Sugar Bear

Today's guests: Scott and Rob Wickersheim, owners of Wickersheim and Sons Plumbing and Heating. Wickersheim has been in business for almost 100 years, and they share hilarious stories of being long timers in the industry.

Wickersheim is also a family owned business, something that customer find important when choosing a trade company to work in their home.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Since 1961, Court's plumbing has offered friendly, reliable service to residences all over Bergen County, New Jersey.

(00:09):
We are a fourth generation family owned business, unnotched in customer satisfaction and professionalism while working in your home.
We are the hydronic heating and water filtration specialists with a workmanship guarantee to put you at ease so you can rest comfortably.
We offer financing for those big projects that catch you off guard, and we have a network of excellent contractors in all fields for any project you wish to tackle.

(00:37):
Call our responsive office team and we'll dispatch a handsome and educated technician to lay the smackdown on all your plumbing issues.
You can also find us at courtsplumbing.com, search us on Google, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, T-Talk, and YouTube.
Like, subscribe, and share please.

(01:27):
I hope it doesn't collapse because everything here is fake.
Everything here is fake.
You gotta pretty much hold a wall squat the whole time.
No, so we are on episode 14 and we have with us Rob and Scott Wickersheim, who courts plumbing has worked with very closely for many, many years.

(01:54):
Sister company, right?
You guys worked on it hack and sack in that whole area.
We really try to stay away from it.
Mostly because you said something to me one time.
You go, what's your truck doing around the corner with my shot?
We stay out of our area.
So you guys, my grandfather and your father, you said he was the only one that he got along with back in the day.

(02:20):
He's like, watch out for this guy.
And then ever since then, when you guys got into the business and Paul got into the business, it kind of just morphed from there.
Absolutely.
So you guys have been in business, Wickersheim has been in business since 1926.
Correct.
By your father Gus.
Grandfather.
Grandfather, Gus?
Yeah, Gus.

(02:41):
Gus Wickersheim, and it moved on down the line and always in hack and sack.
Correct.
I mean, that's a long time.
We're going on a hundred years.
We don't look that old, do we?
I mean, I can edit my answer out of you.
Listen, I have a beard for the same reason you do to cover everything underneath it.

(03:03):
Exactly.
The baby face.
So grandfather started it, father took over.
I mean, it's inevitable that the boys get into it.
But I know for me, I ran away from it for like 20 years.
When I did it with my father as a kid, I was like, I'm never doing this.
Oh, I don't pay for that either.
But how did you guys, what made you decide?

(03:24):
Did you try anything else?
Well, we both had jobs.
Stay closer to the mic.
We both had like other jobs and things like that, you know, but right off the bat, you
know, the second you started bothering mom on school days off, you got dragged out to
work.
You know, take him, get him out of here.
Here's a bucket of fittings.
Go clean the fittings.
Or that, or you help a flashlight, and then you got to just move the flashlight over to

(03:47):
the area, you know.
And those jobs were through high school.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I mean, but now look at it like no one's getting into plumbing.
No one's getting into the trades.
And now like, you know, everyone kind of looks down on the blue collar guy generally.
You know, I don't know if I agree with you.
You recent turning.
Not recently.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.

(04:08):
Like back then, like, you know, he's a plumber.
You know, but now there's no plumbers coming up.
Yeah.
The go ahead.
I'm seeing more recently.
Like in the last couple of years, you know, going through the trade schools and things
like that, I'm seeing them come out.
I'm seeing a better quality of kid coming out of a trade school.
That's a relief.
Yeah.

(04:29):
You know, if that wasn't happening, it would be screwed in a couple of years.
If you look at it, it was a lot of it where, you know, you're going to come out owing,
you know, the equivalent of what a house, a mortgage payment.
Yeah.
So you come in, you go, you could do your trade school stuff.
They don't teach you the, they teach you a lot, but they don't teach you enough of the
day to day stuff that you really need to know.

(04:50):
Of course.
But they get you a good start.
And if you get somebody that's got a head on their shoulders, you know, they actually
could come in and go far.
Yeah.
And not have the note that they come with when they get out of school.
You know, you got to, you're behind the eight ball, you come out of college.
You jump back into it.
You got that one good high school teacher that recommends a kid that isn't good at school.

(05:11):
Which is rare today.
And recommend the trades, which is rare.
I mean, what shop is going down?
They don't have it in school anymore.
They don't have shop.
They don't have home medic.
Like I learned how to sew.
Right.
You know.
And I did too.
And I liked the fact that I did all that too.
You know, they should really have all that.
Yeah.
To fix your own plumbing clothes.
Funny, my kids, my kids came out of high school and had never signed a rental agreement.

(05:33):
Had no idea.
No, none of that.
My son didn't even know how to sign his name.
Cursive.
But he does know.
Same.
They took away cursive my year of school.
They took away cursive that year.
And my grandmother who went to Catholic school freaked out that I didn't know cursive.
They do come out knowing that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell though.
You know.
I would have to take your word for that.

(05:56):
I mean, that's the one thing I remember.
And then mold day.
In chemistry.
It's not one of the dinner conversations you've ever had in my house.
You know, how to sell propels to the body.
You guys don't talk about that at dinner?
Yeah, I get.
How was your day?
Oh, good.
Listen, I gotta be honest, a lot of the blame would fall on the education system.
Not to take it completely away from the parents, but they've really not criminalized.

(06:21):
They put emphasis on going to college.
You're not going to make it if you don't go to school.
How do you guys feel about it?
Like, what do you do?
You guys both have kids, right?
Yes.
You guys encourage your kids to go to trades or go to college?
I have two daughters.
They were both welcome to come in and do what they, but they were very strong minded and
what they wanted to do.
One was sports and the other was fashion.

(06:42):
It didn't melt with plumbing.
But my personal story was I wanted to be an architect.
I actually, I was very, you know, all through mechanical drawing, all through high school.
I was college prep classes through everything.
That's what I wanted to do.
I got up into my senior year and I, you know, they, senior year, it's mechanical drawing

(07:03):
three, I think it is, when you're sitting back, I just couldn't sit at a desk that long.
You know, and I'm like, oh my God, this is killing me.
I love the teacher.
Hackensack High School, I was very happy with everything I was going through.
Love the teacher.
Everything was good.
My guidance counselor said, oh, you're not, you're not going to do this.
It didn't offer any alternatives.

(07:24):
I said, I want to go work for my father's company.
I want to do that.
Instead of, and this is in a very, very beginning when I was looking for my classes for my senior year.
I wish they said small business classes.
Yeah.
Did they offer those?
They had them.
There was there.
There was.
I know.
I didn't find out about it until afterwards.
And I got through and I took everything right through and I muscled through and got out.

(07:48):
But, you know, there's got to be small business classes, accounting, accounting for small businesses.
They should really gear this stuff towards, you know, if it's going to help the kid, it's
going to want to open up a landscaping company.
Yeah.
Anybody that's going to do anything that's not mainstream right through the college,
through the money, through the situation, get something out there, get your entrepreneurial,

(08:10):
you know, juices flowing.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I don't understand why I don't, they don't look outside the box.
You can do this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyone can do this.
Were you going to go into plumbing right away after school?
No, actually I was going to Denver.
I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I had an apartment and a job.
Really?
Plumbing job lined up out there just right out of high school, but I ran into my wife,

(08:34):
who was now my wife, but I ran into her the second time of dating three weeks before my
senior probably decided to stick around and see how it worked out.
Wow.
So that's why I'm here.
A life-changing decision over the senior problem.
So your wife kept you in Jersey, huh?
Yeah.
Nice.
Not the worst thing.
She's a keeper.
You get out of high school.
I mean, I started at 10 years old, like my father said, this Friday I need you to come

(08:59):
into work because you're out of school.
And I said, no, I don't want to do that.
Right.
And he said, okay, now you're going to come and help the family for free.
If you had said yes, I would have.
I learned quick, okay, I'm coming.
That's how he was.
I mean, listen, my grandfather was a ball buster, and if he got along with your dad,
I'm sure your dad was a ball buster.
It's the North Jersey though.
The two of them are ball busters.
It's insane.
Every time a Wickershine truck passes, and I see one of them giving me the finger passing

(09:25):
by, bumping the truck.
No, no, no.
What Rob will do is he will, he'll be in his personal trucks.
You don't even know it's Wickershine.
And he will just come over into the lane if there's nobody else around.
And I can't recognize the truck right away.
You're a little bit dazed off.
You're a little bit dazed off.
Are you kidding?
These drivers in North Jersey, at the last second I see it's you.
I'm like, this guy.

