Goodwill from Way Back Brought in Big Account
In 2017, as the PRO industry was booming, I decided to jump back in. After many months of talking with Sanitrax, United Site Services, United Rentals, and others, I joined Reliable On-Site Services (ROS), a new division of United Rentals, Inc. (URI) on May 1. On May 13, the ROS and URI Gen Rents team deployed at the US Navy’s Fleet Week celebration in Manhattan, supplying toilets, sinks, holding tanks, restroom trailers, roll offs, light towers, and generators, as a supplier for MLS Corporation. Fleet Week is a three-day event on five NYC piers that generates hundreds of thousands in revenue.
This was not a bad way to start a new job! My Fleet Week event marked the first time that ROS had toilets, sinks, and holding tanks in New York City. At the time, I was unaware that UR Gen Rents had been trying to get this event for years—they always seek to cross sell among their five verticals. I needed the Gen Rents division to fulfill the promises I had made, and they all marshaled the team and delivered.
Fleet Week New York 2006-2009 and 2017
The backstory on how I was able to bring the Fleet Week job with me to ROS is that I had recently reconnected with Mike Darby at MLS. Years earlier, while at Mr. John, I personally had handled 9 Fleet Week events for Mike, but we had not spoken in the 11 years that had passed since I left Mr. John. After catching up on family and sharing that I was getting back in, I asked Mike if I could handle Fleet Week again. Mike immediately gave me the event—without knowing which of two pending job offers I would accept (the other offer was from United Site Services, Inc.). It was just like riding a bike—but better—as I was able to give ROS the job, replacing Sunbelt (light towers and generators) and Mr. John/Russell Reid (everything else) who had had it for years. I utilized Russell Reid as a sub-contractor for roll offs.
If you make promises and keep them—often under challenging dynamics with extremely high expectations (US Navy!)—show up, pay attention to all details, and never have any excuses, customers will rely on you to achieve their desired outcomes, and reward you with long-term repeat business and valuable referrals.
During the nine years that I handled Fleet Week for Mr. John, I coordinated contaminated holding tank (CHT) pumping with a fleet of 5,000-gallon straight trucks on the pier, all using 4” hose for maximum speed (load time 11 minutes), overnight hauling, roll offs for US Navy waste, and certified roll offs for international ships, restroom trailers, a 1.5M-gallon barge to take CHT from larger ships (the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, and the landing helicopter dock USS Nassau). I seamlessly coordinated (1) finding the barge, (2) finding a tugboat captain capable of mobilization and demobilization, and manning the barge 24/7, (3) cleaning the barge of prior contaminants, (4) finding a wastewater treatment facility with a barge dock for CHT disposal, (5) coordinating all mobilization and demobilization with the Navy’s event timetable, (6) deploying hundreds of feet of 4” hose, both for offloading CHT and for making connections between ships, when requested, and (7) showing up to make sure everything went as planned.
