Kurt Cortese loves things clean and he loves cleaning them. So, whether attending to his own home or servicing the grease trap at a client’s business, he’s in his element. “I’m very OCD about it,” he admits. His wife, Stephanie agrees. “Our house — you can literally eat from the floors. It’s immaculate.” 

The couple are the owners of Cortese Pump Services in Wayne, New Jersey. The company strictly focuses on grease work — pumping traps and interceptors and providing regulatory inspections.

Customers are the beneficiary of Cortese’s meticulousness, as his cleaning process is very thorough, covering every part of the trap. He also keeps the trucks clean. “As soon as I pull into my driveway I’m cleaning my truck out, doing my windows,” he says. “If I have a half hour, an hour, I’ll clean.” Once a month, and especially in the winter when he’s dealing with salt and grime on the roads, he takes his trucks to a truck wash where technicians hand-wash and power-wash them.

Cortese also attends to his personal appearance. This wasn’t lost on one town official when Cortese and his technician Mike Tostano responded to an emergency call from a Pizza Hut. “We had to meet the municipal inspector because of an overflowing exterior trap. He saw us and the truck and the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Are you the grease guys?’ When I said yes, he said, ‘I’ve got to tell you something — I’ve never seen two guys and a truck that do grease be this clean.’” 

Cortese says although they service a number of high-class establishments where they certainly would never drag a grimy hose around, in reality he’s careful everywhere he goes. “All my places, I wouldn’t want to do that,” he says. “I pride myself in that. It’s a dirty job but you don’t have to be dirty.”

Read more about Cortese Pump Services in this month’s issue of Pumper magazine.