(09:46):
Keep your one your toes.
Yeah, if the bumpers line up, I'll even tap you in the red light.
So that's what he did to me one time.
And it's like a month after I'd gotten into an accident with the work truck.
And I'm at a red light, and he bumps me from behind, and I put the car in park, and I'm
like, and I look in the back mirror and I see him.
I thought it was like some high school girl.

(10:08):
I thought it was some guy just, oh, so you can't leave your windows down at the supply
house if they come by.
No, I'll steal your keys.
You get your radio turned up.
Your wife is thrown on.
You need that camaraderie in the trades, though, or you'll go insane.
This guy put a pigeon in my work truck.
Where'd you get a live pigeon from?

(10:30):
It was in the garage.
It just flew into the garage, and we were closing up, and it was flying around, and
I grabbed a burlap bag, and I threw it over the top of the pigeon.
And of course, the guys are starting to roll in, and he had to go out on a call.
So I knew this.
I threw it inside the back doors, and the trucks all closed up, and we're all staring
out the door of the office.
Wait, watch, watch, watch.
He got in the truck and was like, so disappointing, nothing happened.

(10:52):
No, no, no.
But you drive away and now realize it's in the air.
Now I opened up the door, and there was a pigeon standing on the drill box, and I'm
just like, come on.
And I got it out, it just landed, and I'm like, all right, get in the truck and leave.
I'm like, I'm thinking about the job.
I didn't know I was disappointing my audience.
Oh, I've led live squirrels in the guy's trucks.
You're transplanting a squirrel with a have a hard trap, and oh, there's one of my guys.

(11:16):
Just leave it in the truck because you're on a job.
I couldn't work with my brother.
We've tried it.
I mean, you guys have been doing it for how long?
Yeah, but we keep a nice line between the way we work.
So it's like, it's office and service, and we've always tried to keep that.
And when we're out, we have beers together, and everything's fine.
It's working, yeah.

(11:37):
We have the same goals.
We're looking to make money.
We think things differently, and the guys all look at it and know it, but it doesn't
matter if that's what works.
Well, you guys have different roles in your company.
Totally.
Yeah.
I like poppy seed.
It's that's a mean for me.
So you know what you funny?
You brought up the squirrels.
The best story that I've had, and I know you know this story was.

(11:59):
You gotta get closer.
My grandfather, my grandfather was, he was, he was whatever, you know, anybody would
think we are, and in whatever it thinks, my father was, my father was like the king.
The apple went straight down all the way down the line.
So the story that I've heard from grandpa was he was at a bar that he would go to all

(12:20):
the time, like after work, three, 34 o'clock.
It was a different era back in the 1940s.
Yeah.
I think it was called two joes.
I think it was called two joes.
And he was, he would hang out there.
He'd do plumbing work there.
They'd work back and forth for, you know, trade off their, their monies.
And for some reason, something that the bar owed grandpa, they weren't paying.

(12:45):
So grandpa went back in there a couple of times.
Gus was a big stubborn old German guy.
And he came in and he's like, you know, where's my money?
We're going to do this.
You're going to pay me.
And the owner yelled from behind the bar says, Gus, I ain't paying you.
Get out of here.
So grandpa trapped some squirrels.
Oh my God.

(13:06):
He opened up the door.
You're not paying me.
Okay.
He opened up the have a heart trap and two squirrels ran into the bar and he closed the door.
And this world apparently held it.
And apparently the squirrels were looking for some place to go.
They were knocking bottles over.
They were chasing out anything.
And when as high as they could behind the bar and not as awesome.

(13:27):
That's he's like, all right, we're even now.
That's okay.
That's that's that's perfect.
That's the perfect way to do it.
Yeah.
It's like, I'm not going to hurt you.
I'm not going to get mad or say, here we go.
Yeah.
We'll make it even.
So you guys went through a period where you grew really quickly.
And that was about what five, six, maybe seven years ago before that.

(13:48):
Really?
2012, 2013.
But where'd you where did you take it from from where your grandfather or your father
gave it to you?
My father, my grandfather died in 1976.
And then it went to my father and my uncle.
Okay.
And then my uncle died 1997.
And I went to my father.

(14:09):
And then Rob and I took it in.
Oh, well, we were working during that time.
1997, we had two trucks.
Yeah.
A brand new Chevy van and a 10 year old used truck we bought that had a bad transmission.
It had first in reverse.
That was it.
And I got that truck.
Well, you're not leaving Hackensack.
I mean, I could only drop that one.

(14:34):
We nicknamed it the moped.
And inside of six months, it was another new truck, six months, another new truck.
And we went on like that.
I think 2008, we peaked.
I think that was 28 employees around the end of the 2000s after that.
28.
Yeah.
I think that was where we topped out.

(14:54):
And it was nightmare.
Yeah.
And we were working out of that same house down there.
Wow.
But dad said, don't get more than 10 guys.
Yeah.
Five trucks.
That's it.
Yeah.
Five trucks, 10 guys.
And he was right.
That was a nightmare to manage.
And we guys would hold the gun to our heads like, yeah, you don't give me a raise.
I'm walking off the project and I'm right.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(15:15):
Now, how do you jump in?
What do you do?
Yeah.
You know, you got you got.
Well, there's the yeah.
So that that's where it was out of control.
I said it.
I would never get that big again where I couldn't jump in at least finished projects.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And myself, you know, and I think our, our, the reason that we're held by that is I think
Robin, I like to try to be too much involved to where we don't want to be.

(15:37):
And I think the bigger companies say the owners, not it's a bad way.
It's a different formula.
But I think the bigger guys, they just they're it's so okay.
You have to have this guy following this.
I think him and I might go managing a little bit.
Yeah.
We like to be really much skin in the game.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's our name.

(15:58):
You guys have, you guys have been in company for almost 100 years and you have a name on,
you know, it's your name.
And I think if it was some other name that it was ABC or something, you know, okay.
Or we'll hire managers and when I'm at a big like my labor shortage, you know, yeah, I'm
at a bagel shop and I have a guy behind me going, Wickershaw.
You were just at my mother's house.
You know, it's like, I did a great job.

(16:19):
Yes.
That's what I am.
Oh, I don't know you.
Yeah.
I don't want that.
I don't know him because it was a service call that came through and Rob's guys handle.
And when I say Rob's guys, it's the division is kind of like I have my, the commercial
end a little bit more and he does the day to day reservation.
The residential.
Residential service.
He's on the cooling side.

(16:41):
So that's why it's, that's the sides that we have to deal with.
It turns into a joke with, you know, you're on Rob's side today.
Sorry.
The darts.
You know, with the guys, y'all, you know, because we got to play good cop, bad cop, you
know.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a bit of that.
Go ahead and talk to your brother.
Talk to my brother.
I have no other cop.
It's just my, it's just me as the cop.
You can always blame Uncle Paul.

