Upgrade Your Fleet

Nice-looking, well-organized service trucks are more expensive — but sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
Upgrade Your Fleet
The well-stocked vans minimize time-wasting trips to supply houses. The same parts are stored in numbered bins in the same location within the customizable shelving system in each truck.

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The seven graphically eye-catching Sprinter vans owned by Valley Plumbing and Drain Cleaning in Sandy, Utah, cost about $43,000 apiece. But ask owner Lawrence Snow if the vehicles are an extravagance, and his answer is a resounding “no.”

That’s because the vans get great gas mileage (about 17 mpg); carry roughly $5,500 worth of parts inventory, which reduces time-wasting daily trips to supply houses; and feature an efficiency-enhancing shelf-and-bin storage system, made by J & M Truck Bodies. Moreover, they serve as an invaluable branding and marketing tool, courtesy of a snappy, vividly colored vinyl wrap that features the company’s mascot — a coverall-clad duck carrying a plunger and a monkey wrench.

“We wanted a design that really stuck out from the rest,” says Snow, who started the company in 2011 and has added a new Sprinter to his fleet about every eight months or so since then. “We were looking through a bunch of online art work with our graphic designer and I thought the duck suited my personality — a little bit crazy. Other than that, there’s no significance to it. It was just something that no one else had. Kids usually call it the Donald Duck truck, and I’m OK with that. For marketing, we came up with the slogan, ‘The trucks with the ducks.’”

Snow says the company receives several calls a week from customers who call while driving because they just saw a Valley Plumbing truck. The vinyl wraps, made by Queen of Wraps in Salt Lake City, cost about $3,000 and serve as the company’s major form of marketing, along with its website and a little bit of newspaper advertising. Money well spent? Absolutely, he says. “Name recognition is huge,” he notes. “It’s the name of the game. All our trucks are identical, which makes us seem bigger than we really are. People always say, ‘We see your trucks everywhere.’”

But while the exterior graphics provide the sizzle, the well-organized interior storage system serves as the steak, for two reasons. First of all, the well-stocked trucks minimize time-wasting trips to supply houses. Secondly, the same parts are stored in numbered bins in the same location within the customizable shelving system in each truck. “No matter who’s driving the truck, everyone knows where everything is,” Snow says, noting the efficiency aspect. “It’s great for our apprentices, who rotate helping out on different trucks.”

As a former business coach for Quality Service Contractors, part of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling-Contractors National Association (www.qsc-phcc.org), Snow knows the value of a well-managed truck inventory. He says he often encountered contractors who were unwilling to spend extra money on a larger service van with a good parts storage. But in the end they spend just as much money as they saved — if not more — by making too many unnecessary supply house runs.

“In terms of a monthly payment, there might be a $250- or $300-a-month difference between a Sprinter and, say, a $30,000 service van,” he says. “But if you go to a supply house even just one more time a month than is necessary, you’re effectively losing that same amount of money in terms of nonproductive time spent driving instead of charging billable hours, not to mention vehicle wear and tear and fuel costs. We figure one extra trip to a supply house a day costs us about $3,600 a month.

“You’re also losing out on doing more jobs per year,” he adds. “Our average invoice is about $700, so if you can do an extra four jobs a week as a result of well-managed inventory, that’s about $2,800 a week per truck — that’s significant revenue over the course of a year.”

Valley Plumbing technicians average about two trips to supply houses a week, if that, Snow says, which results in an average of one more job completed per day. From his business coaching experience, he says it’s not unusual for many plumbers/drain cleaners to make six to eight trips a week, which definitely is a productivity killer. “And then guys wonder why they’re not making money,” he notes. “Duh!”

Each of the company’s trucks also carry a RIDGID SeeSnake pipeline inspection camera system, a RIDGID wet/dry vac, an air compressor built by Central Pneumatic, and three drain cleaning machines made by General Pipe Cleaners: a Super-Vee hand-held model, a Mini-Rooter XP for pipelines ranging from 1 1/4 to 4 inches in diameter, and a Speedrooter 92 for lines ranging from 2 to 10 inches in diameter.

Snow also lauds the Sprinters for their spacious cargo area (the interior is 14 feet long) and taller-than-average headroom. The former allows technicians to carry more equipment and parts and find things more easily, while the latter offers a creature comfort that makes walking in the truck easy, as opposed to a head-banging experience.

Moreover, the Sprinters offer larger-than-normal side panels that offer plenty of room to market the two most important things a plumber/drain cleaner can promote, says Snow: the company’s name and phone number. And combined with nice graphics, the trucks give the company a professional look that pays dividends. “Image is everything, and it makes a huge difference in your bottom line,” he points out. “All plumbers and drain cleaners do basically the same job, but a customer might use us over someone else because our trucks convey a perception of how we will leave their house looking when we’re finished. And sometimes customers are willing to pay a premium price without complaint because your trucks look so professional."



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