We’d like to welcome Tim Toler of Clean Sweep Lot Services in Indianapolis to the 1-800-SWEEPER family. Tim makes a great addition our organization and we’re glad to have him.
From starting with a broom and a wheelbarrow, Tim Toler has grown his company a long way. For eight years Tim Toler, now president of Clean Sweep Lot Service, Inc., did outside maintenance for a developer. Noticing that a store in the area wasn’t keeping its lot clean, Toler contacted the manager, who put him in contact with the management company. He not only got a contract to do that property, but nine others managed by the same firm.
For a couple years, Toler and his son continued to clean the properties by hand, all while continuing with his full-time day job. Coupled with starting to go to church on a regular basis, he says he came to the realization that there was enough money in other people’s trash to quit his regular job and go full time with sweeping.
Deciding that if he was going to have truck payments then he’d just as well have a new sweeper, Toler went out on a limb and bought a new Schwarze 347-I. After having walked lots for many years in his work for the developer, with sparing use of a Tennant sweeper — walking the soles off many pairs of shoes in the process — the overnight transition was enormous.
At first, he found himself still spending four to five hours on a property that previously took eight but now should be done in about three. Even then, one property manager simply could not be made happy. “However, I came to a realization,” Toler says, “that my time had to be worth much more than $10 an hour. That was the beginning of figuring out my actual costs and the pricing that needed to go with it.”
Toler credits his company’s growth with providing a good end product for his customer and always doing whatever he says he’ll do, period. That has brought him both growth and a high degree of customer loyalty.
