of tempered glass and cost them a little bit of money. But that's that's what you do.
00:17:27
Speaker
that's Yeah, that's business.
Career Highlights and Retirement Reflections
00:17:28
Speaker
You've got to make it right. Yeah. A lot of my friends, man. Just for the viewers, behind Dave, he has two pictures of his career that, you know, would assume those are old canvas tents and the it looks like a painting, right?
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's a painting of a flea market. that's old kind of Old school. I thought those were pretty cool tents. so Yeah, to today.
00:17:59
Speaker
but to today And that is a picture of an event center at the Doubletree Hotel in Chesterfield, Missouri, end user project that is kind of where um' I wound up my career, putting up structures like that.
00:18:17
Speaker
I call it my career wall. Well, but that's awesome. You've definitely had a great career in the industry. um You were with Loesberger for how long? About 15 years. Okay.
00:18:30
Speaker
okay And you were national sales manager the entire time? ah Except for the first year or two when Pat was. And then, yeah, I was in charge of sales the whole time. So I was involved with hiring guys and bringing new guys on.
00:18:47
Speaker
Kind of the same way I was at Anchor and during my career as ah as a manufacturer's rep for Anchor. Yep. And then after Loesberger... What happened? Where'd you go? Back in 2019, I believe? Quit the industry. By God, quit. I said, I'm done.
00:19:05
Speaker
Until ah about two months after I resigned, um I got a call from Trowby Tent down in St. Louis, who I had been selling Loisberger Structures to for 15 years.
00:19:19
Speaker
Became really good friends with them. And they said, no, you're not retiring. You're going to join us. We we just we just can't... manage this I spent a lot of time there. I'm close by, so I'd go down every other week, three weeks, be with the guys, look at their inventory, make sure that things were organized. And they said, we need you.
00:19:41
Speaker
And I agreed to start with them as sort of a consultant. Then they they closed the championship for the Corn Ferry Tour.
Logistics of Golf Tournament Tenting
00:19:53
Speaker
in Newburgh, Indiana, of all places, which is where I live. It's at a spectacular golf call course called Victoria National. And they said, look, you've got to run this project for us. You're right there.
00:20:07
Speaker
it's It's a double-decker on the green and so forth, and I agreed, and that put me back into the business. That year, ah i picked up three more tournaments, and ah then the story just went on. you know we started doing some more end-user sales and ah working a little bit with rental companies for sub-rentals to keep the equipment up in the air.
00:20:35
Speaker
It's like an airplane. It doesn't make money unless it's flying, right? Exactly. So I want to dive into the golf tournament world a little bit because there's not a lot of people ah who would ever get to experience that. that's Obviously, larger companies are doing that work.
00:20:50
Speaker
Can you dive into some of the background of what it takes to actually get those off the ground. I mean, I would assume most of them are multi-week, maybe multi-month installs and removals that I don't think a lot of people realize. And I would assume there's a lot of challenges working at a golf course.
00:21:07
Speaker
I don't think that anybody would disagree with me, Kyle, that ah basically the toughest part of our business is the personnel side. And you hit the nail on the head.
00:21:19
Speaker
The golf business is very challenging because the deployments last for so long. ah The first thing that comes to mind is the granddaddy of all ah Tented golf tournaments, the TPC of Scottsdale for the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
00:21:36
Speaker
You've seen the 16th hole. It's the gallery. um that That project, I believe they start the mobilization on that project in mid-September.
00:21:49
Speaker
In Productions does the scaffolding on that project. Sixteenth hole and our Loesberger's, I think they're either six or nine meter structures go on the very top.
00:22:03
Speaker
um But the deployment for for companies who aren't local is is really a long one. And the you've got to give employees a break.
00:22:16
Speaker
I mean, sooner or later on ah on a three-month or a four-month deployment, they've got to go home. And you can't have the work stop. So the backup and the training that the other guys on the site have is really important.
00:22:32
Speaker
the the The people side is important. The... The most important guy on the golf course that you're dealing with is the golf course superintendent.
00:22:43
Speaker
He's the one who's going to either allow you to use equipment or not. think of ah I think of a job in Omaha called the Pinnacle Bank Championship where...
00:22:58
Speaker
I think it's on the 18th green. There's a 25-meter on a platform, and it had to be raised by hand. We couldn't we couldn't use equipment.
