Two years ago, Pauline Dube lost her husband, Gene Dube, to cancer. From his diagnosis in October 2006 until his passing, she had only seven months to get used to the idea that she would be running the family business — Pat Jackson Inc./Tri-City Septic Tank Service — alone.
“It was like slam-bam and it was over,” she recalls. “I took care of our 14-year-old daughter, Monica, who had become ill from the stress of watching her father suffer.” Both mother and daughter took the death hard, but Pauline Dube knew she had to pull herself together if she was going to salvage the family’s livelihood.
She had known even before her husband died that the business was in trouble: The bank had called to report financial discrepancies in the company’s books. Dube had to study details of the firm’s everyday operations to be able to call the shots.
Despite heavy odds, she managed to learn the business quickly, assess the weaknesses that had jeopardized it, and re-organize management and structure into a stronger, more efficient and profitable enterprise. In the process, she enhanced her husband’s on-site treatment plant to banish disposal issues and cemented an environmentally sound position for the company in her south-central Maine market.
STARTING OVER
While doing her homework, Dube determined there were serious issues involving some employees. She met with her lawyers to determine liabilities and options. On her first day as the new CEO, Dube made several personnel changes aimed at improving the accounting and day-to-day business operation.
“I had a big cleanup to do,” she says. “My husband was a big-hearted man, and he didn’t like confrontation. That was his only downfall.” She then worked on finding people who would be on board with her philosophy.
“Being honest — with each other and with customers — is my biggest concern, because that’s what this business is built on. If you’re ethical, customers might leave for one reason or another, but they’ll always come back. Sometimes they don’t like what we’re saying, but they learn we’re trustworthy and they respect that we know what we’re doing.”
She hired Kimberly Sweetster as interim manager. Together, they went through every document to find out where they had contracts. Dube came in every day and made the big decisions, and Sweetster handled day-to-day operations while her boss took care of her dying husband and their daughter. Next, Dube hired an accountant. Business records had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Dube was determined to keep the business afloat. Her persistence paid off, but it took more than a year to straighten everything out. Last year, she was able to breathe a sigh of relief. “We knew that we were out of the woods, because we had finally gotten caught up on old tax filings,” she recalls. They had also recovered financially from a position in which the business had been redundantly insured and Workers’ Compensation records had never been updated. “They’d apparently never been audited, but now we have one every year,” she says.
Dube now oversees a management team she can count on, including Sweetster, the permanent office manager. Operations manager Gary Boynton keeps things running smoothly, pumping residential and commercial properties, including restaurants, schools, nursing homes, office facilities, shopping malls and other businesses.
Currently, the workload is roughly 80 percent residential and 20 percent commercial, and picking up, Dube says. The firm fields nine service trucks, including two tractor-trailers and two pickups for this part of the business. They also have two tractor-trailers that haul septic and one transporting graywater from their treatment plant to the municipal plant in Augusta.
The fleet carries many badges, including Western Star, Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Volvo and GMC. A 2006 Pete was built out by Presvac Systems Ltd. with an aluminum tank. Three trucks have aluminum tanks from Longhorn Tank & Trailer Inc. A fourth Longhorn tank is mounted on a vacuum trailer. Two 2008 GMCs were built out by Mountain Cat Tank Co. with 3,500-gallon tanks and Fruitland pumps. Several trucks have pumps from National Vacuum Equipment Inc. Some of the trucks were outfitted locally or were purchased used and the manufacturer is unknown.
Septic pumping comprises 85 percent of the business, with system inspection making up 7 percent of annual revenues. Waste disposal fees from the on-site treatment plant add 5 percent. The company processes wastewater for two other pumping companies, with sales of the resulting compost accounting for the remaining 3 percent of revenue.
CRAFTING A DISPOSAL SOLUTION
Gene Dube bought his first truck from his father, who was also in the pumping business. In 1976, Dube bought out Pat Jackson, another pumper who’d been in business since 1956. The company had a great reputation, so Dube kept the name, adding it to his Tri-City name.
By 1990, some disposal facilities he’d long used had closed to outside haulers. So he decided to build his own facility. He contracted with an engineer, and they designed and built the plant together. Construction began in 1991 and the plant was humming along in 1992.
