Ramp Rack Review After 1 Year & Signing New Construction Contract

What's up, guys? We are going to do the ramp rack review. We've now had these things for about a year almost. So some of you have been asking how it's been going, what have we learned, et cetera. So let me go ahead and show you around the ramp rack. If you haven't watched the previous video that we shot last year when we first got them, check those out. We made one kind of doing a more in detail walk around as well as Lee doing one on the installation process. So check those out. But today's just really kind of a recap on our experience with them. So if you haven't seen the ramp rack before, basically it allows you to get into the back of the bed of the truck. You don't have to use trailers, et cetera. So we've used these all across the country, not only at our franchise locations, but at our corporately owned locations. So we have these in North Carolina, we have them in New York as well as Washington state at our corporate locations. So what's nice is the spring loaded ability of the back rack or back ramp, I should say, if you want to get in and out, it's really, really easy. Like you can literally pick this up with a couple fingers. It's not like super heavy, which again is nice. On a regular trailer. What we always found is, is they have those little cords that coil up on both sides of the, of the ramp. But whenever you're moving zero turns in and out or big mowers, those would get caught and they would break. And we were always like rewrapping them on the spring coil and all the rest of it. So this thing's pretty hardy. And honestly, if it broke, like, my.

Goodness, I don't know what you have to do.

Like, it's, it's pretty intense. But what we use these bad boys mostly for is for push mowers here at the local shop. So at the local shop we use 30 inch Exmark mowers. Some of our franchisees use the Toro, Time Masters, et cetera. But what we used this for here in the back, we had to custom make this. They are available on Amazon for you to purchase. But they were just too like skinny and flimsy. So we actually ended up welding these and fabricating these ourselves. And they worked really good. What you do is you just put the tire in sideways or, sorry, the mower in sideways. And then this locks the front wheel in place. So that way the mower doesn't move back and forth. It does the exmark 30x mowers do have a parking brake, but we just found like if someone forgot it or even with it on, it could still slide around with this being wet. So we have these, they lock right in place. They, we just bolt them right down to the wire mesh here and it works really good. At our other locations that we have in New York and North Carolina etc, we do use zero turns. A lot of people like, oh, I can never use that because I need like a 48 inch mower. Well, you can get a 48 inch mower in here. Let me show you a little bit here. So as long as you can get your deck in between these, you're good to go. We've only seen 48s fit in here, but one of our franchisees out in Tennessee said they actually got a 52 inch mower in by simply. If you actually dented these wheel wells in, we don't really recommend doing that very much, maybe an inch or two, but you are kind of like damaging the bed of the truck when you do that. But you can technically get a 52 in here. And it really depends on the truck too. So what I'd recommend doing is measure between these wheel wells and see what you're going to be able to get inside here. So for example, I know for a fact I can get a 36 inch between these and pull the mower all the way to the front. I'm not going to be able to get like a 48 inch mower through here because it's going to be rubbing up against the side here. But what's nice is back here the deck can sit. So the deck can sit back here. And that's why you still have so much more room because your back tires of your stand on mower or zero turn can be on the back of the ramp here. So you can still definitely like. So like last week we posted a video on TikTok and like there's a whole bunch of questions. The biggest one is like I can't get big equipment on it. Okay, you can get up to 52 inches and you can have the deck be back here. Or if you go like 36 inches, you can get all the way to the front.