00:23:09
Speaker
We just couldn't get it there without tearing up the course. um Very challenging. You know, when you're up 14 feet in the air and you've got to raise these beams, I know you've been there. It's a very challenging situation.
00:23:22
Speaker
Weather. Weather.
00:23:27
Speaker
At the championship, both in Newburgh, Indiana, for the Corn Ferry and at the Pinnacle Bank in Omaha, we had torrential rain.
00:23:38
Speaker
before For like three weeks, it was on and off rain. i like Someplace I've got pictures of mud on telehandler higher than the hubcap.
00:23:53
Speaker
we We had to call in a bulldozer to get it out. And this is on a golf course. So they were pretty well freaked out. Luckily, this wasn't over any of the fairways or anything. It was sort of on the back to get the double-decker to where it needed to be.
00:24:10
Speaker
um But without the golf course superintendent there to help us out, yeah we would have been in trouble. We had to order crane mats. We we tried three-quarter-inch plywood. That was a joke. you know That sank down.
00:24:23
Speaker
So crane mats basically saved the day. And I think about eight truckloads of mulch to absorb all the mud finally when we got out.
00:24:34
Speaker
And it it worked out well. You know, the show did continue. Well, there's no other option. It's got to work out well. It's got to. That's our business. Yeah. When you're working on these courses, are people still playing golf or they shut down?
00:24:49
Speaker
a It depends. At TPC they play golf, um but they but they have two courses there. At most of the most of the places they shut down um or they'll they'll make it a 15-hole course or something like that.
00:25:07
Speaker
ah they They try to keep it open because most of these courses are membership clubs, and members aren't all that excited about you know, losing the opportunity to play. They they really like having the pros come in but missing the opportunity to play for the two or three months prior to the event, it's that's tough. So they've got to work they've got to work with their members.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah. And who's dictating the schedule for you guys? Is it ah the rental company saying, well, we need X amount of time? Or is the tour saying, we need you to be done by a certain date, so that's why you're coming in two months early? A little bit of both, but in our situation, as you know, ah we're we're dependent on the guys who are doing the staging ah before we can start. We can we can place our anchors ah and so forth while they're doing their staging underneath the deck, but we really can't start doing anything until they finish or they get close to finished.
00:26:07
Speaker
um So if... If they're running okay, we'll be running okay, because I think our job is is arguably a little bit easier than theirs.
00:26:19
Speaker
um At the Zurich Invitational down in New Orleans, um our our staging contractor got a little bit behind, and we were panicked.
00:26:31
Speaker
We thought, hey, you guys, you've got to get going. We're not. We won't have enough time, but we did have enough time. It's one of those, like you said, it it gets done.
00:26:43
Speaker
well Is the staging contractor on your bill or was he on his own bill? He was on his own. Oh, well, that's good. So they can't blame you. No, we were we were we were direct contractors. We weren't subbed to a prime contractor. We were dealing directly with people.
00:26:58
Speaker
Nice. yeah Yeah. You got any other... Horror stories from the golf days? Horror stories from the golf days. um You know, the planning that goes into these events is is so thorough that really the things that screw it up are employees who get sick and weather.
Weather, Safety, and Industry Challenges
00:27:21
Speaker
The equipment is ready to go, but... Weather really does create issues, especially on golf courses. Golf course superintendents always hope that it's too dry rather than too wet. They can irrigate, but they can't get rid of too much water, and that's a big issue on a golf course when when we're working on you know setting up an installation for an event.
00:27:45
Speaker
I've got plenty of horror stories, but in the golf business, not really except nail-biting of... are we going to get this thing done in time? Yeah.
00:27:57
Speaker
How long was the planning process from, okay, we've won the contract to installation day. Are you guys working on it for six, seven months, trying to figure out logistics and all that?
00:28:08
Speaker
Not really. uh, I always, I always make site visits before, uh, we start that process. Once we, once we closed these jobs, uh,
00:28:21
Speaker
we We go out there. I i went out with ah the guy who was going to be the superintendent. We walked the site. We worked with the superintendent of golf.
00:28:32
Speaker
we We drove a few stakes in to see what the stakeholding power was. Like out in Omaha, I think we drove in 40 stakes because we were on a 14-foot platform, and we needed to know that this It was going to hold. This thing was going to hold, yeah. um We did the same thing and in Newburgh for the Corn Ferry Championship.
00:28:52
Speaker
We drove a lot of stakes because it was so wet. i didn't know I didn't know if our stakes were going to hold in all the mud, so pretty much everything was gang-staked. had four to eight stakes. We had as many as 16 stakes spread out among base plate stakes.
