Thanks to a combination of gritty determination, innovation and a continuous focus on top-notch customer service, Tony Papania’s business — Rosey’s Tank Cleaning and Pipe Services Group in Blackwood, N.J. — has established a diverse array of customers that’s building up faster than grime in a lift station.
Digester tanks at sewage treatment plants. Municipal lift stations and catch basins. Grease traps at restaurants and grocery stores. Garbage chutes and vent stacks in high-rise condominiums. Pipelines at Superfund toxic waste sites. Car wash pits. You name it, and Rosey’s guys have cleaned it — or they’d be happy to give it a try.
“Instead of putting all our eggs in one basket, I figured we’d do a lot of different things,” explains Papania, who began focusing solely on car washes. “That way, if something bad happens to one business sector, we won’t get hurt as much.”
“We thought it would be a good idea to expand,” agrees Tom Blake, the company’s sales and general manager. He joined forces with Papania in 2005, bringing with him a wealth of pipe-cleaning and environmental cleanup experience. “So we started doing a lot of municipal work, then branched out into Superfund sites and industrial work.
“It really mushroomed at that point,” he continues, noting that Rosey’s business is about one-third tank cleaning and two-thirds pipe services. “It’s been a real good thing — when Tony’s slow (with tank cleaning), I’m usually busy (with pipe services), and when I’m slow, he’s usually busy.”
INNOVATION AT WORK
Before Papania entered the world of tank cleaning, he owned a car wash. When he found it difficult to find a reliable company to pump his operation’s pits and water reclaim system, he decided he could build the proverbial better mousetrap.
“I looked into it and saw a market there,” Papania recalls. “Nobody else wanted to do it because it was such a pain to clean out all the waste — sludge, sand and solids — that settles to the bottom of the tank. You have to shovel it out by hand. I figured there’s got to be an easier way.”
So Papania gave it some thought and designed what he calls a hydraulic ejection unit that cleans out the accumulated solids with the push of a couple buttons.
“It’s like a round bulldozer blade that fits inside the circumference of the tank,” he explains. “I designed it and found a fabricator to build it. It took a little trial and error to get it right, but eventually, it worked.
“It cut in half the time it took to offload solids, which allowed us to do two jobs a day instead of one,” he adds. “It made life a lot easier, that’s for sure.”
A ROSEY START
Papania named his business after an aunt who was a stickler for cleanliness. He liked the contradiction between the delicate name and the dirty work the company performs.
“Aunt Rosey didn’t mind, and everyone remembers the name,” he chuckles.
The first 8 or 9 years, Rosey’s focused mostly on cleaning out car wash reclaim systems and conveyor pits. That all changed when he teamed up with Blake, whom he met in an industrial park where the two rented buildings to store equipment and trucks. They enjoyed talking shop whenever they’d bump into each other, Papania recalls.
“Tom worked for a competitor at the time,” Papania says. “But it wasn’t doing well, and we thought the two businesses would work well together.”
That opportunity arrived when the company Blake worked for went out of business, paving the way for the entrepreneurs to join forces. One thing that drew them together was their shared fervor for customer service, which they consider the cornerstone of their business.
“We make sure our equipment is clean, that our technicians are dressed and trained properly, and that customers get quality service and the job is done efficiently,” Blake points out. “We also believe in leaving a jobsite cleaner than when we arrived. You can do 10 days of good work, but if you leave the jobsite unkempt on the last day, that’s what the customer is going to remember.”
Blake says Rosey’s always follows up with customers to be sure jobs are done correctly.
Adds Papania: “If I’m satisfied with a job, then the customer is going to be satisfied with it, because we set the bar pretty high. We do a job the way we’d like it done if someone was doing it for us.
“A lot of companies think that because they’re bigger, they can do a better job, but that’s not always the case,” he concludes. “We provide more personalized service.”
COMPETITIVE EDGE
Working smarter wins over customers, Papania says. As an example, he points to a job in which Rosey’s cleaned the accumulated grease and debris in the trash chutes of three 31-story high-rise condominium buildings in Philadelphia.
“We lowered a rotary nozzle with a power jetter into the chutes, and put a power vac in the trash container at the bottom that sucked up the water and debris at the same time as it fell down the chute,” he notes. “We did it in less time than the previous company, which just left all the liquid and residue in the trash container — grease, paper, garbage, bugs —you name it.