(17:01):
Yeah, I have actually, I've used Uncle Paul as an excuse to motivate him to do things.
Skate go to ball scapegoats.
Are we allowed to tell stories about Uncle Paul?
Absolutely.
Are you kidding me?
Well, let's talk about how your friendship with Paul came to be because Paul came in
a lot later in the game than you guys, right?
96.
He looks great for 96.

(17:22):
No, um, well, Paul and I kind of, did you know Paul first?
I thought I knew who he was.
We said hello to each other, but you and I did business or you and Paul did business.
Yeah.
He had a one job that he needed.
He needed more guys than he had.

(17:42):
And he reached out to me and he's like, you know, can you guys take care of this job for
me?
And we did it and everything went well and everything went from that point on and hanging
out a couple of here and there and then through a supply house, drinking buddies, skiing,
you know, snowmobiling.
Well, I don't want to talk about that.
Oh, I do.
That was one of the funniest stories.

(18:03):
What happened?
With his, with when they went snowmobiling, you know, we'll get into it in the second
half.
I'm going to bring it up.
I hate to tell it, you know, but that was so funny.
That was a great weekend.
Oh my God.
There was a whole song to the weekend.
I remember hearing it.
And it started with an unbreakable bottle that we broke.
That started the whole weekend off.
I mean, when I first started working for Paul, I would go to the supply house while you guys

(18:27):
were still going to the supply house quite a bit when it was Ramapo.
Yeah.
All right.
But I remember when I would go there with him and he'd run into guys like you and other
guys like, you know, just the stories are hysterical.
Oh my God.
Because Paul's not the one that's going to just keep it at work.
If, you know, if he likes you, he's going to go, let's go get a beer.
Let's go do this.
You know what I mean?
It should be.
Yeah.

(18:47):
And you know what?
That's why we're here.
Yeah.
We're both in the same area.
By being, I'm, no, no, but I mean, like, you know, there's enough work for everybody.
You know, and you don't have to be out there to cut the other guys.
No, there's no need for that.
So we do our thing.
We don't badmouth you.
You don't bad us.
If we have, we need help.

(19:08):
We've got shortage of people.
We throw work your way.
I've worked with you guys before.
Mm hmm.
When Paul first took me on and you guys were doing a big project in Jersey City.
I don't know if you want to talk about that.
I know that one.
That was just some people that are under the bridge.
But I remember when he first took me on, he's like, you know what?
They're going to teach you a bunch of, you're going to learn a whole bunch of stuff really

(19:28):
fast on this job.
And I did.
And that was the job that we exploded for.
Yeah.
That's where we were.
We were 28 then.
Yeah.
We were right before that.
We went up to.
Wow.
Yeah.
You only saw probably half the crew while you were on that job.
Yeah.
But you were there every day.
I was there every day.
Yeah.
And I was there with the guys and then I don't know how many plumbing there every single

(19:49):
day and then four or five, you know, on both sides, 10 people right there.
Yeah.
And then, you know, we 12, 10 or 12 trucks running with helpers.
That was an interesting job.
I mean, like I said, I learned a lot and the guys who were on it who have been experienced,
I was, I learned a lot from those guys.
I mean, the one guy, I don't want to say his name, but he, but when he was doing those

(20:13):
branches that came down from all the apartments and the way he, I still remember that.
Like he was like art.
Yeah.
Coming in and doing that PVC to come into all these different whys and then funnel it.
It's like amazing.
I used to hate it when the GC is like, I don't understand why it's taking him so long and
he's making it so perfect.
The walls are going to be on top of who cares.
I'm like, I care.
Yeah.
You know, it's a Dan Halhans said a hundred years from now, you will marvel at my work

(20:37):
and never know my name.
I'm all right with that.
Yeah.
That's it.
You know, that's the way it should be.
Yeah.
I'm totally right.
And it was the touch base on what you said before.
We had another local guy, Casey from steadfast plumbing on last week and we talked about
the same thing.
I said on paper, we're supposed to be competitors.
It's like, that's just stupid though, especially around here.

(20:57):
And when you go out to Ohio or my brother does plumbing, it's the opposite because there's
no work out there.
Everyone's spread so far out.
Cutthroat.
Yeah.
Cutthroat and most people just take care of their own stuff.
You know, not like out here.
Farmers.
They're telling you for what is the most mundane thing we've ever gotten cold for?
Fill valve.
Yeah.
Kitchen faucet replacement.

(21:18):
Yeah.
Stuff that...
Even simpler than that.
A flabber.
A flabber.
Toilet seat replacement.
Flabber, toilet seat review.
Yeah.
Flabber stuff.
I mean, we'll do it.
Yeah.
We'll 100% do it.
We'll go out there and then we'll go out and what we do is we go and say, listen, while
I'm here, I'm going to point out everything.
It's not, you don't have to do it.
Listen, you need a new house.
You're going to do it all over again.
I need $20,000 immediately.
Make it new.

(21:38):
It's like the money pit.
Give me $5,000 on all the pots and I'll see you in two weeks.
What'd you say?
The good scratch?
The good old flabber?
She's some good looking wall.
It's so funny.
No, but that's just an interesting fact that there should be competitors, but there's
so much work.

(21:59):
And you know what?
You can't do it all.
If you want to grow, sometimes you can't find the people, which has been a problem for everybody
and you can rely on somebody else.
You know, Everett Fuel Oil, we work in the, like they pay my guys hourly.
I don't make any money.
They just take my guys.
There are, there are, there are, they're just good.
They have a welding truck set up for bigger welding jobs.

(22:21):
I borrow their guy all the time in their truck and I pay them the hourly.
I don't.
Yeah.
You got to do what you got to do around here.
Well, again, it's, you know, do I want to buy a welding truck for three times a year?
You know, like, and they do a lot more of it and they, like I'm doing a work next week,
I think a water heater job, it's commercial water heaters, all propress fittings and it's

(22:42):
for like 200 gallon tanks all piped together on their boilers.
So, you know, I need a couple guys, no problem.
Yeah.
Like that's, so they sell it.
We, they pay my guys.
I don't have to look for work for them for a couple of days.
I make a couple bucks or whatever and that's all good.
I mean, if whatever, whatever propels everyone around here forward, I mean, because you do

(23:02):
have to do that.
You have to jump in and the electricians have been doing this in this area for years.
Yeah.
You know, like small shops combined and gone on.
Yeah.
Let's knock this project out.
Right.
Yeah.
So throughout the years as you guys have been growing and like you said, you wouldn't, there's
been times that you didn't take your father's advice.
She went down the path that he's like, you're going to fail.

(23:23):
You're going to screw up, you know, and Paul says that to me all the time and I have to
learn the hard way too.
Everything up to this point has been the hard way.
I wouldn't say it was a failure or a screw up with that.
It changed quality.
It was a learning, learning experience, you know, and it was, I mean, we, we made money.
We made lots of money.
Right.

(23:43):
The problem was it was getting out from under us.
Handling.
The quality wasn't there.
Maintain, maintaining the guys wasn't there.
Yeah.
You know, and it was evident to the employees that they knew we needed them.
I mean, we couldn't do without them.
That's the problem.
Right.
Right.
Where they had the upper hand versus the owners.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And not to say they weren't worth it or anything like that.

(24:04):
But it was a bad approach on their point going, give me a raise on that.
Yeah.
Like we could have talked about it.
Probably if you're not happy with the money you're making.
No, this was just, I'm holding you hostage.
I know, I know the one situation or the situation that you're talking about.
And yes, we definitely got ourselves into a bind.

