When Hurricane Fran am-bushed North Carolina and the mid-Atlantic area on Sept. 5, 1996, its 115-mph winds and torrential rains devastated Raleigh, N.C., to the tune of $930 million and $4.5 billion of damages statewide.
Flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley areas, sudden snow in Denver and New England and droughts in the Plains states have wreaked similar havoc over the past few years.
Such environmental disasters are obviously tragic situations, but the reality is that lawn and landscape contractors in areas hit by such misfortune can benefit from an abundance of opportunities for work.
PREP WORK. Contractors interviewed for this story credited their companies’ ability to get to work immediately following disasters for their success. “The hurricane created an overwhelming demand for so many different services that whoever could supply the equipment got the work,” explained Sam Lang, president, Fairway Green Inc., Raleigh, N.C. “The entire city was essentially shut down, though, and lawn care was the least of anybody’s concern. So we leased two logging crews and equipment from a logging company in Georgia, and we went into the logging business.”
Getting the use of enough equipment to deal with the situation and finding the personnel to operate that equipment are the two main challenges companies face in disaster relief work. “For equipment, contractors have to be ready to do whatever is necessary to get the work done, and that may mean buying, renting or borrowing,” noted Keith Miller, construction operations manager, Cedar Landscape, Hillsboro, Ore. “After the floods, we had limited people available. We had no choice but to pull employees from other jobs.”
Along with difficulties obtaining equipment, contractors confronted with such a situation should prepare for tremendous wear on equipment. “We had to use crews that didn’t have as much experience taking care of the equipment as we would have liked, and slowing down the equipment isn’t an option,” noted Tom Tolkacz, vice president, Swingle Tree Co., Denver, Colo.
Swingle was forced into relief action when an early, heavy snowfall hit the Denver area while most trees still had their leaves, which caused considerable tree damage. “A year later we’re seeing the maintenance effects on the equipment we used after the storm, and we’re seeing a lot of problems that the equipment shouldn’t be having this soon.”
And Swingle was in the envious position of having specific equipment locked away that was only to be used in the event of a storm (see sidebar). “The key is being able to get the most crews working as soon as possible,” Tolkacz said. “If I could have gotten extra people in from other companies to help us out, then I would have done that.”
| The Plans In Place |
Thoseplanning meetings proved worthwhile on Sept. 21, 1995, when an unexpected snow storm dropped as much as 20 inches of wet snow across the Denver area. “We have 20 employees with their home phone numbers included in the plan, so when that storm hit, I started the chain of phone calls going and we were ready to get to work,” said Tom Tolkacz, vice president. The 15-page plan is comprehensive and was created to instruct every employee as to their specific responsibilities following the storm. Here are some of the basics: Examples of tasks to be handled in emergency situations include ordering/renting equipment, handling irrigation shutdowns, hiring temporary employees, scheduling, quality control and even coordinating with cities to determine open and closed roadways. “We certainly had to make adjustments to the plan as we went along,” Tolkacz said, “but having it already in place and being familiar with it allowed us to be prepared for the immediate issues that arose and not lose any time.” |
SERVICE FIRST. Getting customers on the phone or in the door was not a problem for any of these companies. “We turned away more work than we took on,” said Lang, echoing his colleagues’ experiences. With so much work available, two questions arise: Which clients do you say no to? And when do you start saying no to everybody?
“Our biggest issue was how long were we going to take on new clients,” admitted Tolkacz. “Work came in so rapidly that we had real difficulty projecting when we could service the jobs. We stopped taking all new work four days after the storm.”
Tolkacz said the company’s Storm Plan included actual scripts for customer service representatives to follow when handling new calls. “This was important because we had to find out which customers had problems that were real hazards to people or their homes so we got to that work first.”
David Blakeley, president of Southern Tree & Turf Co., Raleigh, N.C., said his company only serviced current customers because the demand was so great. “We had 15 or 20 crews going seven days a week for two weeks, and some probably worked 100 hours the first week,” he said. “This was a case where our service was a necessity to keep clients satisfied, and, hopefully, the clients will be equally loyal to us.”
Tolkacz agreed on the importance of assisting any clients with disaster-related problems. “It’s really more of a necessity than a option,” he explained. “But you always have to be in a position to be able to say no.”
The companies all saw this business boom, although none of them marketed these particular services.
“We always try to emphasize to our customers that we’re there for them no matter what the situation, but these situations occur so unpredictably that it’s really difficult to sell for them,” remarked Miller. “The primary thing is to have the relationships and customer base before the disaster occurs. You don’t want to look like an ambulance chaser afterwards.”
PLENTY OF PROFITS? “This is real tough work to do profitably,” warned Blakeley. “We did make money, but we didn’t line our pockets off of the hurricane. There are too many ex-penses for overtime, hotel rooms for extra per-sonnel, extra equipment and so on.
“We heard all kinds of horror stories of rates being jacked up, but we knew we’d still have to deal with these clients over the long term, so we only charged our normal overtime rates,” Blakeley continued.
“We generally charged about 1½ times our normal rate, but with all of the extra costs we made roughly the same amount of profit as with normal work,” said Tolkacz. “It was difficult in some cases to charge people the higher rates, and some employees seemed to get nervous charging so much, but this is an area where our preparation work helped us out because we had done the research to know exactly what we had to charge and why.”
In fact, Tolkacz said, contractors may often want to make extra sacrifices to maximize their profits immediately following an environmental disaster because they may see revenues drop off in the following months. “We lost between $15,000-$17,000 in aerations following the snow,” he said. “Overall, there’s been a drastic reduction in the sales in our market since the storm. The storm seemed to create a real awareness about tree pruning, so a lot of people got their trees pruned right away, and I think the rest of the people are holding back because they spent so much money after the storm.”
Lang had a unique opportunity following the hurricane that he warned may not be as attractive as it seems. “We took contracts with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but companies really have to have deep pockets to take on these contracts,” he said. “The contract and payment forms are complicated, and this can hold up invoices. It’s often two to six weeks until you get paid, but you’ve still got to meet your own payroll.”
FEEL THEIR PAIN. Contractors’ customer communication skills are also tested in these situations. “Everybody wants their problems taken care of right away, but when you explain how busy you are, people are usually understanding,” noted Miller.
“We were getting hammered with phone calls, faxes and people just showing up at the office,” added Tolkacz. “We mailed postcards to all of our customers for general communication and status reports.”
Tolkacz pointed out there are other methods of mass communication available. “We worked a lot with the media to get the message out about how people should treat branches or limbs against electrical wires and other dangerous situations,” he continued.
Steve Erbe, owner of Top Care Inc., St. Louis, Mo., has suffered through multiple droughts and floods. “When we see the bad weather coming, we try to be proactive by alerting our customers as to how the weather will affect their property,” he said. “We also pay attention because if there’s a drought we have to anticipate an increase in turf installations and order extra seed.”
Regardless of how proactive or reactive a company is, Tolkacz warned contractors to be prepared for considerable job losses and customer turnover following one of these disasters. “You will lose customers — there’s no way around it,” he lamented. “We were booked out six months, when our normal response time is two to four weeks. Our cancellation rate almost doubled because we couldn’t get to all of the work. It became a real planning nightmare, trying to figure out how much of the money we put on the books we were actually going to capture.”
The author is Associate Editor with Lawn & Landscape magazine.
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