The Right Tool For the Right Market

The right equipment makes this pumping company popular with grease trap customers.
The Right Tool For the Right Market
A 1st Rate Pumping Service relies heavily on a Conde ProVac portable industrial pumpout station from Westmoor Ltd.

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A 1st Rate Pumping Service’s technicians like the Crust Buster septic tank agitator, but the one piece of equipment that really gets a regular workout is their Conde ProVac portable industrial pumpout station from Westmoor Ltd.

“It’s solely dedicated to grease trap pumping in a mall setting, where we can’t get the big equipment to, say, fifth-floor restaurants,” explains owner Julie Southwick. Her husband, Mark Southwick, bought it years ago because he felt it was very well built and was customized to grease trap pumping, so would be reliable.

“Our first one gave us 14 years of dependable service and we just replaced it with a new one. Mark loved it because it came on its own cart. Since it weighs about 300 pounds full, we put a lift on our pickup truck for it. He’d just go off and do the job and felt it was really slick.

“It enabled us to take those jobs we couldn’t handle before, allowing us to enlarge our client base at the slow and steady pace we prefer. It’s a good example of how we educate one customer at a time. We explained how with this new tool, we would be able to come in before the restaurant’s production gets started for the day, and that made us very attractive to the customer. We match their schedule; we don’t ask them to match ours. The only time we do that is for emergency calls.”

She says their portable grease trap pumping has become kind of a self-selecting service. “You serve one customer and in the food industry managers move often, and the staff is also high-turnover, so word spreads quickly when you have certain capabilities.”

Read more about Julie Southwick and A 1st Rate Pumping Service in the full profile in this month's issue. 



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