(24:25):
It's funny how the many other situations where you have employees turn around and go, I got
you.
And the next guy comes in after that person's gone and there's just no hiccup at all.
You know, that's a gamble.
That is like, well, and since then that pool has gotten thinner and thinner.

(24:45):
We've gone six, eight months without somebody even coming through the door.
You know, I know everyone is desperate.
I'm on a bunch of, because we got an ad out right now looking for guys.
By the way, court's plumbing is hiring.
If you want to learn plumbing, come on over.
For the 200 views.
You guys learn more, come to Wickershire.
If you want to make money, go to Wickershire.
Court's plumbing will send you to Wickershire and then you can come back.

(25:07):
Go make your mistakes at Wickershire.
No, but that whole hiring thing is a nightmare right now.
And I don't know where everyone's getting their money to not have to work.
But there's just not people filling jobs right now, especially the trades.
And it's starting to become worrisome.
You know?
But if you come into it, you're going to get paid.
Now because there's a shortage, you're going to get a paid, I'm paying guys, I'm paying

(25:30):
guys more than anything that they should be getting to start off.
And if they're coming out of a trade school, they don't have a bill.
They don't have, they don't have a college.
Or if they do, it's small.
It's small.
And they can come right in and we're paying by basically what you can do for us.
Everybody thinks, oh, I got to get my license.
I'm not going to get paid until I get my license.

(25:52):
I really don't care about your license.
And a lot of people don't want to get their license.
Then don't.
Just come in and work.
You can hit the top to pay, scale without a license.
Quickly.
And then I'm going to be, okay, you're making this much for us.
I'm going to pay you that way.
Not oh, I have to spend my four years to get my license.
It doesn't matter.
You are.
Show me you're going to keep my customers happy.

(26:13):
Show me you got to bring in money.
Yep.
Protocopty.
You make money, we make money.
Or the other way around.
Yeah.
Personality, everything like that.
I mean, there's, there really is no ceiling.
You can keep going because if you're working for a company, you can get paid great working
for a company.
And if you one day decide to go out on your own, then that's even more.

(26:34):
If you start to, you know, and you can build a business.
We put what, five, six people through school, got their licenses and went out on their own.
So yeah.
I mean, there's that.
You spend all that money and time and training and everything.
Yeah.
See, and then they break your heart.
And you see them at the supply house.
It depends on how they do it.
There's a couple of guys that did it right.
Did it the right way.

(26:55):
Well, that's the thing.
And there's also a couple of guys that I've heard would come back.
Yeah.
That's, you know, that's, that's, that lines down the middle because most plumbers are
not businessmen.
No, it's huge to not burn bridges too.
Right.
As an employee and as a, as an owner of a company.
Right.
If, for whatever reason, like I've, we've had, I had to leave courts at one point and

(27:17):
I had to leave for, yeah.
You said, oh my God.
I didn't know we were going to.
And I still hold it.
I still hold it against him.
I had to leave.
Yeah.
No, I never left Wickershine and something.
You know, he had to leave once and then I had to lay him off once.
There was one time where I had to leave and there was one time where he laid me off and
both times I came back because there's no hard feeling.
You leave the right way.
That's it.
What else are you going to do?

(27:37):
Wickershine.
I didn't want to stab you in the back.
I'll leave you.
I'll leave the card for you.
I did try and get, bring him to the dark side.
I will tell you this.
If you, let's say hypothetically, like you do.
They're going to bust your chops the worst.
I know.
We would ridicule Phil.

(27:58):
Rip on me.
It's completely.
So much better than working for Phil.
Now there's going to be two trucks bumping, course, pulling trucks.
Two wicker trucks.
I can't drive down the freaking road without getting almost hit.
It's like a demolition dirty box.
Box him in today.
So we, so when I took over, let's say, okay, when Paul took over from my grandfather, there

(28:21):
wasn't too much technical improvement.
You know, it was still kind of basically the same thing.
Unless you were doing like, you were typing up your invoices and sending them out.
That was really the only difference.
But now in the 21st century with social media and podcast, podcast.
Can you imagine?
We should start one.

(28:42):
What exactly is that?
We have a whole dispatching app where it notifies customers, this person's on their way.
Your job is finished.
Click here to play online.
Websites.
Your receipt email.
Yeah.
Your invoice via email.
No papers.
My father wouldn't go computers.
Yeah.
Okay.
He was so against.
Refused.

(29:03):
Yeah.
He's told against.
He said, why am I going to do that?
First of all.
These are never going to catch on.
Well, first off, no.
What's a face?
Like that on the line thing.
I'll tell you, he was definitely ahead of the game though.
In one aspect.
Uh huh.
He did not want his computer connected to the internet.
He didn't want them to be able to see what he's doing.

(29:27):
He didn't want them to be connected to where he goes.
He was worried about hackers.
Exactly.
When did he pass away?
2006.
So you could see today.
Oh my God.
No, we don't even want to.
We don't even want to.
I'm getting kind of lonely.
Yeah.
He was totally like, no, that's not what I want to do.
So I knew we needed to go computers, because we had the handwritten bills and all that

(29:50):
wasn't going to go.
This is actually, I think it was in the late 1990s, so maybe 1996 I think it was.
My invoices, I think was the first one that we went through.
You know, we had the little computer thing.
So I asked him a couple of times and he's like, I don't want to do that.
I don't want to do that.
So I'm like, all right.

(30:11):
So I was trying to-
You're pushing a rock uphill a lot of times with him.
I had my first house and I was renovating the first house
and everything and I said,
I said, Dad, I need help with these windows.
So I already bought my invoices.
I had it set up down in the living room
and I said, hey Dad, I said, good day.

(30:31):
Listen, I gotta take this thing.
I gotta make a phone call.
Sit here, I put a course light, which was his beer.
Next to the computer.
I said, just mess around with this.
So he messed around with it.
I'm upstairs, I'm like bed sitting there watching TV.
Like, come down like 15, 20 minutes later
and he's like, messed around.
I said, if I can make this work for the company,

(30:54):
I said, would you buy it back for me?
I already laid the money out.
He goes, yeah, one month.
And after that, we were computerized.
Really?
We weren't hooked up.
I don't even think that back then it was anything like that.
But it was like, all right, that was the step.
That was the first step.
Well, we did your deck at your house, that same house.
We're trying to figure out how to square up the posts

(31:15):
and we're all talking and it's like,
there's this 345 method.
I go, but I don't know how it works.
And Scott goes, well, I'll figure it out.
He goes inside and Dad's like, yeah,
what's he gonna do?
Looking in encyclopedia or something.
He comes out with a printout.
And he's like, how the hell did you do that?
He's like, I went on the internet.
He's like, holy, so weird.
So weird.
So there's no way you got that that fast.

(31:36):
It's crazy.
Just in 20 years, my grandfather died in 2001.
I can't even imagine what he would say
to what he's seeing now all today.
There was one of the such a funny meme where
it was like two pictures side by side.
And what was in the 1950s when they wanted to hook up
the telephone?
They're like, I don't want that in my house.
They're gonna wiretap me.
And then the next one is this modern woman with an Alexa.

(31:58):
She's like, hey, wiretap.
What's a recipe for pancakes?
And that's exactly what it is.
We're monitored all the time.
So exactly what they were afraid of.
He would still put his EZ pass inside the aluminum envelope
so that he couldn't track them on the road.
He's like, big brother's watching.
I'm not doing it.
Listen, they are.
It's like, I'll hold it up to the windshield
when I go through the tolls, but I'm back in the bag.

(32:20):
They are, but it's over.
It's every single thing that we're recording with the phone.
It's all done.
You don't have any privacy.
You can forget about privacy.
I got some guys who are, they're cops.
Some of them are like, I have a cousin who's a fed.
He's like, listen, we can get anything we want.
Anything we want.