00:29:10
Speaker
base plate stakes like please please But the planning process for us really wasn't all that complicated as long as we knew what product was going out and what type of equipment we had to bring with us. In the case of Omaha, where we were raising beams with...
00:29:30
Speaker
On stages without the benefit of telehandlers, we had special equipment made that the guys could push up these beams, and it worked well. So that was that was part of the planning.
00:29:42
Speaker
Logistics has to include where are these guys going to live. ah So that was another project that we worked on. we have We had a really good office staff that got these guys set up.
00:29:55
Speaker
you can't You can't put them in flea bags, especially for two or three months. you know They've got to feel like they've got a place to go home and relax. And most of the time, we put one guy to a room at at an extended stay or something like that to give them the privacy and the and the courtesy of their own company that they deserve.
00:30:16
Speaker
yeah It's hard being away from your family for that long. when so you talked a little bit about the schedule, and obviously our crews are the most important guys. Were you alternating crews so you might have four weeks on and a week off?
00:30:30
Speaker
Generally not. um For the, let's say the Zurich Invitational, our guys were down there for, I believe, eight or nine weeks.
00:30:42
Speaker
I think we gave everybody maybe a weekend home. or a couple of days home during that period just to you know give them a break. um And you've got to take that into your cost costing you know when you when you cost out these jobs.
00:30:58
Speaker
um But you know the business. it's You've got one crew over here. You've got one crew over there. You've got one super crew working on golf.
00:31:09
Speaker
All the guys in the company really want to work on the big golf projects, but we've got other stuff going on. and So typically, in our case at least, it was one crew, and the average size was, I believe, eight or nine guys.
00:31:27
Speaker
That's all. That's interesting. I would assume would be a much bigger crew. Nope. So what we did in our planning, in this case, most of our most of our work on golf and putting tents on staging is in production.
00:31:41
Speaker
ah We did spend a lot of time working with the guys at in production to know their schedule so that we would know, okay, they're going to be done with with the platform for the double-decker on such and such a date.
00:31:53
Speaker
So we'd start there. or Whatever their progress was, we'd kind of... tail along after them and get our equipment out. So, yeah, planning with planning with the other contractors is important.
00:32:09
Speaker
The decorators,
00:32:13
Speaker
permitting is is a whole other deal, as you can imagine. ah But the the work with other contractors, other tradespeople, the electricians, sometimes plumbers and so forth, it's important.
00:32:27
Speaker
It does take planning, but for the basic equipment, it's pretty straightforward. I'd have to imagine the engineering needed on these is quite hefty, assume because you're putting all these up on 14, 16, 18-foot platforms. Right. That some town's engineer or code official might come in and go, wait a minute, what how does this work? Right.
00:32:52
Speaker
We have to have engineering... from the peak of the tent to the ground. We depend on the engineering support for the scaffolding and the staging from our partners, in this case in production.
00:33:09
Speaker
They have wet-sealed certification that their installation is safe. ah We, of course, at Loesberger had engineering on all of our structures that was totally dependent on anchoring, as you know.
00:33:25
Speaker
And that was kind of my area where I wanted to be sure that that tent was going to be there when we came down to came back to take it down. So we typically over-anchored.
00:33:38
Speaker
i never I never got yelled at for it or or regretted it, and we never lost a tent.
00:33:48
Speaker
that's ah That's a proud thing to say. Never lost a tent on a golf course. Yes. I'm sure everyone's lost a tent. Everybody's lost a tent. Yeah, it's bound to happen. You know, tents fall down.
00:34:00
Speaker
oh yeah Sometimes they do. So do buildings. yeah Yeah, exactly. Everything can come down. That's right. When up comes down. But the engineering is really important.
00:34:11
Speaker
um It's important for the club. it it protects them as far as their liability is concerned. It protects the public, and it protects the contractors who are working on the site to the max that we can.
00:34:27
Speaker
Just because something is engineered doesn't mean it's not going to fail, but the chances of it failing due to weather were really reduced once once we had the formal engineering.
00:34:39
Speaker
We felt good about it. Yeah. So you were in golf course construction for a while. Did you leverage what you knew from that to help you when you were obviously doing installs at golf courses? Because you could kind of speak the lingo, per se. A little bit, Kyle. the biggest The biggest benefit was work I did at Augusta National.
