Yes Man

Grand Bend Sanitation owner Andy O’Brien finds his one-word "business plan" speaks volumes about how to succeed

Pumping contractor Andy O’Brien sums up his business philosophy in a mere three words: Just say yes.

Guided by that aggressive mindset, Grand Bend Sanitation in Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada, has enjoyed steady growth since O’Brien bought the company in 1987. Bolstered by a passion for his profession and savvy marketing and business instincts, Grand Bend has expanded from a small outfit with one vacuum truck, 35 portable restrooms and $45,000 in gross sales in 1987 to a stable of almost two dozen service vehicles and machines, 350 restrooms and gross sales of $1.6 million in 2008.

Moreover, the company now is strategically organized into three different divisions: septic pumping, portable restrooms and sewer cleaning/hydroexcavating. And success came, O’Brien says, because of a staunch refusal to say “no.”

“My famous line is that as long as I say yes whenever I answer the phone, I stay busy,” he explains. “That’s been our business plan all these years. We haven’t grown in leaps and bounds, just steady growth. In fact, 2009 marked our first downturn in sales.”

KNEW WHAT HE WANTED

O’Brien is one of those rare guys who always knew what he wanted to do in life: run his own pumping outfit. When he was five or six years old, he couldn’t wait for the local pumper to arrive and let him help drag out the hose or pack it away.

“Sometimes, I’d even get to ride in the truck for a few hours, or head out to where the company land-applied its waste,” he recalls. “I found the whole process fascinating.”

At age 14, the new owner of a company called Grand Bend Sanitation came to the O’Brien family’s seasonal cottage to clean a septic tank. Like always, O’Brien lent the owner a hand, and was thrilled when asked if he wanted a summer job with the company.

“Of course, I said yes,” O’Brien says. “And I’ve been saying yes ever since.”

O’Brien worked for Grand Bend until high school graduation. Then he went to a tech school to become a welder/fitter and, after graduating, took a factory job.

“But after I got behind those closed doors inside the plant, I knew this wasn’t for me,” O’Brien says. “So I came back to Grand Bend. And when the owner wanted to retire, I bought the business with help from my parents, who took out a second mortgage to help get me started.”

DISPOSAL CHALLENGES

At the time, the biggest issue facing Grand Bend was disposal of septic waste. The business land-applied its waste, just as it does now, but the provincial Ministry of Environment did not allow operators to spread waste on farmland with drainage tiles for fear it would contaminate water sources.

“That made it difficult for us because less than 1 percent of the farmland qualified,” O’Brien says. “It forced us to find little corners of land here and there. We bought land in chunks — different farms that weren’t contiguous. It worked out pretty well, though, because the way they’re spaced out is pretty strategic for us.”

Today, the drainage-tile restriction no longer applies. Grand Bend land-applies waste on 300 acres of company-owned land and on 500 to 600 acres of rented land. O’Brien says a spreader plate is used to distribute waste; no screening or lime stabilization is necessary.

“We tilt the tank and put it over to pressure —10 psi — then spread the waste 15 to 25 feet wide,” O’Brien explains. “It’s applied at a rate of about one gallon per square yard.”

Grand Bend isn’t allowed to land-apply on frozen ground. So during winter, the company hauls septage to a treatment plant about 20 minutes away. That plant only accepts waste generated within the local municipality, so when the company picks up waste from other municipalities, it must use two other treatment facilities that are as far as 2 1/2 hours away, O’Brien says.

GAINING A COMPETITIVE EDGE

With strong local competition, especially in the portable sanitation area, O’Brien has always concentrated on customer service and clean-as-a-whistle restrooms. “When we first started out, keeping restrooms clean gained us a lot of work, and it hasn’t changed much since then,” O’Brien says.

That emphasis on customer service and clean restrooms also helped when competitors tried to undercut Grand Bend on price. “There’s always going to be someone who’s cheaper, but you beat them by providing better service,” he says.

Competition also prompted O’Brien to offer a wider array of services. For example, he added drain-cleaning and septic-system repair to his septic service menu.