(32:40):
All we need is probable cause or an inkling of something.
We can just take it.
Or we don't even need to do that.
Say the B word and spell.
All you need to do is string a nice sentence of words together.
I know.
They're gonna come look into it.
Exactly.
They will.
Well, there's the same thing with the, like Google search.
How they steer you into what they want you to see.

(33:01):
It's not starts with the suggestion when you start typing.
And then it's like the top rated searches for today.
They know based off of your recent searches,
how you would actually, like what kind of answers
you would be looking for.
Well, how many times you're having a conversation
in your kitchen about camping and then you go on your computer
at work and it shows tense.
And they're like, what the hell?

(33:22):
They're like, yeah, we do that.
But here's where it's, here's where the businessman has
to take advantage of that.
How do we make money from it?
With the algorithms.
So like there's a whole bunch of different ways you can trick.
You kind of trick the algorithms for Google SEO,
search engine optimization, where now you're getting

(33:43):
boosted when you search for local companies
by starting a blog and putting hashtags.
So you're kind of tricking the algorithm to push you forward.
It's almost like tricking the system almost,
to take advantage.
And people will pay a lot of money for advice
on how to do that.
It's out there.
You can find it.
And now there's whole companies that just
will take over everything.
Did you say you were using one?

(34:03):
That's right.
We're just starting up.
Yeah.
We're just starting up with everything like that.
With the average, we have a video coming out.
And the City of Hackensack growing as much as it is.
We want to take advantage of being there because we're
right in the heart of it.
We want their service.
We want to be able to get the guy in there.
And then we were reached out by the advertising company

(34:26):
that's doing their website.
And our ad's going to be on that website.
Oh, you talking about your new commercial?
Our new commercial.
Yeah.
I showed him today.
When does it come out?
It's, well, the shorter version.
I can't look for it.
I can't find it on the market.
The shorter version is coming out very shortly.
I've had meetings weekly.
It's a lot of.
You were invited too.
You just didn't show up.

(34:47):
That's all fine.
Everybody's got to.
He set this up.
So I'm older.
What do you think?
I would guess, Scott.
It's just a maturity.
Aside from the gray hair.
I mean, well, he's smart.
He shaves it all off.
I try to look older.
No, I showed him the commercial today.
And we're like, oh, look, there's
James doing what he does at the supply house

(35:10):
in the middle of the door when you're trying to go in.
Words were, dollars would be rich.
I was, to be honest, I was.
He's a great guy.
He really is.
He started, when I first started with you guys,
he started on that Jersey City job with me.
And the guy who was running that job used to bust his chops
so bad, to the point where it was kind of cruel.
It's like, dude, why do you hate him so much?

(35:31):
He's a nice kid.
No?
No.
Even the helper's bust his chops.
My son comes through and is like, oh my god.
No, he started when I started.
Wow.
And that was going eight years ago.
It's crazy.
And then I worked with you for a little while with the big guy.
I can probably see.
He talks about this.
Brian, big Brian.

(35:52):
And me and him would go out in the field.
And he's one who just refused to get his license.
He was a journeyman for years.
He's like, eh, I don't want to.
I'm just going to, I'm happy.
It's a commitment.
They may get hard four years of schooling
while you're working.
So I mean, you married with kids who
wants to go to school at night.
Yeah.

(36:13):
When I took the test, I didn't have to do that.
It was just take two tests.
It was two years too, right?
It was only for two years.
No, no, no.
It was?
Four years.
He actually had to be plumbing under a licensed plumber
for five years before you were at.
And that plumber had a sign of documents saying you were there.
They didn't ask for W2s.
It was just a letter from my father or my uncle saying,

(36:34):
yeah, he worked here.
What kind of work you did.
And that submitted to the state.
And they'll make you eligible.
Hang on one second.
This is getting out of control.
Hey, stop it.
Stop.
They're going to knock everything over.
Stop.
Come here.
We're having fun.
They'll do that all day long.
That's so cool.
And they'll go because they'll hang out on people's property

(36:54):
while we're working and stuff in their backyard.
And they'll start to go at it.
And they'll really go at it.
And one lady ran to, your dogs are killing each other.
You really, really, this is killing.
When I ran out, like, what's going on?
Yeah, yeah.
And they're doing that.
I'm like, lady, relax.
You need to get a dog of your own.
Now they're tongue kissing.
Yeah.
And here.
We had a job where we were doing, it was like three.

(37:16):
It was a whole house renovation.
And there's so three, four subs on the job.
Everybody's working it out.
And at towards the end, trying to finish up,
there was like, you couldn't tell who was coming and going.
Right.
And the cat got out.
A house cat.
Oh, god.
And it was like, oh my god, nobody knew who it was.

(37:38):
And I'm like, and I felt terrible.
I was like, talking with the homeowner.
I'm like, I don't think it was my guys.
I don't know.
But it really, it affected me.
Like, I can't say it wasn't.
So it was very, very, it was bad.
So like the next week, I'm working at another house
and I'm carrying a radiator out.
And I was a long, very, very big radiator.

(37:59):
And I'm carrying out one of my guys in the house.
I didn't think the woman was at home.
We had the key to go in.
We're doing it where we had to.
Carrying this radiator out.
And it's catch passed us right out into the,
we came out the back because the driveway came up along this way.
Catched huge past us.
We're like, oh, no, what?
I'm going to, I don't want to exaggerate.
200 pound radiator.

(38:20):
Yeah.
Right.
You know, putting it down as carefully as we can.
I am chasing this radiator, this cat, through this backyard,
diving at it.
I'm like, I got like, you know, grass stains here.
And I hear, I hear a voice coming up behind me.
Scott.
And I turn around and there's a woman who worked for her
since I was a kid standing on a deck looking at me.

(38:41):
She's like, what you doing?
I'm like, we let you cat out.
She's like, it's an outside cat.
Or like, I'm filthy.
I'm like, you were two of us.
We sweating and all that.
Oh my gosh.
I cannot lose two cats in a week.
It's like, even if it wasn't us.
I worked for a company and this was before I worked there.

(39:02):
But they told this story all the time.
Someone had let the dog out that got hit.
And that was something that like, oh my gosh.
I've seen that Judge Judy case.
Yeah.
It's that's not a judge Judy case.
I've seen that.
My dad killed a German shepherd on a job once.
Yeah.
I was like 12 or 13.
And that can be edited.

(39:24):
It can, but I will be.
Lady had to go out of the cage to get used to people.
And we walked in.
She said, come on in and dog jumped at my dad's throat.
My dad jammed his forearm into the dog's mouth.
He fell down and he had no intentions of hurting the dog.
He was protecting himself.
But when he fell, he wrapped his arm around the dog's neck
and he snapped the dog's neck as he picked it up.

(39:45):
And it was a big German shepherd.
And the lady went, a postal.
Oh my God.
You killed my dog.
It's like, the dog came out of my neck.
Don't let your dog.
Listen, if you have a dog, big or small, doesn't matter.
When you have workers, just put it away.
You know, just put it away for the most part.
Just for lawsuit purpose.
Yeah.
Just put it away.
We went to a house.

(40:05):
We did a job.
And this woman had two little Yorkies.
The whole.
The whole time.
And she'll be talking to us and the dog is biting my ankle.
And I'm like.
And I told him one time, I was like, listen, the dog bit me
and I kicked him.
So I sent the dog.
Because he bit me hard.
I was bleeding.