00:35:01
Speaker
or actually work that I refused to do at Gusta National. They wanted me to redo the bank on Ray's Creek on number 13. My company had never done gabion baskets. Those are like chain link fence cubes filled with ah rock. We priced out the job. It was about $150,000, and we decided as a company...
00:35:21
Speaker
we decided as a company that a $150,000 job on the prestigious Augusta National Golf Course wasn't worth the risk of doing something for the first time and screwing it up.
00:35:33
Speaker
So I passed, and the guy that I worked with said, well, I'll be damned. I've never had anybody say no to doing and work on my golf course. And I said, I'm sorry to be the first one, but I am the first one.
00:35:48
Speaker
um Two years later, when I was out of the golf course construction business and back with Loesberger, he called me up and said, I understand you're in the tent business. I came down and we sold them two 30 by 100 foot clear spans for their ticket booths in the parking lot.
00:36:08
Speaker
Great sale. Everybody happy. The trouble is I hired a subcontractor who didn't listen to instructions because the call before you did, the lines were all over the parking lot. You can't go here, you can't go here, you can't go here.
00:36:24
Speaker
ah So we left several. In that structure, you only needed one stake at each base plate, but there were holes for two. And our guy came out and said, we can't show empty holes.
00:36:39
Speaker
and I said, well, those are those are spaces where I can't put stakes because of underground utilities. Can you cut them off? Yeah, okay, we can cut them off. So the instruction that I left with the contractor was take, I think it was like 14 or 15 stakes back to the shop.
00:36:58
Speaker
chop them down to a foot just for appearance, come back tomorrow and put them in. They did that for one and said, eh, we'll do it tomorrow. They came back down and they started torching stakes in the parking lot.
00:37:11
Speaker
That was a real no-no because we didn't have a burn permit. And they finally said, screw that, but that's all right. And they put in a long stake and punctured the main water line for the irrigation system coming into Augusta National Golf Club.
00:37:27
Speaker
I had gone home, sitting at dinner, kind of wiped out after a long week down there. And the phone rings at 9 o'clock at night, and it's from my contact, Marsh, Marsh Benson, great guy.
00:37:41
Speaker
Hey, Marsh, how's it going? Not too goddamn well, Dave.
00:37:48
Speaker
They had six feet of water in their parking lot. um So, yeah, it was a bit of a segue. That one was a disaster, but
00:38:01
Speaker
it it did give me a ah good feeling of what golf course superintendents go through to keep those properties so beautiful, especially the nice ones like Oakmont all these beautiful courses.
00:38:16
Speaker
yeah No matter how important the tents are, you can't just go in there and screw things up.
Financial Lessons and Safety Evolution
00:38:22
Speaker
We, the first golf job that we did was in Nashville for the Nashville Golf and Athletic Club. I think was called the Nashville Greater Open.
00:38:33
Speaker
And terrible weather, terrible, absolutely terrible weather. We had to go from the parking lot, the boneyard out to the 18th green with double-decker stuff. The weight of the 12Ks is heavy with all that stuff on it. We used plywood. We used everything we could think of.
00:38:49
Speaker
But we tore her up a significant part of the background course. And we had we had to eat it. We had to pay for it. It was, I think, like $25,000, $30,000 worth of damage. to Damage. They insisted that we pay for which we did.
00:39:09
Speaker
But that was that was a real lesson learned that, unfortunately, it repeated itself in the Newburgh job, and that's where we had mud up to the hubcaps of our 12K handlers.
00:39:21
Speaker
So anyone who wants to bid golf coursework, I would just add a bunch of money in for cleanup after the case if it's going to rain. there's on On my spreadsheets, on my on my cost workouts, there's there's a line called PIA.
00:39:37
Speaker
And um it depends on the job, but... I've always got extra money in there, Kyle. You know something's going to go wrong. I'm not trying to gouge anybody, but you've got to account for the fact that something is going to go wrong and somebody's going to have to pay for it.
00:39:56
Speaker
Let's pre-plan it. And most likely it's going to be the tank contractor paying for it. Yes, you know that. So you touched on it in the beginning, and I want to kind of go back to it.
00:40:07
Speaker
Safety, obviously, in this industry has evolved. 10, 20-fold since back in the 80s when you got your first start. What have you noticed has been the progression or were there things that you saw that obviously opened your eyes? Obviously, your partner dropped the base plate on his toes and that said, oh, steel-toed boots.
