Twin City Sweeping is a Growing Operation

Dave Shappell has a friend that was already in the sweeping business in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. That’s who encouraged him to purchase a sweeper, says Dave, because he thought it would be a good addition to his current business. So, in 2010 Shappell purchased a used Elgin Broom Bear. He then started calling on prospects and from there his business has grown into a multiple sweeper operation called Twin City Sweeping. Since the company started, a TYMCO 435 as well as a TYMCO 600 have been added. The company also has some Tennant sweepers for doing garage sweeping.  In Minnesota, Shappell says, much of the sweeping work comes in the spring, when they are asked to remove the large amounts of sand that have been applied during the winter snow season. The rest of his business has historically been composed of construction sweeping and some milling work. Only recently have they started getting into what he terms ‘maintenance sweeping,’ doing regularly scheduled litter pickup in parking areas with their 435. Shappell thought it made sense to get diversified in case there’s a construction downturn or the government money isn’t there to rebuild roads.  Twin City’s construction sweeping is on demand.  Typically, when they get a construction sweep call it’s fine if they show up the same day or on the next morning. There is not a mandate to have a sweeper onsite during construction projects, so to date they haven’t picked up any jobs where they have to leave a sweeper onsite.  Most construction sweeping is done from once a week to three times a week or when an inspector is coming out. Only on rare occasions Shappell says there are sites where sweeping needs to be done every day. “Our Broom Bear and TYMCO 600 stay pretty busy with that kind of work. Plus, we are very diversified.  Since we provide other services, including asphalt maintenance, striping and pressure washing, we have our efforts split up into multiple directions, so we’re always busy doing something. “We started pressure washing two years ago.  We’ve had a number of municipal contracts as well power washing at multi-housing, senior citizen complexes and that sort of thing.  We started by subbing it out to another vendor, but soon got to a level where we had so much volume that the vendor couldn’t keep up, so brought the service in-house and started doing it ourselves.  This is our second season we’ve been doing it on our own.” Another way they pick up work is by teaming with a friend of Shappell’s that has been in the asphalt replacement business for 25 years, so that work is subbed to him. Their Broom Bear is then used for the milling work on those contracts. In the winter, the company has collected a number of customers where they perform indoor parking garage maintenance weekly, or more than once a week.  They are also able to do some line striping in the winter.  The Tennant machines are delivered via a pickup and a trailer.  The types of jobs they go out on include multi-housing, senior citizen and regular apartment complexes, condos — anything that has an underground garage or ramp areas that need to be maintained.  So far, this has not expanded to include industrial warehouses since the level of work the company needs is being gained in the multi-housing sector. “We specialize in sweeping and/or washing and line-striping the garages and the parking ramps from start to finish,” said Shappell.  “Our customers really enjoy  being able to deal with one person. They also like that they can call the decision-maker and make sure things are done the way they want.” Twin City Sweeping employs between five and 12 workers depending on what time of year it is. They gain new employees mostly via an employee referral program. “Typically,” said Shappell, “we are able to find any additional help we need through our current employees.  I stay away from Craigslist and all the other [outside ad programs].  We also utilize a temp service, which does a good job screening. They provide drug testing and different things of that nature. “Our current employees, once they’ve spent some time working with our company, really start to like their job.  They don’t want to recommend people that aren’t going to provide results. They want to have people that are going to be part of the process and better the organization. So they weed the people out on their own before they get to us.” Dave works in his company with his father, also named Dave. They make up a strong team and Shappell says his dad is an indispensable member of the company who does all manner of tasks in the firm. Shappell has hit upon an efficient way to secure CDL drivers for his company’s equipment. Rather than finding an operator with a current CDL, they have their drivers operate non-CDL types of equipment for the first few months on the job. Then, once an employee proves their ability, they utilize a local truck leasing company to train them to take the CDL test. “Typically,” said Shappell, “we hire people that do not have CDL and provide a nice training process for our non-CDL vehicles. Once we have a comfort level established with how they operate those vehicles, we sign them up to secure the training needed to get their CDL. We have a company here in town called Class A Leasing. “They meet our employee at the CDL testing facility with one of their truck and a trailer units and then train them on the pre-trip. After that, they train them on vehicle operation by actually operating the truck. Once they’re comfortable that the individual will pass the test, they come back to the CDL testing facility and the operator then takes the test. This works very well at a cost to us of only about $400-$600. We have found that it’s pretty handy to have a company that does that. “Although each person’s a little different, for the most part the trainer probably spends three-to-five hours with them, teaching them the pre-trip as well as the driving portion. I think the biggest thing of all is the pre-trip.  A lot of people don’t understand, for example, the workings of air brakes and how to know if they’re set correctly and so forth.  