Another factor in Rosey’s success is the ability to convince customers of the benefits of more frequent service. It’s not quite as formal as a maintenance agreement, but more of a comprehensive effort to keep track of when customers were last serviced and giving them frequent phone calls, Blake explains.
“Take sewage treatment plants, for example,” he says. “They clean digester tanks every five years, which made it a much bigger job that really crunched their budgets. Now they do it yearly. Their equipment functions better, too — there are less breakdowns.”
Rosey’s also cleans on a quarterly or monthly basis the pump stations used in 25 to 30 township sanitary waste systems, Blake adds.
“The townships benefit because they have fewer pump failures caused by grit getting inside the pumps.”
A GROWING FLEET
As the company grew, its fleet of trucks expanded, too. Rosey’s now owns seven service trucks — three that handle tank-cleaning jobs and four dedicated to pipe-cleaning services.
The tank-cleaning vehicles, all built by Vacuum Sales Inc., include a 1990 Freightliner FL120, equipped with two Masport H20W pumps and a 4,500-gallon steel tank made by J & J Manufacturing; a 2000 Freightliner, also outfitted with dual Masport pumps, plus a 4,500-gallon steel tank built by Presvac Systems Burlington Ltd.; and a 2002 Freightliner with a Robuschi positive displacement blower from Robuschi & C.S.p.A., plus a 3,200-gallon steel waste tank manufactured by LMT Inc.
The pipe-cleaning trucks include a 2001 Hino box truck equipped with an O’Brien 3518-SC jetter from O’Brien Manufacturing that delivers 18 gpm/3,000 psi, and a 1,000-gallon plastic freshwater tank, also made by O’Brien; a 2002 Sterling outfitted with a Roots P.D. blower (80 gpm/2,000 psi) made by Dresser Inc., a 3,100-gallon steel tank and a 1,500-gallon plastic freshwater tank built by Vac-Con Inc.; a 2005 Ford E-450 that carries a sewer inspection camera from RS Technical Services; and a 2006 International Camel, built by Super Products LLC and equipped with a Roots P.D. blower (80 gpm/2000 psi), a 1,950-gallon steel tank and a 1,500-gallon plastic freshwater tank, both from by Vac-Con.
All the trucks are thoroughly washed once a week because Papania firmly believes clean machines attract and retain customers.
“When you go to a place with a clean truck, people really notice it,” he observes. “It’s a psychological thing — if they see a clean vehicle, they figure you’ll do a good job. They also figure if you can’t even keep a truck clean, then you’re not going to do a good job.
“People also see our trucks on the road. They’re very recognizable with their big, bright-yellow tanks,” he adds.
Another important part of Rosey’s operations is three 10,000-gallon steel tanks used to temporarily store waste brought in after disposal facilities are closed for the day.
“That gives us a real competitive advantage,” Blake notes. “We can still service customers at night or on weekends.”
TRAINING IS CRITICAL
Along with equipment, Rosey’s possesses another valuable asset: its employees. Employees receive thorough training before they’re allowed to head into the field alone with equipment. A new employee typically goes out with experienced technicians for two to three months, Blake says.
After it looks like new employees will stick with the job, they attend a mandatory 40-hours HAZWOPER training course, sanctioned by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. HAZWOPER is a shorthand term for Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard, which applies to any employee who’s potentially exposed to hazardous substances. An eight-hour annual refresher course is also required, Blake says.
About 25 percent of Rosey’s business comes from Superfund toxic waste sites. Most involve cleaning lines and tanks at sewage treatment plants built at the toxic waste sites for the express purpose of handling toxic waste.
To retain employees, Rosey’s offers paid vacation, health benefits and overtime pay. Employees also gather once a month for meetings, where they discuss on-the-job safety and other pertinent matters.
“We want employee input about things that can make their job easier,” Blake says. We also want their input regarding changes … we want them to feel like they have a voice.”
Whether it’s improving employee relations or obtaining new business or coming up with that proverbial better mousetrap, Papania enjoys his work.
“This job really gets you involved with a lot of different companies, you meet a lot of different people and you do a lot of different work,” he observes. “There are always new challenges.”