00:40:24
Speaker
But even in the last five, six years, it has been really a big push for safety. And that's kind of, I think safety kind of took its stance of it's going to take off this industry maybe in the last eight, nine years, and that's really it.
00:40:38
Speaker
Before that, it was all kind of cowboys and yeah yeah just do whatever you have to do to get the job done. I've been on job sites where where a couple of the workers showed up in flip-flops.
00:40:52
Speaker
Yeah. Hello, guys. This is heavy construction. But you're right. I wrote an article for, oh, heck, I forget who it was. Maybe it was a rental management on safety, oh five or six years ago. And they recently republished that article with a few little changes. But when they originally asked me to write that article, ah it really dawned on me that Safety is something that was really not at the top of owners' minds and field superintendents' minds at all.
00:41:34
Speaker
mean, guys showing up with sneakers and flip-flops on job sites, that's crazy. And I've only had one ah situation with OSHA, but I can tell you that if OSHA came on some of those job sites, they would have shut us down because we we were just ignorant and stupid.
00:41:54
Speaker
um I think the the advent of steel-toed shoes, hard hats, eventually safety glasses, hearing protection, even even sunscreen, um you know, that it evolved, but pretty recently.
00:42:14
Speaker
mean, like you said, within the last 10 years, honestly. Yeah. But like the hard hat, you notice it more and more. And it's honestly, I'm noticing it more than last three years. You start seeing in people's social media. And it always makes me laugh because you can tell if they're a hard hat company or if they're not really a hard hat company based upon the hard hat that the crew is wearing in the photo. Some of them you can be like, oh, they just threw those on and said, hey, we got to take a picture. We need you to have a hard hat on.
00:42:40
Speaker
Right. Right. It's exactly right. We, uh, uh, Loesberger had a pretty aggressive social media campaign. We were always looking for pictures. And guys would send in these pictures with guys up on platforms and everything else.
00:42:53
Speaker
No harness. No hard hat. And we'd say, like, guys, I can't use that. i can't I can't publish that on our and our website or in a blog if if you guys aren't wearing hard hats and and safety harnesses and and lift equipment and ladders and stuff like that.
00:43:10
Speaker
And I think some of it is just... People obviously get hurt in the industry across the board, but no one talks about it. It all kind of gets brushed under the rugs the wrong term, but you know no one's saying, oh yeah, this happened to me.
00:43:23
Speaker
It's all kept in an inner circle most likely if something someone at your company gets hurt. So some of the smaller guys who are growing and coming up don't realize really the risks associated with, I'm going to go buy a structure tent.
00:43:35
Speaker
Well, you know once you get moved from pole tent to structure, someone can get killed pretty easily. It's happened, Kyle.
00:43:46
Speaker
You and I both know two companies that lost an employee on a job site by accidents. Don't need to be named, but what a sad said couple of days those were when we learned that through job site neglect, somebody got killed.
00:44:08
Speaker
I'm happy to say that no one... in my career has ever been seriously hurt. I've seen a broken toe. One guy had a ah beam fall. He slipped on ice as a small, easy flex frame a beam was going up, and the beam came down and whacked him on his on his thigh, and he had a big hematoma there. They were worried that he broke his femur, but he did not.
00:44:35
Speaker
And those are the two Worst incidents that I've been on in 43 years. Lucky, maybe, but I feel like I'm getting out at the right time. i want to go out on the upswing, not on a downswing. Downswing, ah you know I've seen a lot of fun things with cranes, but nobody got nobody got hurt.
00:45:00
Speaker
The equipment got hurt. The building got hurt. No individuals were hurt through neglect on any of the job sites that I've been fortunate enough to be on.
00:45:13
Speaker
And, you know, it's great. these The associations are all making a push towards safety, which I think is a great thing. And I think it's going to take some publicity eventually for some of the smaller companies to realize that even putting up 20 20 feet,
00:45:27
Speaker
feet Something bad could happen and seriously hurt one of your employees. I saw some so a comment on a post the other day. Someone put up a 20 by 20 and the crew had a hard head on. And people were making fun of him. Well, what's what's the hip rafter length of a 20 by 20?
00:45:44
Speaker
It's about, what, 12 feet, 13 feet? Some guy's carrying it up on his shoulder, turns around and whacks in the head. I mean, he's going to get hurt. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Or he's he's standing under the the crown, the peak casting, and there's a guy on the on a ladder with ah with a wrench, and he drops the wrench.
