Overhauling The Shop Storage For Efficiency in Our Lawn Care Business!

Hey, what's up, guys? It's Lee, the office manager of Augusta Whatcom County. And today we wanted to show you how we optimize our shop setup to make it more efficient and streamlined going into this new season, 2021.

So if you've seen our videos in the past, lots of Mike's content has done shop tours as well. If you've come up for conference 2019, when we actually met in person, when we could do that, we did a shop tour. So you probably saw these storage containers that we're in, and we've done a lot of product reviews and different things in these storage containers. So this off season, this winter, myself and our maintenance staff decided we could streamline these boxes a lot better. So what we did is completely rearrange them. We made one box strictly dedicated to maintenance, and then one box strictly dedicated to landscaping, as well as product treatments and applications. So right now we're in what we call box two. And this is going to be the maintenance only box. So it's going to be essentially dominated by our three maintenance staff. And what we do is we just streamlined everything so it's all in the back of the box. As you can see here, everything in the back of the box is going to be what only the maintenance staff needs to use. The whole front of the box during the season is going to be empty. There's going to be nothing in the front of the box. The reason for that is so that we can just have the crew at the end of the day or middle of the route if a piece of equipment goes down, if they need repairs, if something happens mid route, all they have to do is come back, throw it in the front of box two, leave it, and leave it for the maintenance staff. So the maintenance staff knows that if something is tagged and it's in the front of box two, that it needs to be repaired. So we set everything up here. I think you saw this in a video Mike did. The guys did an amazing job. They built themselves a workbench. Way cheaper than going out. You don't need to buy a brand new 6, $700 workbench. They mounted some lights themselves. They have a little bit more light in here. We also have organization of different nuts, screws, bolts for, you know, steel parts, the trimmers that we're going to be mainly using as well as the blowers, so replacement parts that they can just quickly change in and out as they need to. We keep some spare equipment down below. Not going to get into the nitty gritty on the other side, we just have a shelf strictly dedicated pretty much to tools and then also truck maintenance. So we have different oils, antifreeze, coolant, things like that down there for the different equipment as well as the trucks. So that is dedicated to the maintenance staff there in the back corner. As you can see now, I've kind of stepped out of the way. You'll see that that is equipment that needs to be addressed this off season. So different things like those sprayers might need a new tube, a new handle, the blowers might need a new pull cord, whatever it may be. The maintenance staff is addressing that this winter, and that's where they will put stuff that they're in the middle of working on. So they. That way the crew doesn't grab anything from this box that's in that back corner. They know, hey, the maintenance staff's working on it, it's not ready to go, they're repairing it. And then in this guy, what I love is all the blades we have. We have Gravely blades, we have X mark blades, we have Honda blades. You know, we are simplifying services and trying to standardize equipment. So pretty soon this will only be 30x blades and Honda 21 blades, because we'll use those as backups. But that's kind of the setup we have here. All right, so this is box three. Now, box three used to be a hybrid. We used to actually do blade sharpening in here as well as keep landscape stuff assorted in here as well. And the treatments used to be in box too, if you remember that from our tour and previous videos. So we decided let's reduce the footprint of everything, make this box strictly dedicated to landscaping and treatments. So we'll swing in here, and the footprint is so much smaller. We got rid of so much junk. This is streamlined, efficient, quick and easy for the crew. So up in the front, you're going to see we have chains, tie downs, levels, various things that only a landscaping crew is going to need. Some sawhorses, laser level. And then we have the landscaping toolboxes that we keep on hand that have, you know, line levels, gloves, chisels, hammers, different things they're going to need for hardscaping jobs. Those are right here in the front. So we kept those in the front. So landscaping crews, they usually need to come in, grab one or two of those, and then they're off for the day. Maybe a wheelbarrow. In the winter, we mounted all the sprayers here on the wall. Keeps them out of the way, keeps them off the ground, and Keeps them nice and clean. So that way, you know, the sprayers aren't getting fouled up, the hoses aren't getting stepped on, things like that. We kept them out of the way for the winter. And then most of these are going to go on the trailerless setups that you've seen us talk about. But a couple will just stay in here as backups. So that way we know they're here, mounted on this wall. And not like mounted, say, in the back of box two. So the crew might not get them confused With a piece of equipment that needs to be repaired. So those are going to be mounted up here, Kept off the ground and safe. We also just line up our spreaders here. So the spreaders don't get used as much. That's why we mount or not mounted them. Excuse me. Just kind of lined them up on the side here. So we have four different types of spreaders. We always try different ones every season to see what the crew likes. So those are here and then in the back, Same thing as over there. We had the guys build a nice workbench. So here we did the same thing. We built a shelving system for our treatments Going into this year, 2021, we. We're only going to offer five granular treatments. So we didn't need as much floor space as we did previously. So what we did is we built a shelf. So that way we have the bins for each treatment. And then we can store extra bags either on the side. We might build another shelf up top and store bags up top. Or even in this back corner where I'm standing right here. This space isn't even being used because we're so efficient to reduce the footprint of certain things that we now have just extra space for storage. So we might even store some bags here, which is great. And then in the back, we just have some miscellaneous equipment. We got a couple rollers. Those don't go out as much. Those used to be in the green shed, which I know Mike's done a video in the green shed before. These only go out, you know, maybe every once in a while in the summer. Definitely not going to go out in the winter. So we tuck those in the back. Got our rollers here. And then, you know, pressure washer, air compressor. Things that aren't going to get used as much were just left in the back of this box. So I hope that helped you guys out. We really, really streamlined. I wish we had some footage of the way the boxes were set up before, because it's a night and day difference when you kind of rip everything out and really see, where are my inefficiencies? Where could I save 5, 10 seconds every day by rearranging my system? Now's the time to do it. You got a few weeks before the busy season kicks up. That's what we're doing right now, rearranging everything so that when the busy season kicks up, we are ready to roll and to be efficient and ultimately make money. Because that's why we're doing it, guys. Leave a comment, subscribe like, and we'll see you guys next time.