Anything Goes

Wyoming’s Redi Services lives up to its name as a do-it-all industrial, liquid waste and municipal cleanup contractor

If you want to see the Swiss Army knife of industrial cleaning, look no further than Redi Services in Lyman, Wyo. The company offers a dizzying array of industrial support services — including many jobs familiar to workers in the liquid waste industry — pointing to the do-it-all business plan set forth by co-owners Gary Condos and Jay Anderson.

The pair — Condos organizes field work and Anderson is the chief financial officer — founded the company in 2005 with a goal to diversify until Redi Services becomes the one-call, one-shop service provider to gold and trona (baking soda) mines, electric power and gas plants, refineries, energy exploration companies, and municipalities.

In the name of diversification, they’ll do everything from place portable restrooms at a biker rally to clean and vacuum municipal culverts to perform heavy lifting for industrial clients. The breadth of challenging jobs requires a varied and muscular fleet of trucks and a crack team of multi-tasking operators.

Focusing on maintenance services less affected by swings in the economy, Redi-Services has opened eight branches in five states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and North Dakota — and employs nearly 500 workers. Just when it looked as if no other opportunities remained, another would show up. Condos and Anderson recently initiated a fire suppression business and began a civil earth-working division.

The continual search for add-on services across the wide-open Western states has paid off. Annual revenue for the company has exploded from $5 million in its first year to $55 million for 2009.

UPBEAT ATTITUDE

The company’s most important assets are not its equipment, Condos says, but rather its people. “If I have a secret to success, it’s surrounding myself with top-quality managers. They are the honest, self-disciplined, hard-working folks who are always looking.”

In turn, the partners concentrate on giving managers latitude to do their jobs. “If they don’t measure up, the system spits them out,” Condos says. “Successful companies don’t have a lot of hierarchy, rules and regulations at the managerial level. That stifles progress.”

Condos’ philosophy is that there are challenges once in a while, but never any problems. “My favorite saying is, ‘We have only good days, but some are better than others,’ ” he says. “We can choose to use the different challenges as learning experiences.”

Condos constantly reinforces business ethics with his managers, holds weekly conference calls, and spends much of his time working with them at different locations. “The managers are responsible for maintaining quality throughout our 30 business lines,” he says. “It’s a big challenge. One inferior job from even the world’s best company will damage the relationship with that client.”

Because experienced operators are difficult to find in the Rocky Mountain Region, the partners try to retain employees when they acquire a new company. As an incentive, they offer a 401(k) retirement plan, paid vacations, sick days, and health insurance with dental and eye care.

SMART GROWTH

Their reputation for acquiring companies prompts many business owners to call with offers to sell. Properties that interest the partners have the correct market niche and solid reputation. The location would have industrial clients requiring sufficient support services to bolster growth.

“We look at what the firm did well and not so well, listen to our gut feelings, and make our decision,” Condos says.

It began in 2005 with the purchase of Redi Industrial Services, an industrial insulation company in Lyman, Wyo. The partners deleted “industrial” from the name, then went looking for other maintenance services that fit their business plan. GTM Ltd. in Meeker, Colo., purchased in 2006, launched them into solid waste management and water and septage hauling for the oil fields. The territory had an insatiable need for those services, enabling Redi to grow rapidly.

A fleet of 50 trucks supports the industrial cleaning, vacuum loading, and hydroexcavation work. There are four Guzzler Classic industrial air movers, 10 F2 hydroexcavators from Tornado Hydrovacs, and four Mud Dog hydroexcavators from Super Products LLC. Most have Roots positive displacement blowers producing 27 inches Hg. Redi also moves product in 14 5,000-gallon bobtail vacuum trucks, 10 5,000-gallon vacuum tractor trailers, five 3,200-gallon bobtail potable water trucks, and four 6,000-gallon tankers.

PORTABLE SANITATION TOO

The fleet also includes septic and portable restroom service trucks. Most are from Satellite Industries Inc., as are the 2,000 Maxim 3000 restrooms in the company inventory.

“Offering portable sanitation got our foot in the door more than once,” Condos says. “After that, my guys are really good about cross-selling and we end up doing multiple services for the client.”

Restrooms go mainly to construction and energy exploration companies, the mines, and construction firms. Condos reserves newer units and Liberty handicap restrooms for special events uses.