There’s a lot of different aspects to point out on the truck prior to the test that people, in general, don’t really think about.” To date, the Twin City budget has covered the cost of the training process. When asked if anything is required in return from an employee; for example, requiring payback if they don’t stay with the company ‘X’ amount of time, Shappell had a ready answer. “I don’t want to do that with my people. I’ve always believed that if people truly want to work with you, they will.  If they don’t, especially if they get an opportunity to better themselves and their family, then they shouldn’t be here. “That’s how our country was built — off of opportunity. If somebody needs to better themselves, so they can better their family, that’s what the world was built on.  I’m not trying to make somebody [do something they don’t want] or repress any one. If they don’t really 100% want to work some place, I think they should move along.” When Twin City Sweeping was first started, the majority of the workload would finish up right around Thanksgiving. However, as the business has grown and the number of clients has grown, they are able to keep all the employees busy run right up until Christmas. Then there is some downtime before they get going again by the end of February. During the intervening time, though, they are still able to do maintenance sweeping of big parking ramps. They have clients that want their ramps swept on a weekly basis and sometimes have construction sweeps that are going on during the winter. As long as it’s not snowing, clients still want their access roads swept. No matter what time of year, when properties change hands or are put onto the market for sale,  Shappell says many property managers want to spruce up the property. “They want to revitalize the first impression of a parking lot or a parking ramp, so they’ll want it line-striped in the winter, or power washed. Sometimes that can be quite challenging. Shappell says one of the more important parts of business is to give an honest effort and, if a mistake is made, to own it and attempt to fix it in a timely manner. “‘Cause people that try to skirt around the issue or the problem, or the negative part of it — I just think that smears the whole industry. Certainly we’re not perfect, we know that we have challenges and opportunities appear all the time. It just depends on how you solve your problems as they come up, and then move forward. “I think one of the biggest things in business that I’ve learned over the years is how often my day changes. You would think that you’d be able to get a calendar and schedule your day out and say: ‘This is my day!’… But literally, your phone rings, and your day changes so fast and so rapidly that, if you’re going to be successful, you have to be able to take the punches as they come. It’s continuous, all day long — 15 hours a day, you’re changing your plan, all day long — no matter what! No matter how hard you try or try to be disciplined, you have to be very fluid with all the situations that happen.” Recently there has been a push toward porous pavement being installed on sidewalks, in residential driveways and even at colleges and universities. With this new type of installation comes a new learning curve, one that Twin City Sweeping has done research on to make sure they are ready to maintain porous pavement lots as well as they maintain asphalt lots. If a porous lot isn’t serviced properly, Shappell says, the lot won’t drain like it’s supposed to. “I think the most important part is the education — for the customers to make sure they police their vendors, to make sure that their vendors understand that they shouldn’t be dumping piles of mulch on the pavers, and they shouldn’t be cutting down trees and letting all the leaves fall out on the pavers. “If everyone is educated well and they take the appropriate measures in the whole thing, they can, basically, just adjust their thought process a little bit, If they [have that education] they’ll have better success all the way around!… I think that the pavers look really nice and they serve a great purpose. It’s a natural filter, so it’s filtering the contaminants. And if the owners and users don’t add a lot of contaminants unnecessarily, the system works well. However, it does need to be maintained. If you have and keep to a regular maintenance schedule and the cleaning is performed the way it’s supposed to be, I don’t think that the amortized fees to have the pavers versus blacktop or concrete, or anything else, are going to be that much different in the long run.” Third party vendors have left an unwanted impression as far as Twin City Sweepers is concerned. Shappell says he tries to steer clear of them when there’s enough on his company’s plate. “I have utilized them in the past,” Shappell said, “and it just seems like it never works out in a favorable way for you — the person doing the work. They have obtained the customer, they get to collect the check every month, and then, when something doesn’t work out between the customer and them you never know if they got paid or not but you never get paid, no matter what!” One of the goals Shappell has with Twin City Sweeping is to develop a personal relationship with each client he does a job for. “We want to obtain our own customers and I want to work for them for many years. I’m not trying to find a customer that’s going to use me today and use someone else tomorrow. I‘m trying to build a business based on loyalty and providing a good service. We also need to be paid a fair wage or a fair rate for the work that we do for them.” Shappell believes strongly that being able to pick up the phone and answer a client’s phone call at any hour speaks volumes to building trust with the customers. That lets them know that Twin City Sweeping will be ready and able to do any job that is asked of them. It certainly demonstrates a ‘people first strategy’ that has guided Shappell from his days with a single Elgin Broom Bear in 2010 to being a growing, multi-sweeper contracting firm that is committed to standing behind its work. You may reach Dave Shappell via email, by calling 612.499.2680, or through the company’s website, which is www.twincitysweeping.com.