Of the bed here with a 36, for example. Another thing people always ask about is debris. So the nice thing about having the push mower is literally we aren't even using any of the bed of the truck because this is all extension of the ramp rack. And so the wheel locks in place here and then you literally have the Entire bed for debris, et cetera. So they're about to use this truck for the day. They already got extra sprayer and bins and all the rest of it. This is where the debris would go though, and then the push from over here. Now the downside of the ramp rack is if you do have a zero turn and it's sitting on the back here and taking a bunch of space, you don't have much space for debris. And those clippings are going to fly in the face of your mower, which kind of stinks getting the debris out. Again, it's not like you have a dump bed. Again, we're going for simplicity here. It is a pain to have to like, yes, you're going to have to shovel out, you know, clippings. That is a pain in the neck. We've seen some people put an insert where they have the tarp system where they can just do the whole wheel thing and then move the debris off the back here. But still it is a bit of a pain just to get it all off and the guys will just blow off this mesh at the end of the day to get all the debris, the clippings, etc off. So those are kind of some of the major drawbacks I would say is the fact that your debris sits here and usually your mowers behind it. So debris is flying in the face of that. The fact that again you're going to be limited somewhat by the size of mower that you do bring on this truck. And when you bring a bigger mower now you got to start thinking about suspension. For us we don't have to worry about it because our mowers are light. This is relatively light. Like this is pretty light stuff. But if you get like a 50 inch zero turn mower on here now you got to start thinking about like do your springs and your suspension going to be able to sustain that over the course of several years. All that wear and tear. So you might have to put some. I'm not by any means inclined when it comes to trucks and stuff, but you could definitely probably put like, I don't know, blocks or some people airbag things for the suspension. That would definitely help, you know, leaf springs, I don't even know what they're called. But upgrading that might be necessary if you are going to be getting a bigger piece of equipment in the back here. The other downside of these is the fact that, and people mentioned this in the video last time is storage of these. And it's totally true and that is you Know if you don't have inside storage, like we don't want to have to build a massive shop where we park our trucks inside simply because it's gonna be really expensive. It's not lean, it's hard to find. It's expensive real estate to be able to get ahold of. And so what we'd rather do is just find. And basically a big gravel parking area is what we found at all our corporate locations is big open gravel parking area for the trucks and all the rest of it. And then just have these sitting outside. The downside is if I have a big mower in the back here. As you can see right now, there is no mower here because we actually store them inside of these bins. So for those of you who are worried about storage, we put it inside these bins here. We have 1, 2, 3 of these big 40 foot containers. And this is where we can store the mowers at night. And so same thing. If you have a zero turn, you can just open this thing up and park your mowers in here at night. Again, this is really, really lean. Yes, it's nicer to have a big roll up storage and all the rest of it. And our new headquarters will probably have one of those kind of big bays. But if you're looking for lean and efficient, definitely this is a great option. A 40 foot container. You get them in 20 foot containers as well if space is limited for you. But you can put it on a parking gravel open area, park all your trucks and at night all you have to do is put the mower inside of here. It's still easier than backing up a trailer. It's still easier than trying to get your employees every morning to back up and get the hitch correctly aligned on the ball and all the rest of it. So that's kind of a quick review. Some of the downsides, the pros and the cons, definitely the pros, is the fact that that bad boy, I put a mower on it and it's ready to roll. There's no trailers. It's only what, maybe 20ft long instead of 40ft. By the time I get like a 18, 20 foot trailer on here, it's much more difficult to drive, takes up a lot more space, et cetera. So definitely a great option for you. If you want to think about doing a trailerless setup. We've had a great experience with it so far. There's definitely downsides though. The installation process is not great. We have to drill those holes to get those racks on There. And that was not fun. If you're like me, you're not good with tools, might be a little more difficult for you. Maybe take it to a fab shop, take it to a mechanic that can drill the holes real quick for you. So you can put the racks on the side. That's a downside. The downside of storage and having equipment outside. Another downside, debris. You don't have a ton of space for debris. Or like 30 turn mowers are not gonna fit on that. So there's definitely a place for these. Definitely not for everyone. Big commercial spots, big massive jobs that you're doing where you need big 60 inch zero turns and multiple people and all the rest of it, a bunch of debris. Probably not the best option for you. So here's kind of the review of the ramp rack. We've had it for about 12 months, use it all across the country and we look forward to making more of them. Copy and paste.

So very simply, we give them quotes for the job, we define the scope of work and if the scope of work is completed, we give them the price for that. Right. So if everything is done according to the scope of work in the estimate, time doesn't matter. That's how we present it to the client. And if you think about it on the flip side, if we showed up and it took them seven hours, we would charge them the same amount. Yes, we bid by the job and we charge for that work. The scope of work is really the only thing that matters. As long as that is done accurately, we will bill them for that. So time is one small variable for a job.

So if you want to share your 100% answer.

No, that was good.

The follow up though, the part with.

That is the fact that they knew the hours. That's a mistake on the franchisees part.

Yeah, it is. But at the same time we can't necessarily control that.

But it would definitely be a follow up conversation like, because like even the canned response of like about the hours, the client knows we're now billing based upon hours in some degree. So it needs to be clear, the franchisees and estimator, we never share budget hours because you're just disarming the employees who are trying to go as fast as possible. And like you said, and you can tell them the phone, if it would have taken them five times as long, you would have been charged the same amount. And that starts to make more sense in their mind. It's like, I'm not changing the estimate. It's not like an Estimate. It's a quote, really. Right. And that's why even the word estimate I don't like a whole lot, because it makes it like, oh, we're just kind of guessing. It's like, no, that's the number unless you change something. Right. So, yeah, it would be a follow up conversation, I think, with a franchisee too. They're like, hey, don't tell. And the guys on the field too. Sometimes they'll be like, oh, wow, we got four hours for this job. And the client's like, oh, okay, great. And then they leave in an hour and then that's when they're calling. So that's the employee's fault. And like, I'd be like, hey, you should go back and spend your four hours since you told them that. So, yeah.

All right, we just left command center, headed over to the contractors that are building reset and looking over the plans, designs, estimates. It's gonna be very bad. Cost of everything's going up. But right now I'm hopping on a contractor conference call with our attorney and our Stanwood Camino island franchisee that's signing right now. But the actual signing of the franchise agreement only literally takes like five minutes. But I have to call in. Then we docusign it over the phone. Usually I do it in my office, but.

Here we go.

Mike here. How you guys doing?

