Talk about shifting gears. Allen Lewerer grew up in the western Wisconsin community where he still lives and works, but when he opened his shop a year ago he was the new guy in town.
After nearly three decades of doing mostly new construction plumbing, he was taking on a new niche: service plumbing. And accustomed to working just for his father in a small, local shop, he now finds himself part of a national operation as a Mr. Rooter affiliate. He has no regrets about any of it.
Lewerer, 46, operates Mr. Rooter of St. Croix Valley out of New Richmond, Wis., serving three counties in Wisconsin and one in eastern Minnesota. He is optimistic about the road ahead, and he has already begun mapping out new directions for his business.
“Pretty much the future is completely open right now,” he says.
Construction to service
The Mr. Rooter business opened in 2006, but it grew out of the longtime plumbing business owned by his father, Dave Lewerer. Richmond Plumbing and Heating Inc. has been in business for more than 30 years, and Al has worked for the company since he finished high school 28 years ago.
Richmond Plumbing has focused on new home plumbing for most of its history. “My dad did a lot of the service work himself,” Al Lewerer says. “Occasionally he’d have me do the remodeling and other service work, too.” But as father and son looked at the changing landscape, they noticed something.
“We saw the new construction field being competitive,” the younger Lewerer says. “This area needed a plumbing service company. We saw the opportunities Mr. Rooter offered.”
So they obtained franchise rights for Mr. Rooter in the area and set up the new company with Al Lewerer in charge. Located 15 miles from the Minnesota border and 40 miles from the Twin Cities, the company is one of three Mr. Rooter franchises that touch the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
There were plenty of changes to get used to. One was being part of a large franchise organization. While that took a little getting used to, Lewerer mostly appreciates the strength and support in numbers. “My dad started as a plumber in the Twin Cities area and learned a lot of things on his own,” Lewerer says. The Mr. Rooter network offers plenty of support, available online and on demand.
“Usually I’m checking it daily just to see if anyone’s posting a question that I could learn from,” he says. “When you’re pulling from over 225 franchises in the United States and Canada, that helps tremendously.”
Making adjustments
Customers and prospects had to adjust, too: They needed to know that behind the new corporate name was a familiar local face. “People are hesitant when there’s a new company,” Lewerer says. “Once they realize who we are, and they find out we are mainly a family-run business, that puts them quite a bit at ease.”
Still another adjustment was adapting to the Mr. Rooter standard of flat-rate pricing. “New construction is mainly bidding,” Lewerer says. “Flat rate was a whole new concept. It’s been a learning curve, but I see the value in it.” Flat rates were mostly a new idea around the area, but customers seemed to like it.
“It makes the customer feel a lot more at ease when you go over everything, diagnose the problem and tell how much it’s going to cost them,” Lewerer says.
Lewerer’s part of the world presents some distinctive plumbing challenges. They include working in older homes with older pipes and tree-root intrusion and, in winter, frozen water and sewer lines. That’s part of what has Lewerer thinking about the future.
“One of my hopes in the next couple of years is to take on a pipe relining system,” he says. “I’ve talked to a lot of city utility workers, and they’re all very interested in that type of an idea, because they’re seeing a need for it.” In the meantime, Lewerer has plenty to do. His service fleet includes a pair of Ford E-350 Super Duty vans with box bodies.
His inspection and cleaning tools include a MyTana M81 mainline machine, an M661 drain machine, and an M20 jetter that delivers 1,500 psi. Cameras include a MyTana color mainline unit and a RIDGID SeeSnake Micro unit.
“I’m a firm believer in, once you cable it, send a video down the pipe to inspect it,” Lewerer says.
The location of MyTana Manu-facturing Company Inc. in nearby St. Paul is one reason Lewerer likes that company’s products. “If something breaks down, we don’t have the time delay of having to ship it,” he says. “We can drive it over there and pick it up.”
Computer savvy
A computer hobbyist, Lewerer has built the computers for his business. He does digital video editing on the computer, and he brought that skill to his work. “I’m recording most of the sewer camera jobs I do on VHS tape,” he says. “When customers ask for a copy, I digitize it in the computer and actually burn it on to a DVD.”
When he inspected a sewer line for a local church, he produced a DVD and handed it over “so their board of directors could see how I wanted to handle it,” Lewerer says. He dubbed a narration on the recording and branded it with a Mr. Rooter logo.
Video work helps customers not just at the moment but in the future, he reasons. On one call, the camera revealed cracks in a customer’s sewer line from invading tree roots near where the line tied into the city sewer main. “I put it on a DVD and mailed it to them so they could take it to the city utility department and ask who is responsible,” he says. “Now they can plan for their future and how to deal with it.”
He also collects still images from jobs to use in training employees. “I carry a digital still camera with me in my diagnostic bag,” Lewerer says. “I take pictures of things that are broken or have gone wrong to build up a library. When I have future employees, I can show them pictures of the problems.”
Always on call
Tied in with the new flat-rate pricing structure is the principle of around-the-clock service. “Mr. Rooter is a 24/7 company, with the idea of making it more convenient for the homeowner,” Lewerer says.
He finds his customers like that as well. “They don’t have to take off of work in the middle of the day,” he says. “If it’s in the evening, it’s in the evening, and there’s no extra charge.” Of course, that means demands on his time. “I went out Christmas Eve and I went out New Year’s Eve for main lines that were plugged,” he says. “I knew I made their holiday better because I solved the problem for them.”
Just how many hours a week does he spend on the business? Lewerer chuckles at the question. “I’ve been afraid to add them up, actually,” he confesses. “You’re always in the business mode as an owner because you’re always thinking about it. How you would handle a situation. How you would handle something so it’s fair to the customer.”
Solving problems is a major reason he went into the business. “Mainly I’m a hands-on type of person,” Lewerer says. “I like to be able to work with my hands, and I like to help people. I like mechanical things and I like trouble-shooting things. I feel good when I can solve problems. It seems like a natural fit.”
