Hamel Parking Lot Service follows the fairly recent purchase of a large company by someone who did not have any previous experience in this particular area of business. Learn more about how sweeping is handled in the heartland of America, Iowa, and how empowerment of employees can play a role in having a smooth-running operation.
SweepMasters’ market area extends from Waylon, Mississippi to Mobile, Alabama. Hurricane Katrina hit that area of Mississippi in August of 2005, changing the landscape — and the business landscape — ever since. Overnight, the company lost 75% of its customers. In addition, Monroe lost her home. With no work for their employees, the ownership duo took over all tasks in the company, a situation that continued for the next two years. Although faced with an uphill struggle, the SweepMasters organization shows that even after a disaster like Katrina competent members of the business community can persevere and come out the other side in growth mode.
Up until 1990, Bruce and Susan Rice owned and operated a western wear and horse equipment store in the North Denver, Colorado, area. However, in 1990 the western industry fell into a depression, which left them without a viable operation.
The new company, Painless Efforts, LLC, revolved around snow removal, which is a significant need in their Colorado location. At the same time, they also purchased a low profile Schwarze 343 in order to continue utilizing the five years of knowledge Bruce had gained from working with the sweeping company.
Mister Sweeper is one of the oldest and largest power sweeping companies in the United States. The company was founded in 1965 by David Franklin, prior to when most property managers had even heard of the concept of sweeping commercial properties. At that time there weren’t even a class of chassis-mounted sweepers being built for handling parking areas.
Dan Earl entered the sweeping industry in 2008, after selling his prior business and taking a few years off to a retirement he found to be boring. Earl had founded what became a very successful business that had only one thing in common with power sweeping: it was in another industry no one much thinks about, that of providing scale calibration services to the railroad industry.
In 2002, after former employer Interstate Sweeping closed their doors, Beth Krueger used her 20+ years of experience in the street sweeping industry and began putting together a list of clients broad enough to cover loan payments on her own street sweeper. Today, her company, Allstate Sweeping, is one of Colorado’s more well-known minority contractors, having been certified as a woman-owned business. Allstate Sweeping’s clients include RTD, one of Colorado’s public mass transit organizations, as well as the state’s Department of Transportation. Allstate Sweeping prides itself on its quality of work and its ability to pay their employees prevailing wage on more than 90% of their routes.