Awesome. So this is the franchise agreement signing. So it's really just kind of a formality. We sign it and actually give the license for them to start up.

You can start. I'll just give you both the same speech, which is there's a bunch of questions, a lot of yeses, a lot of no's. I'm sorry, a lot of signatures. One actually on this one, two sets of initials because the map is on the second page. And then a bunch of yes, no questions. If Mike and I have done our jobs right, and I know Mike has all of the answers, should always be yes. Obviously you should answer honestly, but they should all be yes. Okay, sounds good.

So yesterday you saw me in the vlog, I was doing a zoom call with potential franchisees out of Tampa Bay, and they just emailed me right now saying they're going to go forward with it. So that's pretty cool. They'll be starting next spring, but I'll try to fill in some of the gaps as days go on. You can kind of see as people join and things. So we're signing for these folks. They're going to be starting in a couple months. And this is the actual Agreement signing. And then the process was kind of just finished up as well. Tampa Bay, Florida. So moving forward. Okay, now time to reset into reset.

Let's go.

So that is the fun of having all the businesses is changing from one business the other and your whole mindset. So like we just switched from. That was our 39th closing with our 40th. Just committing for Augusta Lawn Care. This morning I had to go do the bunch of bank stuff for Blame Anytime Fitness because the SBA loan. And now we're driving into contractor to finalize the project at Reset Mind and Body. You haven't, if you haven't checked it already, there's gonna be a link down below that shows a little bit of the mission and what we're doing at Reset Mind and Body. Basically a lot of biohacking things like ice tubs, saunas, red light therapy, float tank, all that good stuff. Just trying to do meditation, yoga, stuff like that. But now we gotta figure out paying the bills for the construction job.

Hey, how's it going? This is Danny. Don't mind him, he's just doing a video.

The acoustical ceiling will come into here, hit the bottom of that, and then we're gonna jump up to above those upper windows.

All right.

Then we're looking at shower doors. We're going to have a shower door.

Here, here, here, and here.

Yep.

Okay.

And I'm giving you. I've given you an allowance of 1600 bucks for the shower doors.

Okay, very cool.

Well, I might be able to get inspection before all the.

That's.

That's, I think, what they're counting on.

Yeah. Yeah.

So all, all these.

Yeah.

If you're, if you're telling me that Alan's, Allen's, the guy we're using now.

Yeah.

I'll say, hey, send a price over for challenge. You can follow up with them, too, so.

No, I'll.

I'll give it.

Yeah.

So best case scenario, permit comes, like, how long do you think before we can go and get going? I know it's all depending on stuff.

Well, once permit's here, then we can. We can get going.

Okay. What's that look like? We just. We're crossing our fingers. Humping fingers.

I see this thing maybe three month project.

Yeah.

Under construction.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what we anticipated. Yeah. But now it's just a matter of waiting for her.

Yeah.

And that's the hardest time.

Okay.

Which has already been what, three weeks? What are we adding? What's annoying is now three and a half weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

All right.

Thank you so much, Chuck. I appreciate it. Good. Pleasure.

All right, so we left Credo Construction. The budget for the project is $249,084. I think something right around that. So a lot more than I was hoping. We're going to cut out some costs with the tile and go to luxury vinyl plank.

And I think about 60,000 of that back from the landlord. And I get six months free rent. So the goal is to get above break even within those six months of free rent. And yeah, just a lot of money. But I know two things. One, I was just telling Danny this one is it's a passion project. I'm really passionate about mental health and that sort of thing. I want to do it no matter what. Two is if it does really well.

I could franchise it just like we have with Augusta, and it does better in the winter and would correspond really well with landscaping in terms of being able to have both a landscaping company and a reset mind and body. But that's definitely on the road right now. I want to prove the concept, try to build it for cheaper than $250,000, and just, yeah, proof of concept. So right now we're back at Command Center 5pm we have a round table zoom meeting with all of our franchisees and managers. And so there'll probably be about 50 or so people on that tonight. And we'll go over some of the updates, things we're working on at the franchise, and just kind of bring everyone up to speed on what's going on. So I have 30, 40 minutes here to get ready for it, and I have all my slides ready, but there's one part I gotta like, pound out real fast. But Dan will get a little bit of that and then call it a day. But thank you so much. Before we head to the roundtable, thanks so much for watching. I appreciate you guys and I appreciate Danny for making these great vlogs the past few days. See you guys. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. Should be about 20, 30 minutes. I'm kind bring everyone up to update on a few things and then we will jump into some Q and A. So, Lee, if you just let anyone who's in the waiting room in, I'd appreciate that. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. We'll go ahead and get started.

So let's just go ahead and jump right into it.

So hiring. I know for about right now what I'm seeing is about half of our franchisees are so busy right now, we like, they cannot they're literally telling us at Command center, stop taking estimates. But let's focus on hiring, because for so many of you, this is the struggle. So some of these things I'm going to mention.