“Maybe someone else would pump out a tank, but couldn’t fix a broken outlet baffle,” O’Brien explains. “So we’d get a call to fix the outlet baffle. But when that customer needed help the next time, we’d get everything.

“In the septic-pumping business, that was our source of growth — value-added services,” he continues. “People came to realize that we had all the oddball equipment to do the jobs … from replacing a distribution box to cutting out tree roots from a septic-system line.”

EQUIPMENT LIST

Today, the company owns a full line of equipment across its three divisions. For septic pumping, Grand Bend relies on a 2003 International 7500 with a 3,400-gallon tank, and a 1987 International 1954 with a 2,200-gallon tank, both built by Vacutrux Ltd. The municipal sewer-cleaning division depends on a Guzzler combination unit, built on a Ford LTS 9000 chassis, from Guzzler Manufacturing Inc.

“We bought the Guzzler combo because we struggled to do that kind of (municipal sewer) work with a vac truck and a trailer jetter,” O’Brien says. “We saw a niche market we could fill, so we bought it.”

For portable restroom service, the company owns four vacuum trucks that were fabricated in-house: a 2003 International 4300 with a 500-gallon waste/375-gallon freshwater steel tank; a 2002 Dodge 3500 with a 300-gallon waste/175-gallon freshwater steel tank; a 1999 Dodge 3500 with a 300-gallon waste/175-gallon freshwater tank; and a 1998 Dodge 3500 with a 300-gallon waste/150-gallon freshwater tank. The company also runs a 2001 International 4700 with an 800-gallon waste/400-gallon freshwater tank, built by Vacutrux. All their septic service and restroom vac tanks are steel and outfitted with Wallenstein pumps.

The restroom inventory is almost exclusively PolyJohn PJN3 units, though the company services other brands as a subcontractor for another company. Grand Bend also has a dozen 13-foot Comfort Station restroom trailers from McKee Technologies Explorer Toilet Transporter Trailers, and five more restroom trailers manufactured in-house.

The company also owns five service trucks and vans; an excavator; two mini-excavators; two skid-steers; a trailer jetter made by Aquatech (a division of Hi-Vac Corp.); a J-3055 waterjetter, made by General Pipe Cleaners (a division of General Wire Spring Co.); RIDGID K-3800, K-750 and K-1500 cable drain-cleaning machines; and two mainline inspection cameras, manufactured by Ratech Electronics.

O’Brien estimates 80 percent of vehicle and equipment repairs are done in-house. The company has a 3,000-square-foot workshop that includes welding equipment. “We’ve always had mechanically minded drivers, and I do most of the welding,” O’Brien says. “We keep a maintenance book on each truck and track routine maintenance for each truck on a marker board.”

The crew is adept at fabricating equipment, including sink stations and restroom trailers, work that is done in the slow winter season.

MULTIPLYING BY DIVIDING

As Grand Bend grew geographically, O’Brien realized that a name change would help the company market its services more effectively. Potential customers outside of Grand Bend would see the name and assume the company only serviced Grand Bend residents.

So O’Brien broke the company into three divisions: Grand Bend Sanitation, which provides septic services; Advantage Portable Toilet Services; and O’Brien Environmental, which cleans sanitary and storm sewer lines and catch basins, and performs hydroexcavating, utility locating and mainline camera inspections.

“We had to come up with names that weren’t geographically limiting. And I always wanted my name on the side of a truck,” he jokes. “It’s kind of my living legacy.”

What’s the most important lesson O’Brien has learned after being in business for more than 20 years?

“No one big thing — just all kinds of little ones,” he says. One of the most valuable little things was finding out about the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International.

“We’ve gone practically every year since 1990,” O’Brien says. “I found I learned a lot more by talking to people outside my local circle of competitors. The show is extremely important to my business because of the amount of knowledge I can gain in a short amount of time, talking to suppliers and contractors from throughout North America.”

And of course, there’s that other small lesson that yielded big results for O’Brien: Whenever the phone rings, just say yes.



Discussion

Comments on this site are submitted by users and are not endorsed by nor do they reflect the views or opinions of COLE Publishing, Inc. Comments are moderated before being posted.