In summer, the company hauled 40,000-50,000 gallons every day. “Our plant became profitable from the get-go,” recalls Pauline Dube, “because around here at that point, haulers were paying $110 per thousand gallons to dump at the Augusta plant.”
The company has 300 acres of property available, but they’ve only used their application permit once or twice. Now that Pauline Dube is running things, she recognizes the value of the land-application option. “I’m going to keep the license as a pressure valve,” she says, “but I really want to be ‘the environmental company.’ So as a rule, we don’t land-apply.”
Incoming septage gets dewatered through an Alrick belt press and two dewatering boxes, one from Green Mountain Technologies, the second fabricated by Gene Dube. The plant can process up to 80,000 gallons per day, running Green Mountain’s CompDACS software/probe/sensor monitoring system to keep track of what’s being processed.
Unhappy with results from the belt press alone, Dube has ordered another dewatering box from Atlantic Dewatering Services to reach the level of clean effluent she demands. With the addition of two more Green Mountain CompTainer composting boxes, this expansion will increase daily processing capacity by half, to 120,000 gpd. Dube says the expansion may open up capacity for her to accept more outside loads.
A BONUS BYPRODUCT
The rest of the plant works on an aerobic process. Effluent goes into a blackwater tank, where oxygen is added by floating aerators. Dube had a bottom blower added to this tank to increase effectiveness. From there, liquid flows to the filter tank, then on to a graywater tank for secondary aeration. When the process is complete, a hauler truck pumps it out and transports the load to a municipal pump station in Manchester, which sends it to the municipal treatment plant in Augusta.
The company must test its sludge, graywater and compost to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements. Dube also maintains test wells for groundwater monitoring. “We have a license to irrigate with the graywater, because our output is of such high quality,” she’s proud to say.
The composting facility is about nine years old. Dewatered sludge is dumped into a pit behind the main area, where it’s mixed with wood shavings bought from a nearby lumber company. This goes into a mixer, then onto a belt that takes it to a 40-yard compost box. Probes monitor the mix as it “cooks” for 4-5 days at 120 degrees F in summer. Lower winter temperatures slow the process to about 10-14 days.
It then goes to a sampling pad, where it’s tested and left to dry for about a year. It’s sampled quarterly in different batches, with a final end-of-year sampling. The finished compost now leaves the sample pad for a first screening. Before it goes into a customer’s dump truck or pickup, it’s screened again to remove any debris that may have collected.
Big landscapers are Dube’s best compost customers. “They add it to their loam because our pH is 7, perfect for lawns and gardens,” she says. After taking control of the business, she quickly recognized the compost as a potential profit center. She developed it not just as a revenue generator, but also as part of the company’s market positioning. “I’m pushing the recycling angle. In Maine, they’re very environmentally concerned, so the government wants everything to be correct. And people love that.”
MARKETING FOR SUCCESS
Dube knew re-establishing the company’s good name would be a major challenge. Realizing her company’s mission dovetails beautifully with the current “green” social trend; she took a class on promotion to learn how to communicate to potential customers that the company is caring and conscientious.
After some thought, she came up with the slogan “Your environmentally preferred company.” She approaches her market under this banner through phone book ads, direct mail and the Internet. “I’m starting to get online a lot,” she says, “but people around here still call out of the phone book.”
Dube knows “face time” is the most effective way to reach people, so she looks for opportunities for personal interaction. She’s planning to speak in area schools to start early education about how to properly care for septic systems. She’s in partnership with Friends of Cobboffee (Lake), a nearby environmental group that educates people about preserving lake water quality.
“We’re concentrating on education and being environmentally friendly, because that’s what people respond to. Some people do call and ask where our septage ends up, and I have a thorough, honest answer for them.”
It doesn’t hurt that what’s good for the environment is also good for business. “I’m expanding my treatment capabilities, because I think disposal is going to continue growing in importance,” Dube says. “Plants all over here are limiting outside haulers. In the long run, people will either need to build their own plants, or they’ll go out of business.”
That’s one eventuality Dube doesn’t see for Pat Jackson Inc. Her daughter is going to college to pursue an environmental engineering degree, so Dube feels comfortable committing the rest of her life to the business, knowing it’ll stay in the family.
“I want to keep my husband’s dream alive,” the determined Dube says.
