For 35 Years This Company has Honored its Customers, Employees and Community

Jack Davenport and his wife, Shirlyn, started Jack Davenport Sweeping Services in Bakersfield, California, over 30 years ago. Their story was a typical one: Looking for a way to supplement his income from working at Sears, Jack got into sweeping with a single sweeper. From there, the family-run company has gradually worked its way into becoming a powerhouse in the Southern California region, boasting a 25-sweeper fleet with an additional office in Salinas and a new location now being developed in San Diego.

Although both Jack and Shirlyn remain involved in day-to-day operations, the company’s Director of Operations is their son-in-law, Eric Sunderland. In the accompanying audio podcast, Sunderland discusses briefly how the company grew to where it is today, and provides in-depth comments and information about the state of the sweeping industry in California, unquestionably the most regulated state in the union. California’s government system also has been under significant economic duress and budgetary restraints, which additionally increases the degree of difficulty for street and highway sweeping.

“Jack Davenport has built his company by running it ethically and always providing the level of performance that contracts require,” said Sunderland. “These days that method of operation becomes ever more difficult, with a business climate that increasingly lacks ethics about fulfilling contract requirements. For example, our disposal requirements in California are strict and expensive. We are required to dispose of sweeping waste at particular, certified green waste disposal sites. We can no longer dump onsite even if a customer wants that. This is quite expensive compared to the ‘old ways.’ If a competing company isn’t disposing of debris ‘by the book’ then they definitely have a cost-cutting competitive advantage.

“There are definitely ways that some of our competitors are cutting costs by not following the rules. Much of the regulation we deal with are policed largely via self-enforcement, whether it’s debris disposal, the CARB mandates or some of the other environmental legislation we face. However, this company has always prided itself on operating with integrity and in doing what’s right. At the end of the day, we’d rather run our business the right way even if it means making less money. That’s what we’re about.”

The largest problem facing Jack Davenport Sweeping Services — as well as all other truck-based businesses in California — involves the diesel emissions and other requirements of the California Air Resources Board, commonly known as ‘CARB.’ The mandate of this quasi-governmental agency is to clean up air pollution in the Southern California region. To do so, CARB has enacted diesel emissions’ requirements that are the most stringent in the nation. Truck chassis diesel engines that are operated throughout the rest of the U.S. are no longer allowed in many parts of California. Some sweeping contractors not up on CARB regulations have learned the hard way — by a visit from a regulator who impounded their fleet — that their entire fleet of sweepers and other support vehicles were no longer allowed on the road.

“Our sweeping company has always been pro-active in all parts of its operation,” said Sunderland. “That’s one of the reasons Jack Davenport was so successful throughout the past three decades. Jack has long stressed looking ahead and staying on top of any emerging legislation, changes in equipment and whatever else might affect the business. Today, though, we’ve had to take that to an entirely new level.

CARB has set specific timelines for when older equipment must be retired. There are also some retrofit options, and state money is sometimes available to help offset these significant costs to doing business. California sweeping companies have to plan carefully so they don’t get caught having to replace a large number of very expensive sweepers at the same time. On the other hand, it’s also expensive to retire perfectly good sweepers before the regulations require it. The market for used sweepers has taken a significant hit, as well, since when a vehicle gets de-certified in the California marketplace all sales of those have to take place outside of the state. When de-certification occurs, the vehicles cannot even be driven to another state in the event of a sale.

“We basically have to retrofit our sweepers on the correct time schedule or, alternatively, replace them. One of the cost-cutting avenues we would have utilized in the past, buying used equipment, is no longer available to us. Plus, the cost of new vehicles has skyrocketed in recent years with the new emissions, and other, upgrades.”

Largely due to the rise of third party vendors, which come into the market looking for lower pricing, Sunderland says the company has expanded into day portering, and with good success. He said they early on recognized that to continue to provide services at lower pricing models they would have to develop a mix of services that could meet the cleanliness needs of the customer but do so at a lower price.

“We introduced day portering to meet the needs of whatever requirements a management company might have,” said Sunderland. “In addition to what might be called ‘standard day porter cleanup,’ we clean storefronts, have keys made, fabricate new doors, perform new tenant introductions, tenant walkthroughs when tenants move out; we try and do whatever it is that a client may need.

“One area that has expanded greatly due to the high unemployment rate and down economy here in California is replacement of items that have been stolen. With the relatively high price of metal, we’ve been involved in replacing a large number of metal-based items, from wiring to storm grates to air conditioning units that have been stolen from rooftops. We now have some clients where we’ve installed security systems and alarms that encompass rooftop A/C units since that has become such a problem area. Not only have these expansions into new fields allowed us to diversify what we offer; at the same time it keeps our clients from having to contact a variety of different vendors to get their needs solved successfully.

