When Brent McDonald went out on his own as a plumber and drain cleaner, there was nothing magical about it. He was a thoroughly trained tradesman needing to provide for himself and his family, and had grown up in a plumbing house with a single dad. Very practically, he called his new company A+ Plumbing so that it would be listed first in the Tyler, Texas, phone directory.
Twenty years later, A+ Plumbing has gone the way of the telephone book. Instead, McDonald and his wife, Adrienne, are principals in what in 2017 was rebranded Rub-A-Dub Plumbing, a growing plumbing services and pipe lining company serving the major population centers of Smith County as well as customers in adjacent counties.
The work still isn’t magical. There is no abracadabra solution for clogged drainlines and busted waterlines. Service techs must roll up their sleeves and haul out their wrenches. Yet Rub-A-Dub Plumbing is working hard to make those technician encounters a memorable — maybe even pleasant — experience for customers.
“We like to call it the squeaky-clean experience. Customers like our rebranding,” Adrienne says.
“It sometimes does bring a smile during times of stress. The kids absolutely love it. They smile when the Big Blue Duck arrives.”
The cartoonish waterfowl is the visual mascot for Rub-A-Dub Plumbing. An illustrated larger-than-life smiling blue duck, one wing wrapped around a pipe wrench, floats against the bright yellow of each Rub-A-Dub Plumbing truck pulling up to a house. Service techs wear monogrammed Rub-A-Dub shirts that are the same bright yellow. Paper footies they slip on before beginning a service call are yellow, as well.
It is an ice-breaker, a congenial image that gets the company’s technicians comfortably in the door so their technical know-how can do the work that needs to be done
Seizing opportunity
Four years ago, Brent McDonald saw an opportunity in the miles and miles of cast iron sewer and water pipe crisscrossing the Tyler area. The abundance of that type of infrastructure stems from its manufacture locally by Tyler Pipe for more than 60 years.
“We have a lot of cast iron in this area,” McDonald says. That is to say, there is a lot of corroding pipe on the verge of failure needing to be lined for new life.
McDonald seized the opportunity by contacting NuFlow Technologies and having Rub-A-Dub become a certified NuFlow installer, the only one in the area.
“One reason is the support they provide,” McDonald says of why he opted for NuFlow’s lining systems. “They are very helpful. You can call them in an emergency and someone always answers pretty quickly.”
McDonald also utilizes Picote rehab tools, the cleaning and descaling cables that prepare corroded pipes to receive CIPP liners. Techs receive training on that equipment as well. While a team leader for the lining work, Troy Holloway, is involved with every Rub-A-Dub lining job, other employees are cross-trained in order to support the NuFlow work. McDonald notes that the skill set for pipe lining is different than many service plumbing jobs because of the critical timing of epoxy applications.
“You want to be very thorough and take your time,” he says. “Good decision-making skills are very important. Our lead guy [Holloway] is a natural, a good problem-solver. He stays calm.”
Rub-A-Dub Plumbing is not yet using NuFlow’s UV curing system, which cures the epoxy-fused liners in minutes. Instead, his crews cure with steam or ambient dry the installed liners in pipes and fittings.
“UV is the only curing system we’re not doing yet,” McDonald says. “That’s the next step in our progression. We can’t yet justify the cost, but we’ll get there.”
Full service treatment
An example of a significant lining project undertaken by the company was at nearby Longview on the campus of LeTourneau University. The Christian polytechnic university was founded more than 75 years ago and has some 3,000 students. A campus dorm serving those students had a failing sewer line that ran for several hundred feet under a hallway. Some branch lines needed repair too.
“There were lots of fittings. It was pretty complicated,” McDonald recalls. Rub-A-Dub completed the project with the hallway floor intact.
Today, pipe lining constitutes about a quarter of the company’s workload. Drain cleaning makes up some 10% of business but also often leads to lining projects. Service plumbing accounts for most of the rest of the work. However, a few septic customers have Rub-A-Dub on speed dial, too. Company technicians are cross-trained to install new septic tanks and maintain old ones.
A one-ton truck is dedicated to the septic work — hauling tanks and/or septic product and trailering a full-sized Caterpillar excavator to install tanks. Other machinery in the company’s warehouse includes two mini-excavators — one John Deere, the other Volvo — for the occasional digging task and five panel or pickup trucks for service techs. The trucks carry Picote and Spartan pipe cleaning equipment and Spartan inspection cameras.
Learning curve
Every company story has chapters of growing pains where learning ends up taking precedence over making significant capital gains. Adrienne married into the company four years after it was launched, which happened to coincide with the 2008 recession, a definite learning time.
“That was really hard,” the couple recalls. The beginnings of the COVID pandemic five years ago was another challenging time. The company also tried new construction plumbing work on a couple different occasions and learned it wasn’t a good fit.
“It was a little out of our wheelhouse,” McDonald says. “The margins are much lower and we are better at service.”
McDonald is a master plumber. Most of his techs hold journeyman licenses.
“I know how to do plumbing, I am good at it,” says the 49-year-old, having gripped his first wrench at age 8. “But I’m still learning after 40 years.”
That he was willing to take the company into pipe lining shows his openness to learning new tricks.
Dream manager
The company has a full-blown employee training regime. Besides company training from Picote and NuFlow staff, techs are encouraged to try new plumbing techniques and products in the shop under supervision of peers.
“They try stuff out in the shop first and get a feel for it,” McDonald says. “Other learning is on the job. There is no better teacher than learning on the job.”
Adrienne adds another dimension to regular staff training. A psychology major in college and an educator in public schools for 15 years, she coaches Rub-A-Dub Plumbing employees on the human interaction part of the business — the business of building relationships. She dubs herself the company’s dream manager, saying, “I do the best I can to help employees achieve their dreams.”
She describes a typical week:
“On Mondays we review numbers. Tuesdays we go over script [for customer conversations] and invoice reviews. Wednesdays are personal development. Right now we’re discussing the importance of having confidence in yourself and your abilities. And Thursdays are ‘attaboy’ days, where we look at customer reviews and give high-fives.”
These sessions combine company culture building and customer relationship training. The overall goal is not only to have a company workforce meeting customer needs and, therefore, enhancing company growth, but also growing individually in self-assurance and technical skills.
“We’ve been working on this for quite a while, for well over a decade,” McDonald says.
One benefit of the training for both Rub-A-Dub and employees is long-term employment. When people like a workplace and the work they’re doing, they tend to stay around.
“We have a few employees who have been here 10 years now, and some incredible people who have been here three or four years,” McDonald says.
Perfect pair
As much as McDonald enjoys the technical side of plumbing, it is running the business that brings him the deepest satisfaction these days. With Adrienne working full-time in the business as of two years ago, the couple is cranking up the success at Rub-A-Dub Plumbing.
Says Adrienne, “Brent is really good with numbers. I am very much a people person. He is the logical thinker. I am the creative one. We make a great team.”