00:46:04
Speaker
If you don't have a hard hat on, you're going to need stitches. And odds are it's probably a spud wrench. you know it's like Point first. Yeah, exactly. If it falls the right way, there's going a serious problem. It is. It is. And you're you're right. Even on a 20 by 20, it's important to wear the safety equipment, but it's important to start the mentality safety.
00:46:27
Speaker
Being safe, even on a small job like that, so that it carries through and it becomes part of your routine before you before you leave the morning meeting and and the after lunch meeting ah to talk about safety and everything else.
00:46:44
Speaker
The first thing the guys do, hat on, and away you go. I was working on on job site down in Pascagoula at a Conoco refinery, and their rule was from the time that you walk onto our property to the time that you leave, you will wear all safety equipment.
00:47:04
Speaker
That includes driving around in your car to go from one location to another. You may not remove your hard hat in the car. And it's because... Things happen on on industrial sites and things happen on tent sites and they can't afford those those injuries or, God forbid, deaths.
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and we've integrated it, I'll be honest, in the last six years, the hard hat rule, and the first two or three years were hard. Hard. They don't want to do it. No.
00:47:36
Speaker
They're hot. They're uncomfortable, you know. I think it took, I finally just made the rule, if I catch you without one, you're off for two weeks without pay. I don't care. I'll put you in an Uber on the job site, get you out of there. I did it to two guys, and then all a sudden i never had another problem again. there Okay, they're taking this serious now.
00:47:53
Speaker
ah That's pretty serious. We'll have a paycheck for two weeks. Yeah. but and Safety culture is hard. It definitely is. But it's one of those things as an industry, as we grow and the structures are getting bigger and bigger and bigger every single year, it seems.
00:48:08
Speaker
There's more and more stuff coming in and there's people coming up in the industry. It's really important we start taking the safety aspect of it serious. It it really is. And, you know, if if you want to be a number cruncher,
00:48:21
Speaker
the companies who don't follow safety procedures will have higher workman's comp rates because more people get hurt. And that's expensive. I mean, we're already in a very high class ah for workman's comp.
00:48:35
Speaker
So, you know, to have too many accidents or too many injuries that require hospitalization or a hospital visit even, it's going to push your rates up.
00:48:46
Speaker
we We had a bad accident at Trowby about a year ago. a guy broke his femur. And, man, that's that's a debilitating
Career Reflections and Advice for Newcomers
00:48:56
Speaker
thing. I mean, he wasn he wasn't a young pup like you. He was probably, I think he's around 55, and he's still recuperating. he's back He's back with us now on a day-to-day basis, but he's not out in the field.
00:49:12
Speaker
So it's a really it's a really key area for anybody in the tent business, whether he's an owner a site superintendent. You've just got to live that culture.
00:49:23
Speaker
and youre I applaud you for doing that, man, because that's it's a hard decision to make, and it's hard on the people who have to suffer it, but you made your point, and you've got them all thinking safe.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yes. So... have any advice for people, younger guys in the industry, gals? ah You have obviously a really long career in this. You've seen a lot. You've done a lot.
00:49:46
Speaker
You've excelled. Any advice for someone maybe just starting out in the industry of smaller company? Get out while you can. um No, it's it's absolutely the coolest industry ever.
00:49:59
Speaker
um My advice is don't be in a hurry. Good enough never is. um Don't be afraid to go out on a limb and take risks, not in terms of safety, but maybe you've been offered the opportunity to do a job where you don't have the equipment.
00:50:28
Speaker
it's ah It's a 30-meter, and you've only got a 20-meter structure. Take the risk. Maybe sub-rent it from somebody first to see if it's your if it's your thing, but take the risk because out of all the hundreds of tent rental companies out there, not everybody will do that.
00:50:48
Speaker
And the guys who do take the risk usually are the guys who start rising to the top. Trowby Tent Company is a great example. They started getting into structures about 18, 20 years ago. And that was a big risk because those things are expensive.
00:51:06
Speaker
And the industry was, ah, nobody's going to rent those things at $1.50, $2 a square foot. And a lot of people bought that Kool-Aid, drank that Kool-Aid, but companies like Trowby or Chattanooga or some of the some of the well-known guys, you guys at L&A, I mean, eventually Brian or...