“The company’s growth into other areas besides sweeping was born of necessity but has actually become a good part of our strategic business plan. We are competent at, and enjoy working with, our customers to help them solve their problems. One thing that’s nice about having the porter services, especially when you doing the sweeping at the site, is you get to have extra eyes on the property during daylight hours. For example, we deal with a lot of graffiti clean-up and the sooner you can get it removed the less likely it will return.

“One of the things we really strive for is fostering good personal relationships with our customers, with the managers themselves. We want to be able to notify them immediately when something is amiss on their property and having employees at the location during the day allows us, as a company, to provide much more rapid response for items that cannot be seen by a sweeper operator at night. Having someone on-site during daylight hours also provides good feedback for how good a job your sweeper operator is doing at night.”

In the audio podcast, Sunderland and I also discuss and contrast this personalized service with what may be provided through third party aggregators. In the latter case, most aggregators require there be no contact by contractors with their actual clients. So, in the event something is seen to be amiss on the property the contractors contractual obligation is to NOT tell the property manager directly. Fill in the problem that might have occurred: graffiti tagging; an air conditioner is damaged or stolen; a manhole cover has been stolen for scrap value. Under the requirements of most aggregator contracts the contractor must notify the aggregator, who then (theoretically) notifies the property manager in good time.

However, anecdotally I have heard from contractors who report that it is not uncommon that several days will pass before they get a reply back from the aggregator that actually has the direct contract. In some cases the re-contact stretches to weeks and in at least several instances contractors have reported getting some type of feedback from their aggregator representative about something to do with a property as much as four months after the fact. There’s no way this type of situation doesn’t represent a liability to the property manager. This also underscores how important it is not to sign an aggregator contract where liability extends to the contractor for out of the ordinary situations on a property, since fixing them promptly is often out of the contractor’s direct control.

“One of the things Jack Davenport built his business around has been customer responsiveness and customer service. It has become more difficult, in recent times, to track what we are able to provide to each individual customer given the [contract requirements] we might be under. This is where business in today’s climate, especially when being under contract with aggregators, can be confusing.”

Sunderland relates that in spite of the high unemployment rate in California, it still can be difficult to find employees who want to work the somewhat unusual hours and situations required. However, he said the company has embraced the veteran community when it comes to providing job preference and that has worked well for them. “We have found that pretty much to a man — or to a woman, since we have hired both — that they are very responsible and dependable. Especially when you see how much higher the unemployment rate is for veterans, we really try to seek those individuals out because we hold them in high regard not only for their work ethics, but for the service they have provided for our country.”

In the podcast, Sunderland also discusses in detail the company’s pro-active stance in terms of positioning itself as an environmental leader for its role in removing pollutants prior to them entering streams, lakes and other waterways. Contractors will benefit from listening to this to gain ideas and insight from an experienced industry veteran about what might be termed “the background story” of sweeping. Their individual efforts to spread the word in this regard includes adding more of this type of information on the company website, doing email marketing and designing complete ‘wraps’ that display company branding on its sweeper fleet.

As may be seen in the accompanying photos, the graphic wraps the company has chosen illustrate different parts of the California scenic beauty. Some of the photos used in the wraps, all of which show the environmental beauty of California, even include one of the company’s sweepers on the road in the photo. This branding technique not only shows the expansiveness of the services the firm provides, but additionally encompasses the different geographical locations where they operate. Unlike some contractors that shy away from being noticed, often because of concerns that one of their operators may be found doing something wrong, Jack Davenport Sweeping Service maintains a very visible, positive image throughout its market area and proudly wants all to know the company is serving the area.

“We have embraced technology in all its available forms,” said Sunderland. “Many of the ideas we employ weren’t available just a few years ago. We know that in most cases when someone looks for a contractor today, they will be doing that on the internet, not the yellow pages. We offer GPS information on all of our routes. This enables us to manage our machines more effectively, as well, and the use of it brings us cost-savings in a variety of areas that allow us to be more competitive on behalf of our customers.

“What we have learned is to combine available technology with personal contact, whether that’s with our property manager customers, our contractors we sweep for and with anyone else we work with. Personalize your business in as many ways as possible, which is good for your business and employees as well as for those customers you serve. Always make it a point to have that quality, face-to-face time.

“The other side of it is the employees themselves. Jack is really focused on taking care of our employees. We’ve been in business 35 years and have employees who have been here as long as 27 years. The reason they stay is because we take care of them. We have profit sharing and a pension plan. We know that if we take care of them and treat them with respect and show them that we’re all in this together as a group, that really has been a huge key to our success.  That has sustained us through up and down economies and is the true key to the success of Jack Davenport Sweeping Services.”

A variety of additional information is located on the approximately 27-minute audio podcast with Eric Sunderland, linked below. For more information on Jack Davenport Sweeping Services, contact Eric Sunderland or Jack Davenport via the company’s website, located at www.JackDavenportSweepingServices.com.