(40:26):
And I didn't want to embarrass anybody or say anything
like that.
It bit me and I kicked him and now I'm satisfied.
So I was like, listen, if you see the dog with a limp,
just ignore it.
Ignore.
Sorry, that was me.
Don't tell her anything.
But she's oblivious.
Like, lady, I'm not finding this adorable.
Yeah.
Neither of us are.
We're trying to get your kitchen done.
No.
Dogs are different.

(40:47):
Most dogs love me.
I don't know why.
But animals like me.
And there's a very few that bite me.
But I was at a job on Fairmont Avenue
and I was hacking right up the street.
Lady's name is Margaret.
Knows my dad real well.
She calls me in from a porch into the front door.
So that's like, I go through the front door.
I'm so I'm now 15, 18 feet from the front door.
And this 220 pound Great Dane commander was his name.

(41:11):
He was all feet coming at me.
And it's coming right from me.
It's huge.
At this point, I'm not going to make the door.
I don't want to be scared of the dog because I sense that.
So I puffed up as big as I could.
I'm like, ah, you're doing puppy.
And I just grabbed it and started petting.
And it flopped over onto his face.
And this lady's like, what you doing to my dog?

(41:33):
He's never done that before.
And then he was leaning on me through the whole estimate.
She's like, he really likes you.
I'm like, thank god.
He took the alpha roll.
Yeah.
He took the alpha roll.
And then gave him fainting goat syndrome.
You ever seen that video?
So funny.
It gets me every time.
We're going to go to break in a couple of minutes.
But I wanted to ask you guys, it's kind of a two-parter

(41:56):
over the years because you've had it,
but you've been it for a while now.
When you first went in to now, and we feel that every business
should have some kind of business plan.
How has that evolved over the years?
And where you're at now, has it changed much
from where you took over?

(42:17):
Well, yes.
The way we were beforehand, when we first took over in 2006,
I think our plan was more to grow.
And we had aspirations of growing and being
bigger and going through there.
I really think now our aspirations would be,

(42:37):
and from what we've talked to, is more about kind of locking
into what we're good at.
And just saying, OK, we don't need to do everything.
We don't need to do everything.
We don't need to do anything and everything.
Well, our goal was to keep the customer.
We never advertised.
This is the first time we started advertising.

(42:58):
And basically, we were initiated by.
This is the first ad you guys ever done?
Other than social media or something?
No.
Church bulletins.
And we took that one time.
We took church bulletins out one time,
and we got phone calls from all these elderly people thinking
that we went out of business.
Yeah, it was really weird.
But that actually generated a lot of business.

(43:21):
That would probably one church in Maywood, one in Hackensack.
That was a best bang for your buck, basically.
We were advertising.
And then the schools, because we did work at the schools,
we're in Hackensack.
The Hackensack High School, we need a box for the play
or something, fundraisers.
So we did that.
Here's a business card.
Here's $100 just to get.
And to keep your name out there.
And like, hey, if they see your truck at the donut shop

(43:44):
and saw it in the high school play bulletin, it's a win-win.
That's it.
We never did anything more.
The only place that scene your truck doesn't benefit
is when we're trying to pull to that supply
house that's behind that strip club.
Jesus.
I got food poisoning.
I was on hands and knees throwing up
on the side of the road with the truck there.
That wasn't bad.
And that wasn't very good.

(44:04):
There's no bad advertising.
I was coaching a lot of kids stuff.
And I heard at one of the fields is like,
you know, I see your truck's holding that strip club all
the time.
I'm like, whoa.
Oh, that is like a.
Listen, our guys work hard, so they play hard, OK?
The supply house is right behind us.
That is an unfortunate place for a supply house.

(44:25):
I don't know how many times I had to be like, no, no, no.
You don't understand.
I'll show you under my office manager, Sarah,
there to the supply house one time.
And I pull you have to actually pull through the strip club
parking lot to get to the supply house the easiest way.
And I pulled through and she's like, I am not going to.
You felt the lawsuit coming real quick.
Let's go get some lunch.

(44:47):
I'm not going to come with me.
Sorry, we got.
That's fine.
You need to get rid of you.
And this is your new employment.
Hands down one of the funniest moments with her.
And then of course she got even because when
we went into the supply house, she's in her 30s.
And that's one of the counter.
And I'm like, oh, so you're going to take over your dad's
business?
This is like a double whammy.

(45:08):
She's like, you know what?
I'm never leaving the office.
Help me off at the knees.
No, we've been working on a business plan
to kind of fine tune it.
And the things that you guys have probably been through,
except especially with the big growth, the fast growth,
and then doing that in this, I have certain goals
that I want for the company.

(45:29):
And they haven't changed too much.
This we never really had.
The whole podcast.
I didn't think we're going to get into all this.
So it does morph.
But the things that you have been through,
the things that you've seen, the lessons you've learned,
which I have not even remotely learned,
I still call you all the time for advice.
That's fine.
I still call Mr. Preisendorf from Everett Fuel Oil for advice.

(45:52):
So that never ends.
But the thing we're kind of doing now
is looking for quality jobs, rather than quantity.
Like I said, if I got a job that I don't think I can man,
I will pass.
And I'm not embarrassed anymore.
Whereas before I didn't want to lose a customer,
I'm sorry I can't handle it.
Yeah.

(46:12):
And you know what?
I'm sorry.
Disgression is the better part of valor in the sense
that I'd just rather make more money somewhere else
than lose money trying to help you.
We're in the business to make money.
It is a business.
It was a hard thing to learn.
Oh, yeah.
The way this business evolved was,
these are your customers.
You have to take care of them.
Yeah.

(46:33):
And it's not always popular what I'm going to say.
There's a lot of customers out there that are unrealistic.
And you shouldn't think you really don't want to work for them.
Listen, we have no shame here.
I'll tell them right now.
There's people that we won't that.
We'll recommend you to Wicca Shem.
We have a black list.
You want to be difficult?
There's actually bad customer websites
that you can actually.
Oh, yeah?

(46:53):
Yeah.
I clicked into that.
You've got to give me a couple.
You've got to give me a.
Hey, stop it.
But it's, take your lumps.
You know what?
One of the lists that's out there that you see is like really,
it's not even worth working for.
Wow.
I didn't.
It's like, it's like, what is it?
Like rate my ex.

(47:14):
They have like a rate my ex website.
And you can rate somebody's ex.
I always thought that that would be a good idea,
but I know how legal it was.
I know.
I thought it was a long time ago.
I want to do it.
Are we off?
No, we're still going.
No, don't worry about it.
Let's take a break.
The dogs need a break.
I'm going to take them outside.
But guys, I'm glad you're here.
We'll pick us up again, folks.

(47:35):
Stick with us.
We're going to come back with Rob and Scott Wickersheim.
And just, you know, talk about.
Damn dogs.
Kill them.
They both look like what?
All right.
We'll be right back.
Call courts plumbing and heating for top rated service

(48:02):
in Bergen County, New Jersey.
And don't forget to keep treats for Frankie on hand.
Wickersheim and Sons has been a trusted name
for plumbing, heating, and cooling services since 1926.

(48:22):
Founded by Gus Wickersheim, the company
has served generations of Bergen County residents
and continues to be family owned and operated today.
No job is too big or too small for our team.
We also know that emergencies can arise at any time.
That's why we're available 24 seven.
No matter what you need, we'll ensure
that a qualified technician is ready to assist you

(48:43):
as soon as possible.
All right, folks.
We're back with Plumb Bumps podcast, the blue collar
tradesman show where we talk about small business
and entrepreneurship in 2023.
These crazy times of 2023.
I'm still stuck on that line.

(49:05):
We'll figure something out.
You'll figure something out.
We'll figure something out.
That's not a way.
That's not a way.
Why don't we try to figure something out for once instead
of you got it.
Because we couldn't even build this set.
We couldn't even build this set together.
Yeah, so we were.
I think I told you the story off camera,
but this was a nightmare.
Oh, this is an absolute nightmare.