The company has a strong presence in eastern Nevada servicing gold mines. The ore extraction process involves temperature differentials and caustic materials that leave deposits. Redi workers engage in high-pressure (40,000 psi) pipe cleaning, vacuuming sumps, and sandblasting, painting and coating.

Hydroexcavators play a major role in the energy fields by cleaning drilling tanks of inverted mud and hauling it to disposal facilities. “The unpaved roads pound the Tornado and two Mud Dogs to death,” Pat Henkels, Colorado hydroexcavation manager, says. “They’re carrying 1,600 gallons of water to slurry the mud for vacuuming. Even then, the material is so thick that it takes a push plate to dump it, and so much remains behind that operators have to wash out the tank.”

EYEING SERVICE EXPANSION

In the gas fields, Redi uses Mud Dogs to expose lines and solve byproduct disposal problems. Waste materials are stored in pits 60 by 40 feet long and 4 to 6 feet deep. “The volume is immense,” Henkels says. “Even when using the larger Tornado, it takes a week to clean a pit hauling four to five loads per day. In addition, we’re constantly vacuuming the sand used to fracture the soil.” It takes three days to remove 6 to 8 feet of it from two frac tanks. The company also does environmental cleanups.

Redi uses the Guzzlers for municipal work. Operators clean and vacuum culverts and stormwater vaults, remove sludge from wastewater treatment plants, and slag from coal-fired boilers and tubes during critical path outages at power plants. They even clean floors, production lines and sewers in factories manufacturing baking soda. “The trona ore is refined into a slurry, then dried,” Henkels says. “The powdery residue coats everything.”

Workers often spot ways to expand services into untried areas. For example, Redi electricians working at wind farms in Wyoming heard from maintenance crews that 6- by 100-foot-long fiberglass turbine blades were cracking. Normally, they cut up the damaged blades with a demolition saw, but the process was slow, hazardous and dusty. Sim Aimone, Redi’s hydroblasting manager, convinced the client to try hydro-cutting. His crew quickly cut the blades into manageable pieces, then safely disposed of them.

WINTER STRATEGIES

The challenging work, done at an average elevation of 7,000 feet in Wyoming and Colorado, is often exacerbated by temperatures reaching 20 to 30 degrees below zero. “Winters are long and hard,” Condos says. “Developing procedures to winterize our liquid trucks was a huge learning curve.”

Condos and Anderson turned to their industrial insulation division, which includes employees who sew custom blanket and roll insulation pads that are sold worldwide. They have two inches of fiberglass insulation inside a heavy neoprene canvas sleeve. “We insulate all the water lines with them and blanket other components that could freeze,” Condos says. “Some pads even have heat trace elements.”

Some examples of winter working procedures include shooting hot water from the wand into the dig tube every half hour to prevent it from freezing, and returning the wand and hose to the heated cabinet when not in use. Operators wear multiple layers of clothing, and take them off or put them on as conditions change. They also bring extra pairs of gloves should the first pair become wet or worn. Since they usually work in remote areas, workers pack everything they think they will need for the day.

WORKFORCE CHALLENGES

One unusual challenge is finding the necessary workforce to support the Bakken Shale Formation oil fields in North Dakota. “We need experienced hydroexcavation and vacuum truck operators,” Condos says. “This June, 127 drilling rigs were operational and experts expect the number to increase. We’re supplying potable water for their camps and bathroom facilities, then hauling the septage. Our vacuum tractor trailers haul out produced water or bring in frac water for energy exploration. We even provide roll-off trash bins. It’s a very exciting area for us.”

Work in the Bakken fields is expanding too rapidly to determine average volumes, but Colorado’s numbers reflect the overall activity. “We transported 400,000 to 500,000 gallons of septage per month in 2009 and 600,000 to 800,000 gallons of potable water,” Levi Roche, Redi’s Colorado fluid hauling manager, says. “October brought multiple major projects that increased our volume to 700,000 and more than 1 million gallons respectively.” Crews drove three 3,000-gallon and one 2,000-gallon septic trucks and six portable restroom trucks.

WORK ETHIC IS KEY

As Condos and Anderson reflect on the company’s growth trajectory, they say the progress — even during a tough economic period — is simply explained. It’s all about keeping your nose to the grindstone and being prepared to answer the call.

“Companies can hire all the brains in the world to analyze things, but in the end, success boils down to hard work so you’re ready when opportunity knocks,’’ Condos says. “My four sons and Jay’s three sons are steeped in it. Now they’re involved in running the business and we plan to just keep moving forward.”



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