Power Vacuum Trailer / PVT Systems
 

Duct Cleaning

New Jersey heating oil dealer beats gas contractors to the punch.

As told to Robert M. Lightfoot III

    After 17 years in the fuel oil business, John Schoen started Schoen Duct Cleaning. A year and a half later he has two crews working six days a week cleaning commercial and residential ducts, will gross over a quarter million dollars this year in this business, and is blindsiding most of the gas heating contractors in his area. John and his crews compete on quality, were profitable in the first month of business. How do they do it? I talked to John, son John, and son in law, Mark Zaraeczny. Here is their story in their words.

    In this area the mixture is about 75% gas to 25% oil. Although our business is still growing, unless you are aggressive, this is a declining business. Residential or Commercial, it's cheaper for a developer to put in gas. The duct cleaning business opens up a complete new market. We weren't generating any new business from that 75%; now we have a fair crack at it.

    About three years ago my son John came with the company and started off mostly driving the oil truck and getting more interested in the business. Two years ago he came to me with several possibilities, including the duct cleaning business. I was a little skeptical but I felt that since he showed an interest in it, we would give it a shot. We spent a couple of months checking around different companies up and down the whole east coast.

    One of the first things we did was to join the National Air Duct Cleaners Association. This gave  us a lot of information about vendors and standards. These are the people that will be certifying duct cleaning technicians and setting standards for the business. (Editor's note: John is the New Jersey representative for NADCA!)

    We had seen a trailer belonging to another company. I talked to Larry Quick at PVT, who had faxed me some information on PVT units, which feature their Duct Whip®, a cleaning tool that scrubs the ducts clean. We compared them to some other equipment we had looked at, mostly portable units. We decided we liked the trailer better so we called up and made arrangements and bought the first trailer. Now, a year later, we have two, and will probably add a third this fall.

    Why a trailer? Even though the portable was more compact, and cheaper, everything is contained in the trailer. It has a compressor, which is important. All you have to bring into the building is hose; you don't have to move a refrigerator sized unit out of a truck, into the building, up and down the stairs and back to the truck at every stop.

    One of the main things that impressed us was that you could still us the primary vehicle for any other purpose. You have the trailer, you can bring it and leave it. The suction was also impressive, because it's so much more powerful than the best of the portable units. The stronger the vacuum the easier it makes the job.

    It didn't seem as important then, but now I don't see how you could clean a duct without the Duct Whip®. The ads say it scrubs the ducts clean, and it does, beautifully, leaving a polished, shining duct.

    Before, we would do gas installations, but we wouldn't necessarily have access to that job. Now, with duct cleaning, this opens up a whole new picture. When the guys are in there and the customer decides they want central air conditioning, or if they want to replace a furnace, a $300 duct cleaning job becomes a $5000 heater and air conditioning installation. If there is a problem with the furnace (more likely, because the gas furnace isn't inspected yearly like an oil furnace), again, we have first shot at it.

    It's very related, it's in the same line of business but yet it opens up a whole new set of avenues that we can follow up.

    It's also a year-round business. We've been going six days a week for months; the new trailer just lets us cut our backlog, it doesn't give us time off.

Want the rest of the story? Call or email us and we'll send it right out. Don't forget to see the Fuel Oil 98 story to read how well John's doing now.