Category: Parking Lot Cleaning

Video Transcription

Jeremy: Hey, I’m Jeremy Ashburn, and I’ve got Jim Downing with me. Jim actually runs his own business called 10 Point Litter Removal. You guys do trash pickup and removal for a variety of commercial businesses. So how are you doing today?

James: Very good, sir.

Jeremy: You know, I need my second cup of coffee. It’s one of those. So tell me, now if I have a local business, let’s say I own a strip mall or I’m the manager of a strip mall, that kind of thing, obviously during the day I’ve got most of my clientele, customers there during the day. I would probably be wondering when do you actually come and clean my parking lot? Or, when do you do your service?

James: Yeah, that’s pretty common question. Most of the jobs that we do, we obviously try to do it after hours or before hours, so that A) there’s not a lot of cars in the parking lot, B) it’s done before the customers or clients or property owners or tenants actually show up. So for instance, a strip mall, if it’s retail locations, we try to get everything done by 9:00 in the morning. Sometimes people want us there after hours. If they want us there after 5:00 we’ll come after the business closes after five, but generally speaking, most everything we shoot for every morning is to be by 9:00 AM. It just … It’s done quicker, it saves you money, and it’s nice to have everybody show up and actually see a nice clean parking lot, as opposed to have us running around like some of the competition does, at 12:30, 1:00 in the afternoons. It’s not very effective.

Jeremy: Yeah, and it also doesn’t seem as a professional, I guess, to have a cleaning crew come through in the middle of the day when people are trying to come in and out, it seems like.

James: Yeah. You’re probably meeting with a client or something. I mean, it’s one of the pet peeves I have is, a lot of times I’m here with a financial planner or a lawyer or something, and while you’re talking to the guy, there’s that a crew of 14 people walking by the window. We try very hard not to do that.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. I guess people are really thinking that they want it to be … It’s like the whole seen and not heard. They want that parking lot clean, but they don’t necessarily want to see people, kind of thing.

James: Yeah. Most of the work’s done when no one’s looking. That’s exactly right.

Jeremy: Definitely. Well, and then I’ll mention that of course anyone can go to the website. It’s 10, with the number 10, 10pointlitter.com and also give us your number.

James: Yeah. My cell phone directly. It’s 413-531-3755.

Jeremy: And then if anyone wants a quote, how does that work?

James: Real simple, you can call me on my cell phone and I come out. A lot of people in today’s day and age, they just want to go on the website, and you just plug in your address, let me know the location you’re at, and I can figure it out pretty quickly. You can usually have a quote within 15-20 minutes. I do them right on site.

Jeremy: Okay. Definitely. So they can either do it from the web, they get a quote from the web, or they, if you want the old fashioned way, you know, face-to-face, sort of face-to-face-

James: What a novel idea, actually come out and and go take a look at a job, and tell someone how much would it cost to do. Well, I walk it and see how long it takes me to walk to do the property as well, as opposed to going online and looking at satellite photos and trying to do an image. It’s just easier to kind of do the old fashioned way, like you said.

Jeremy: Definitely. And I think still, people appreciate the face-to-face when-

James: For sure.

Jeremy: There are times that they appreciate that. Well, I appreciate your time, Jim.

James: Thanks, Jeremy.

 

Video Transcription

Jeremy: Hey, it’s Jeremy Ashburn, and I’ve got Jim Downing with me, and we’re talking about 10 Point Litter Removal. So you run your own business called 10 Point Litter Removal, and you guys actually remove trash from a variety of commercial businesses, is that correct?

James: That’s correct, Jeremy.

Jeremy: And it’s a primarily local, sort of, strip malls, what kind of businesses do you serve?

James: Mostly commercial. It’s all commercial, actually. Lot of strip malls, convenience stores, schools, urgent care centers, professional office buildings, warehouse distribution-type places. And we do it on a daily service to stay on top of it, so it’s not like you have to wait until your landscaper shows up once a week and kind of runs everything into the grass. We also do it without the use of big, giant, heavy machinery. Power sweepers comes to mind, which is very, very expensive to operate. Our stuff is, we do have some specially designed hand tools that get us in and out of there really quickly [inaudible 00:01:10], but it gets a real detailed job and it’s very inexpensive versus the heavy machinery that people normally see on the road.

Jeremy: Yeah, so tell us about your equipment. What kind of equipment do you usually use to keep the parking lots clean?

James: Yep. So we don’t really, nothing that we use you’re going to … We don’t use anything that you’d find at a large do-it-yourself retail, home improvement store location. We have some stuff that we order out of the country that’s geared towards picking up the trash, giving a very detailed … It’s very similar to the stuff that’s in the home stores, but it’s a lot more efficient. Simply some of the hand blowers that we use, the backpack blowers for the leaves, we use a lot of brooms, rakes, things of that nature, and just really get down to that detailed job that you’re looking for to kind of pick up the common areas and then the landscape planters, and things that are just going to kind of get overlooked and missed if you’re using heavy machinery.

Jeremy: Okay, definitely. If somebody is curious about your services and wants to get a quote, how does that work?

