2014 Truck of the Month
PM has featured so many great plumbing service trucks! See plenty of them here in our Truck Of The Month Archives page. Are you proud of your truck? Go to our Truck of the Month page to find out how your service truck could be chosen!
October 2014: Ranshaw Plumbing & Heating, Whitestone, N.Y.
Ranshaw Plumbing & Heating President Rick Bonelli started with the family-owned company as a teenager, working while attending high school and college. After graduating college in 1978, Bonelli began to take on more responsibilities at the company, eventually receiving his New York City Master Plumber’s license.
Now with 60 employees and 20-plus vehicles, the Whitestone, N.Y.-based company covers the NYC boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan, as well as western Nassau County on Long Island. Widely known in the area for its residential and commercial work in heating and fuel oil, the company wanted to inform customers of other parts of its business.
“We’ve been doing plumbing longer than we have been doing oil and we wanted to create an advertisement or some kind of character on this truck that would catch people’s eyes,” Bonelli says.
To read the full article please click here.
January 2014: Olin Plumbing Co. Tampa, FL
Olin Plumbing’s trucks aren’t hard to spot. All four are wrapped with a simple yet effective blue-and-yellow design. Olin worked together with Tampa-based Good Guy Signs to create the design for the trucks. The eye-catching color scheme and the picture of the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge (a well-known area landmark) were Good Guy Signs’ ideas.
Olin decided he liked the simplistic look and wanted to add a touch of family to it. So he came up with the idea to have his daughter, Jennifer Olin, lean on him with the slogan: “I lean on Dad. You can, too” inscribed to the right of the picture.
He also came up with the idea to have all profits from the company’s backflow tests go to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg.
To read the full article on Olin Plumbing Co. please click here.
February 2014: Creative Multicare, Stockbridge, Ga.
Founded as a cleaning and restoration services company in 1992, Stockbridge, Ga.-based Creative MultiCare launched its plumbing division in 2007. “When our water-extraction technicians were called to the site of broken or clogged pipes, especially late at night, they were all too often left waiting for plumbers to arrive,” explains Patrick McDonald, Creative’s president. “We thoughtCreative’s jet trucks are each operated by two-person teams (an experienced plumber and a helper) and fitted with a jet-clearing unit. “We love the maneuverability, the storage space for equipment and the ease of use,” Barnes says. "The trucks are designed to function with maximum productivity in mind.”
Each jet truck also carries a video-detection unit that “allows for the reconnaissance of many plumbing issues that normally go unseen,” he says. Results are saved to a DVD or thumb drive and are shown to customers on-site so they can see what’s wrong. we could do a better, more responsive job and I believe we have.”
To read the full article on Creative Multicare, please click here.
March 2014: Jupiter- Tequesta, Jupiter, FL
Richard F. Kuntz, founder and now retired president, started Jupiter-Tequesta at the age of 30. He started out in new construction, saw the opportunity in service and repair, and has been focused on residential service and replacement ever since. Covering residential homes in the Florida counties of Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie, Jupiter-Tequesta now offers service, maintenance and replacement for plumbing, HVAC and electrical.
The Jupiter, Fla.-based company has 48 employees and 30 trucks. It uses four different kinds of trucks: the Ford Transit for HVAC maintenance; the Ford E250 along with 12 box trucks for HVAC installations; the Ford E350 with a 12–in. Spartan box for plumbing service; and the Ford KUV body for electrical service.
Some trucks feature both father and son in full, along with company info, while others such as the E350s feature just the logo on both sides with Richard Kuntz’s head on the driver’s side (pictured above) and Matthew Kuntz’s head on the passenger’s side.
Another design includes the addition of turtles swimming across the side. The door reads, “A portion of this van’s proceeds are donated to: Loggerhead Marinelife Center.” And the “Same-day service” promise is moved underneath the phone number.
To read the full article on Jupiter-Tequesta, please click here.
April 2014: Prestige Plumbing Heating Cooling, North Aurora, Ill.
Tim Miller, co-owner and president of Prestige Plumbing Heating Cooling, has been in the business for 30 years. He started as a service plumber in 1984 and soon moved into new construction. That’s when he decided to start his own business. Miller started Prestige in 1989, at age 30, and once had as many as 75 employees doing plumbing and HVAC work on new homes — more than 1,000 a year for 15 years until the housing market crashed.
The van is a 2012 Chevy Cargo Van and the three trucks are GMC cab overs with 14-ft. Hackney boxes (pictured above). Miller says his favorite aspect of the van is the Adrian adjustable shelving. In addition to the adjustable shelving, the trucks feature plastic-part bins and pullout ramps.
In order for the company’s brand to be noticed and remembered, Miller redesigned his old trucks. The van and two of the three trucks are wrapped; the third is in the works.
To read the full article on Prestige Plumbing Heating Cooling please click here.
May 2014: Executive Service and Construction, Boise, Idaho
Paul Lawson, owner and operator of Boise, Idaho-based Executive Service and Construction, has done everything he can to stay afloat after the recession and is now ready to begin expansion again. Having started in 2000, the company — known as “the one with the big red vans” — once had eight vans, 11 employees, a main shop and even an attached drive-through coffee shop.