(49:26):
We'll put in boilers together, 12, 14 hours together
all day long.
Fine.
Listening to music, joking.
We tried to put this up.
It was like we've been married for 40 years.
Yeah, decorating ideas differ.
It wasn't really that it was so different.
It was just putting everything.
Like he had a vision.

(49:46):
And I had something in my head too.
Very expressive.
And he's like, no, it's going to work out.
You're going to be.
It's going to look great.
And I'm just like, you're buying brick wallpaper.
How great is that?
I'm like, have a little faith.
I always call him the fight club line.
I will drag you kicking and screaming.
And in the end, you will thank me.
It's the distressed look.

(50:08):
It's hip these days.
But anyway, we're here again back with Robin Scott
Wickersheim of Wickersheim Plumbing, Wickersheim and Sons.
Plumbing and heating.
Cooling.
Who made that logo?
Who made that logo?
Actually, a friend of mine.
Yeah, way back.
I mean, how long ago?
A group effort.
Actually, the whole chocolate design,
we all had input on.

(50:28):
Oh, definitely.
But I mean, the wrench part was a friend of mine that,
you know, back in, oh my god, 2003.
You can see that truck from a long way away.
Big red wrench.
That's all I get.
It's like, I thought a big red wrench going over here.
And that's say it's upside down.
Yeah.
That's why you notice most people, plumbers that have a pipe
wrench, it's facing down.
Oh, yeah.

(50:49):
So first Scott, it's like, it's upside down.
It's like, no, that's to catch the luck.
That's why I came.
Oh, my god.
That's my father did miss a beat.
And you came up with something.
That's fair enough.
So you completely reinvented the look when you took over?
Yeah.
Well, no, that was actually right before.
It was before my parents.
He was still there, yeah.
Yeah.
But it was a friend of mine who was an artist who does

(51:11):
comic work and things like that.
It was a 1998 truck, I think was the first one, guys.
Yeah, 1998.
Yep.
Well, I figured I had to squeeze this into every episode.
But we actually have my uncle Paul.
Paul Cortes is hanging out in the back.
Holy!
But Paul, from the second he walked in, all three of them,
it's like you can tell that they're longtime friends.

(51:32):
Exactly.
So you've been doing this.
Constantly laughing.
You guys almost pretty much officially took over
when you took it in 96.
And then we talked about it on the first half.
I met Rob in the day.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
I'm hanging out.
But the, that's the first time I met him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, you're Scott's brother? Because you had been dealing

(51:54):
with Scott for a while.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ever since then?
Yeah.
But he had me draw the Cortes logo when I was a kid.
When he first took over in 96.
Was it in Kranon?
Maybe.
But I think it transferred fine.
Jerk.
Sorry.
Jerk.

(52:14):
You know what?
That's Rob's nickname.
My sister.
Yeah, shut up you jerk.
It's actually what my sister called.
That was my last name for a long time.
I will go to the supply house and accidentally
leave my keys in the ignition with the window down.
And Rob will come in.
He'll say, hey, he won't even hint to it.
And I'll go to get the, and we're in a rush always.

(52:35):
And I'm hunting for the keys in the truck.
And I'm pissed off.
I'm like, where could they have gone?
And I see Rob's fricking face staring through the window
with a big smile, just dangling the keys.
Or I leave Mutt Scott's desk, the other manager, the branch.
Yeah, I found them there.
And I got to walk back into the supply house.
Like, anyone see, like a crazy person.

(52:55):
Does anyone see the keys?
And I usually announce at the Scott, hey,
I'm keeping eye on these because I do it to other bombers,
too, family bombing, other guys.
Or I'll move the truck.
If they can't see where the truck is,
I'll drive it around and fork it up next door.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, that's a great prank, but it sucks for the guy being

(53:17):
pranked.
Oh yeah.
Well, it does.
No arm, no foul.
Like, it doesn't cost anything.
Could you imagine a helper for the company?
And that's what he gets.
And he's like, oh my god, it lost the truck.
I'm sick and robbed on the new helper to bring him in.
I'll bring the truck to my yard.
I would say.
He gots forward.
We'll pick something up from Wickersheim.
I would say that the blue collar camaraderie

(53:40):
is super important.
We've talked about this as well.
I mean, Paul, you guys have used to go out on trips
together with our supply house manager.
Who's a great guy there?
Scott from Ferguson.
Scott from Ferguson.
If he leaves, the whole operation collapses.
He's a reason we're here.
But the trips that he, yeah, oh, he should.
He definitely should.

(54:00):
No, you know what I said to him?
I was like, when are you coming out?
He's like, I'm not coming on that thing.
Maybe if we get all over.
You guys don't have enough views.
Give a bigger couch.
We need more microphones.
And we can tell stories.
We can tell stories about it.
My appearance fee is 10 grand minimum.
I'm like, all right, well, you're doing it right.
But there was a story that I remember listening to in the

(54:21):
supply house, and I was dying laughing when you guys, you
went out on a snowmobiling trip one time years ago,
and it was mayhem.
It was just madness.
I mean, you left the state like there was roadblocks,
and a whole bunch of new laws in the state
were passed shortly after that.

(54:41):
It really was an interesting weekend.
There was more fun that to be had than we care to acknowledge
in public.
Listen, snowmobiling is treacherous.
Snowmobiling and drinking is just straight up.
I'm sorry, but we're going to start off by where this is going.
There was not a drop of freaking alcohol in me
before this actually happened.

(55:03):
I know where it's going.
I see the pine was all on the trail.
It was 9 45 AM people, and I did not drink prior to this.
That might have helped if the flask was full.
A little bit more padding.
No, it's like those stories that the younger guys coming up,
when they see the older guys joking around like that,

(55:26):
it's actually very important to see.
When I first brought in, and Paul started taking me around,
and he's like, this is Scott and Rob.
We work with these guys.
We do some work with these guys.
So this is Scott, our supply manager,
and immediately Scott's just ball busting.
Because he has to break people in immediately.
And he always does it when you come in in a horrible mood.

(55:48):
Like he can smell it from his office.
He's like, I'm just going to go mess with this guy.
But he tries to lighten the mood.
Obviously, that's what his intent is.
He's a commonalicious.
He's good at what he does.
That's hysterical.
Great hard guy.
He's one of the funniest guys, I think.
But the younger guys coming in, when they see all that,
I keep using the word camaraderie,
but joking around in a good relationship, non-competitive,

(56:12):
helping each other out, picking up the slack.
That's important for guys to see coming up.
And that's what I remember when we were kids,
coming in, going to work at Ridgewood Corp.
That's where, that was our supply house back then.
Excuse me, there was a Ridgewood Corp in Hackensack
down the first street.
And that's where we lived.
That's every day we'd hear into there.
And you'd stand with dad and the supply house guys

(56:36):
who I still talk to and all the guys that are still young
enough to be there, be alive.
Right.
But you come in and that's where dad, my father,
meant your father.
And I remember it.
Yeah.
Right, sorry.
So yeah, I just think you're old enough to be his brother.
That's why I was saying.
Everyone does.
Especially after I come about who the hell was older.