James: Real easy. You could go onto our webpage at 10pointlitter.com, the number 10, or you could call me directly at cell number (413) 531-3755. I do the answering, I do the estimates, and real simple.

Jeremy: And of course if someone wants you to, you’ll come to the local business and give a quote there and meet the manager or owner or whoever?

James: Yeah. Sorry about that, for sure. Yeah. If someone wants the property looked at, a lot of times they’ll, most of the time they’ll actually have someone meet me onsite and show me the areas that they’d want clean or that’s been an issue for them in the past, but that’s the best alternative. I can certainly just get an address and go look at it myself, and yeah, we get your quotes in real short order.

Jeremy: Definitely. All right, well thanks for your time and I appreciate your answering the question.

James: Thanks, Jeremy.

 

Video Transcription

Jeremy: Hey, I’m Jeremy Ashburn, and I’ve got Jim Downing with me, and he’s with 10 Point Litter Removal. Now, you guys, what do you guys do, Jim?

James: Jeremy, our company specializes in cleaning litter from commercial parking lots, professional buildings. We do this mostly by hand. We get detailed right down to the nitty-gritty on the common areas that often get overlooked by large power sweeping companies or those areas that your customers, your clienteles and your tenants see when they’re walking in. Landscape planners and things of that nature. All commercial.

Jeremy: Definitely, all commercial. So I guess if you own a local business or you are working in a managerial position in a local business, and you’re noticing the parking lot, let’s start with this question: why would you want to keep a clean parking lot? Let’s do that question. What do you think?

James: Well a lot of times, sometimes what’ll happen is the tenants, like for instance, in a strip mall, like a four, six bay strip mall, they’ll notice when they’re putting the keys in the door opening up their hair salon or their clothing store or their coffee shop. They’ll see the trash every day, and usually they’ll contact the property management company that they’re noticing that, or their customer might notice it, because of the image that they’re trying to uphold. So, it’s pretty easy for us to go to that facility and see how long that it would take us to do that and how often you should be able to do that. That’s a very common question is, how often should I clean my [inaudible] have it done.

Jeremy: So yeah. So I guess that’s the other question, how often should you keep it cleaned?

James: It depends. I mean if it’s like a professional office building, maybe like a lawyer’s office or a doctor’s office, more than likely it only needs to be done maybe once a week. Some people do want it done every day, but a lot of that depends if there’s, the fast food is usually what generates the most. You know, or people at a convenience store where, you know, I think Disney said it best. I mean, he used to give out candy, that’s why there’s trash cans every 30 feet at Walt Disney World, because if it was 27 paces before you give out the free candy at Magic Kingdom before the wrapper ended up on the ground.

James: So the question really comes down to, how clean do you want it, and is there any fast food there? And if there’s fast food it probably should be done at least, normally once a day. Our standard is usually five days a week if there’s a fast food location in the strip mall.

Jeremy: And I guess we, you know, you’re really thinking about image as far as that whole question about why keeping a clean parking lot. I mean, you know, you’ve got that image where if it’s a clean parking lot, you’re giving that great first impression. I guess that also kind of conveys the sense that it’s a safe kind of place to be.

James:  Yeah, for sure, yep. And it’s easier to do.

Jeremy: I think a lot of times when I show I up in a real dirty area, I think this could be a dangerous area, you know? Or whatever.

James: It might show you know, maybe there’s a little bit of a thought, maybe the customer, I know myself I’ll kind of almost glance it over and think maybe there’s a little bit of laziness going on in the establishment. You wonder, you know, if you’re certainly gonna be charging a premium as far as a real estate company, maybe you want high end tenants, you’re probably on the other end gonna have to supply a high end product and have it cleaned for them.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. So the really thing to do though would be to have, if you are an owner of a local business or, you know, you are in staff and you’re responsible for the image there, as part of the staff, I would say that probably the thing would be to have you go to the location and you’ll show up and kind of do a walkthrough, and how does that work? If [crosstalk 00:03:36].

James: That’s real simple. A lot of times someone just gives me an address. I’ve given people quotes just by looking at how many parking spaces they have over satellite. It’s pretty easy to do it that way. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to maybe spend five, ten minutes with somebody and just have them show me the property lines, so that, we tend to overclean the areas that we’re doing because we certainly can figure out the property lines of a strip mall or professional office building, and normally we try to go 40 feet past the line as a rule of thumb. So sometimes even the neighbor might actually get a little bit of a benefit from that. But most of our properties take less than half an hour.

Jeremy: Okay. Definitely. Well and of course the thing to realize is that, you know, that it’s really easy for anyone to contact you. And that would just be primarily through where they would just call you, I guess that’d be the best way to reach, and would you give us your number and your website?

James: Yep. Yep. My cell phone, directly, it’s 413-531-3755. I answer it. I get back to people right away. And the other easy one is you can set up a quote or an estimate on our website at 10pointlitter.com, the number 10.

Jeremy: Okay. Definitely. 10pointlitter.com. Alright, well thanks for your time.

James: Thanks, Jeremy.