00:51:27
Speaker
Mike Holland or whoever it was, the owner of the company said, you know, we got to get into this. In Mike's case, it was a little easier because he's had, he's had a hawker equipment probably before he was born. Yeah. And they're, they might still have an old guy. He, he's an old guy. He's like me. He's, he's, uh, he's seen, he's seen it, but it's, uh, uh,
00:51:51
Speaker
Another piece of advice I would say is the teamwork. has never been more important in my career of doing anything than working on a tent site.
00:52:06
Speaker
um Every worker on the tentsite tent site should be empowered to immediately stop the job if something unsafe is going on. And when I run safety meetings before we start every day and after every lunch, I remind people of that.
00:52:22
Speaker
If you guys see something that's wrong and dangerous and you don't like it, Blow whistle, raise your hand, scream out, stop, but don't be afraid to assert safety.
00:52:39
Speaker
And for for the young guys just getting into the business and the young ladies getting into the business, working side by side with your event planners and with the customers, um even when you're in your safety jacket, there's nothing more important because I know you've been there.
00:52:59
Speaker
I've been there. There's nothing worse than the customer coming out and say, I didn't want the tent there. You've got to move that tent. Well, communication, it's it's a fabulous growing and becoming more sophisticated industry that I don't think AI is ever going to put us out of business.
00:53:23
Speaker
It's a career business that a guy like Joe the Installer, would someday wind up owning his own tent company. ah When I was initially hiring new reps for when I was with Anker and with Loesberger,
00:53:38
Speaker
I'd always tell these guys, you know, when you walk into a rental store and you see the guy behind the counter, he's got dirt under his nails and grease and he's dirty and he's, yeah, what do you want? Never discount that guy because you don't know what's going on behind his front door. His wife his wife might be saying, I don't like this job for you.
00:53:57
Speaker
And maybe Uncle Louie's got $30,000 in a pickup truck that maybe he's going to go into business. Respecting people. who may not look like decision makers is really key because they can also help you.
00:54:12
Speaker
And and in the you are correct. Odds are that guy's probably going to own the business one day. It's crazy. I've seen it so many times, Kyle. It's crazy. And the new guys that come in, we have always welcomed from Trowby and all the suppliers welcome new guys.
00:54:31
Speaker
um But working with them in the field and getting them to understand that it's putting up these tents, It's difficult, but it's not. It's hard, but it's not difficult if you have the right equipment, the right people, and the weather. and The weather is the most important part. but yeah Yes, yes, yes.
00:54:51
Speaker
But, yeah, it's for young people, I would say get involved in the associations. Get involved with MATRA. Get involved with the tent rental division, not just because I did or because your dad did,
00:55:06
Speaker
your dad in a big way. ah But because you you learn new ideas every time you come away from a conference, you're going to come out of there with three or four different ideas. If you don't put them to work, shame on you.
00:55:20
Speaker
You know, if if you spend the money to go to a conference like that and you bring your crew and they come home with some new ideas and you don't you don't institute those ideas, then what'd you go for?
00:55:32
Speaker
You know? So... Be involved. Team play is important. And trust that this industry is a go-go industry for young people.
00:55:48
Speaker
When they wind up being my age, they're going to look back the same way I do and realize, wow, I've got a lot of friends in this business, and it's been a super career.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:56:00
Speaker
Some people would say that I've entered my last quarter of life Other people would say maybe I'm in my two-minute warning. I don't know. I hope it's the former. But honestly, for the last 45 years or so, I've <unk> had a lot of tough days, but I've never regretted being in the industry ever.
00:56:20
Speaker
Except maybe after that first install where I thought I'd never understand the F-10s. but They can be a little confusing sometimes. I'll give you that one. Well, that was great. It was a pleasure having you on.
00:56:35
Speaker
It sucks Nate couldn't join us today, but I'm glad that you and I got to have this conversation, and I hope I get to see you. Maybe we can get you to a show sometime, and we can enjoy a nice cold beer together and talk about some more stories. I'm sure you've got a ton of them in that suitcase of yours.
00:56:51
Speaker
ah Yeah, i could I could keep you going for a long time. Lots of war stories. The hottest job, the coldest job, the meanest job, the easiest job. They're all they're all fun memories, Kyle.
00:57:04
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, thank you for inviting me on on your podcast. And ah I hope I didn't scare everybody away. ha Well, I think everyone's going to walk away with this with a little tidbit of knowledge.
00:57:17
Speaker
ah I think it was another great one. So that's another episode of Under the Vinyl, a rental management media podcast. Thanks, everyone.