Chris Reynolds realizes that he is helping his competitors up their game, potentially at his expense. He tries not to think about it.
Reynolds is co-owner with his wife of Total Trenchless Supply in Woodland, California, a one-stop shop in the trenchless industry where contractors can supply their operations with Perma-Liner products as well as receive best practices counsel from Reynolds and his training staff. So far, Total Trenchless Supply has trained some 40 companies on lining pipe.
The problem is that Reynolds also owns the very successful Hall’s Plumbing. Besides traditional plumbing services, Hall’s Plumbing also descales and lines pipe and performs other maintenance and repair services of the underground industry. So when Reynolds shows local competitors the best method of repairing a pipeline, he seems to be doing his own service company a disservice.
“There is a concern,” he says. “What I always think about is that it keeps me sharp. At the beginning, though, I was a lot more skeptical of it.”
To alleviate the underlying tension of the relationship with rival contractors, Reynolds compares the situation to the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s.
“Very few people actually found gold back then, but everyone was buying picks and wheelbarrows and renting places to sleep. Retailers made money. I have a relationship with my competitors and they are going to need me at some point, some formal training or some lining products. My sale of products and training is icing on the cake.”
Reynolds says he has come to the conclusion that it is a win-win situation. “I admit, at the beginning I was very apprehensive. But I talked with the team and told them, ‘I think there could be some huge benefits for us if we do this.’”
So far, it has panned out as he anticipated it would.
Read more about Total Trenchless Supply in the March 2025 issue of Cleaner magazine.