Lawson also was a builder. The three spec homes he built and lost during the Great Recession forced him into bankruptcy. But he has refused to give up. “I have worked too hard to quit,” says Lawson. “Besides, my customer base is very loyal. I want them to be able to count on me to get the job done right.” Now his company is a one-man show with a truck Lawson built himself (pictured above).
The Classic Design Studio of Boise helped with the company logo and design of the wrap. The fleet all had different names from Executive Rooter Service to Executive Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning. “I can hardly go anywhere without someone making a positive comment about the truck,” Lawson says.
To read the full article on Executive Service and Construction, please click here.
June 2014: Dutton Plumbing, Simi Valley, Calif.
Having followed in his father’s footsteps, Eric Dutton started his own plumbing company in his late 20s. Now, 26 years later, he has 39 employees. Dutton Plumbing is a 100% residential service and repair company. Located in Simi Valley, Calif., the company covers 14 cities in Ventura County and 50 in Los Angeles County.
With so much ground to cover, Dutton Plumbing needs every one of its 18 trucks. These trucks feature three different wrap designs. Of the 18, 16 are wrapped in the yellow design (above right). They are Mitsubishi FE 160s with a 12 1/2-ft. Hackney P2000 with years ranging from 2005 to 2013, all wrapped by Eyedentity Graphics in Camarillo, Calif.
The company slogan “The plumber you’d send to your Mom’s house” can be seen on all three wraps. It originated when Falconer was trying to convey to a customer service representative what set Dutton apart from other plumbing companies. “I wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining it and then the phrase popped out organically,” Falconer says. “I told him how he might not care what type of person goes to his house but if he were going to send someone to his Mom’s house, he’d probably want a true professional that’s been background-checked, drug-screened, etc.”
To read the full article on Dutton Plumbing, please click here.
July 2014: Vito Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning, Washington, D.C.
Vito Services celebrated its 80th anniversary July 1. James Vito Inc. was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1934 by James Vito Sr. His son, James B. Vito, started working with his father in the 1940s and became president of the company around 1960.
Third-generation president Michael A. Vito started in the company in the late 1970s and became president in the late 1990s. Chief Operating Officer James G. Vito, Michael Vito’s nephew, joined the family business in 2000. Anthony Vito II, Michael Vito’s son, represents the fourth generation of Vito family members in the business.
With 60 employees and 45 vans, the company, open 24/7, serves 15 cities in the District of Columbia, 21 cities in Virginia and 54 cities in Maryland. A Nexstar member, Vito Services provides service, repair, remodel, plumbing and HVAC services for commercial and residential customers, as well as residential new construction. It is currently working on the Roosevelt Building in Washington, a seven-story renovation consisting of all new plumbing.
To read the full article please click here.
August 2014: Boston Standard, Dorchester, Mass.
With only his old Dodge Sprinter and a cellphone,Joseph C. Wood, 33-year old owner of Boston Standard, started his company in 2008 out of his apartment in Dorchester, Mass.
Wood put a strong emphasis on his online presence and review sites and was able to grow the business by word of mouth.
About a year later, Wood hired his mother, Mary Lou Wood, and a few good friends to help with the workload. Later that year, the company moved to its first official office in Dorchester. “Since then we have continued to grow,” Wood says. “We just moved to a new and much larger office this year, which should allow us room to grow for the coming years.”
Boston Standard is now a 24/7 company that focuses on service, repair and installation for residential and commercial companies, and does occasional remodeling jobs. Belonging to the Dorchester Networking Group and the Better Business Bureau, the company covers the greater Boston area with 15 employees and eight vehicles, including two 2005 Chevy Express cutaways with Hackney AC1000 boxes, a 2008 Freightliner Sprinter 144-in. high top, a 2010 Chevy Silverado 1500 quad cab with A.R.E. truck cap, a 2012 Mercedes Benz Sprinter 144-in. high top, two 2014 Dodge Promaster 159-in. high-top vans and a 2014 Chevy Express cutaway with a Hackney AC1000 box (pictured above).
To read the full article please click here.
September 2014: Cumberland Plumbing
Third-generation plumber and president/owner of Cumberland Plumbing John G. Poundsgot his start in the industrial side of plumbing. When the economy started its downturn and construction work was near nonexistent, he and his father, John H. Pounds, decided to take a risk and start a plumbing service company.
“In 2012 we started out with one van — just me and my dad running service calls,” John G. Pounds says. “In the past two and a half years, we have grown to three vans and a service truck with four hardworking guys who run the services calls, as well as my wife, Jessica Pounds, who does the books and maintains the office side of things.” Pounds’ father recently retired but consults when needed.
Located in the southeast of Georgia, with the Cumberland Island National Seashore being a part of the community, Pounds wanted a name signifying it is a hometown and local plumbing company. Although it primarily services Camden County, the company also serves a 30-mile radius covering Glynn and Charlton Counties.
To read the full article, click here.