(56:59):
Fuck.
Excuse me.
You're in your garden.
You're right.
I think that far.
Probably been out.
I have one.
I have, I think he's proud about that.
Well, we've been freaking a couple to loosen up.
So I understand it.
So anyway, but you know, it was that kind of stuff that,
you know, and what really my earliest memory about having
like fun times, I think I was like in seventh, ninth grade,

(57:22):
maybe ninth grade.
I'm working in the summertime and there was this guy, Wayne.
Oh, Wayne.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wayne was dad was the manager of the Westwood branch.
Wayne was his big guy.
Very, very big.
Yeah.
And my father didn't didn't care about it that way.
He's like, you know, your size and he was just looking for the

(57:43):
laugh.
OK.
And and at that time they had armor when I was kid, he was
scared.
It was like he was bad.
Wayne, they had armor flex just came out.
OK.
And armor flex, the inside of armor flex was coated with the
white powder till make it slip on and all that.
OK.
So I'm with I'm with dad.
I'm with dad and I'm sitting there and he's got my father

(58:05):
like I need 12 lengths of three quarter to flex.
You know, he puts it up on the counter.
He's sitting back and he was he was just your typical like
counter person, not bad, but just like small talk in the
whole time.
So, you know, the work, the conversation's flowing.
Right.
So my father was he was a smoother, but he was everybody
was smooth.
Totally.
He said back and goes, you know, Wayne, you see what they're

(58:27):
doing, they're over freaking, you know, they're over powder
inside of this.
Did you see inside how bad they're over powder in this shit?
And Wayne's like, what?
No way.
Just like the white light.
It was like a party.
Boom.
Oh, my God.
My father like.
No.

(58:47):
And we ran out of trucks and we're gone.
He laughed.
He laughed and God.
But he he you're going to get killed.
We're going to get killed.
We're in the car.
We're driving away.
We'll get the frigging material later.
Doesn't matter.
That was just good.
Oh, my God.
The older guys, they don't care.
Well, they just don't care.
You shrinkwrap one of the counterman's cars.

(59:09):
Really?
You shrinkwrap the whole car.
It comes out of work and then you
got to cut the shrinkwrap off to get it into its car.
And the key is don't use one piece because that's easy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You got to cut the.
He's throwing the roll across the roof of the car to me here.
And I'm throwing it under.
We're like, it took us all of like 15 minutes.
Like we're running around like you're catching.

(59:29):
Like catching up.
And it was like a red car.
So when he came out, it was black.
And he was like, shrinkwrap.
So he's like.
I don't know where my car is.
That's your car.
That is great.
The older generate, I remember my grandfather,
when we used to go out, he didn't care.

(59:50):
He would bust anybody's chops, the waiter, the doorman,
and Walmart, whatever.
It didn't matter.
But I don't know how he would get away.
He told me this one story.
He had this customer.
I'll never forget it.
He told me when I was a kid.
I thought it was one of the funniest things he ever heard.
He had to fix a tenant's toilet.

(01:00:11):
And this woman was big.
She's a big woman.
Very big woman.
Like not normally big, like abnormally big.
Didn't leave her house much.
Was kind of a lifer in her apartment.
But a nasty, nasty lady.
He had to fix the toilet the next day it broke.
And he's there.
And the landlord's there.

(01:00:31):
And he's hunched over the toilet trying to fix it.
And she's screaming at him, pointing his finger,
tapping his shoulder, scolding him.
And she's like, you supposed to put this toilet in?
I've waited forever for the toilet.
I'm sure this was a lot of money in it.
You gouge the guy.
And my grandfather goes very calmly.

(01:00:51):
He turns around.
He goes, that's because this toilet's
made for humans, not elephants.
Jesus.
And the landlord lost it.
Like he lost it, couldn't stop.
The lady was like, I don't want you to die.
Completely lost it.
In a court's plumbing shirt, pulling up
in a court's plumbing truck.
Yeah, pardon his leave.

(01:01:12):
But they left the, he walked out with the landlord.
And the landlord was like, I've wanted to say something
like that for so long.
She's the worst.
Locked in.
My customer locked in.
Forever.
No filter at all.
And they just did it.
And it's a North Jersey thing.
So your father grew up in Hackensack?
Yep.
All right, so grandpa grew up in Elizabeth.

(01:01:33):
You know, just urban areas.
Exactly, the edge.
You just don't care.
So my father's big thing.
You just know how to deal with people.
You know what you can get away with, first of all.
You've been doing it after so many years.
You know what you can say and what you can't.
It's an East Coast talent.
My father liked to put in a new toilet and take his coffee cup.

(01:01:54):
He would make sure this was very, he explained it.
You don't leave the room.
You don't leave the room.
He would take the toilet out of a box.
He would put it in, install it, hook it up himself,
not leave the room.
And bring the customer in.
Bring the customer in to show him or her how to work it.
He'd take his coffee cup, put it in the bowl.

(01:02:16):
And as he saw it, could drink.
Take a drink of water.
Oh, my gosh.
No way.
Just to watch your eyes.
Watch him get horrified.
That's a good one.
First of all, I like that one.
So he knew the water was coming out of the bowl.
Flushed it a couple of times.
It was the dust all over.
Yeah, it was the porcelain dust.

(01:02:37):
It was totally clean water coming through.
That's hysterical.
Just the visual of the root of all.
That's hysterical.
You know, what are we talking about?
You like it?
Oh, my God.
Customers respond to that kind of stuff, though.
When you have a good sense of humor
and you're just a normal person and not just a dweeb
and a button down, like trying to be all businessy,
they gravitate to that because there's

(01:02:59):
so many big franchise companies where you never
get the same guy, the old personality.
Yeah, no personality.
They're coming in there to fulfill their contract.
That's it.
That's why small businesses like ours, family owned,
the same person answers the phones.
Most of them, they usually see the same guys coming.
That's important.
I worked for a lady at 15 or 16 years old

(01:03:20):
on an emergency with my dad.
It was a Saturday.
She was having a birthday party for her son.
And a Hulk Hogan lookalike was at the party.
I remembered it vividly because he was in the backyard
like slamming these kids and then a match and everything.
So she's been a customer forever.
10, 20 years later, her husband, Jim, Mr. Fixit,

(01:03:41):
tried to fix the toilet, and it kept
running and running and running.
And I walk in and the overflow or the refill tube
was down too far, and it was siphoning out of the tank.
Simple fix.
So I just, you know, carol, Jesus, tell your husband
he's a jerk, and I pick it up and hook it on top of the thing.
And I put the lid on, and I go, this one's on me.
And as I start walking out, she's like, oh, no, no, no.
You need to show me what the hell you did wrong.

(01:04:03):
You can't just fix it that fast.
So OK.
So what you see, plumber's sitting on the toilet backwards.
The first thing I do is hit the flusher,
take the tank lid and put it on my lap,
and the refill hose comes off of its holder.
And it's now like a fire hydrant.
And the fire hose is spraying me and her.
And she, of course, comes in, and it's over my shoulder.

(01:04:24):
And it's spraying the cry.
And she's smacking me.
She's going, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I'm crying.
I'm so embarrassed.
I'm so red.
And I put it on my cup.
I'm so sorry.
So by the time I got home, Cheetah,
you already called my dad.
And I had called him first and told him what happened.
But she's on the phone with him.
Like seconds after me, he goes, I understand.
I have to call Dithus.

(01:04:45):
What are you talking about?
You just beat the shit out of my son.
And he's like, oh, my god, he told you.
So how long, when you guys took over,
how long did it take for the customers to stop saying,
I want your dad?
I don't want, you know.
You know what?
We were always the boys.
So it didn't matter.
And we weren't really taken over at that point.

(01:05:06):
Dad was still alive.
He just didn't go out.
So it was a transition.
They had him on the phone.
They would love.
He would talk to customers forever.
Which they wanted to get out.
That's what my grandfather would do.
Paul said he said it all the time, like they would go out.
And then he would sit there.
And he would talk to the customer
and have a cup of coffee while you did all the work.

(01:05:27):
Yeah.
But that was the baton being passed.
And as an apprentice, you didn't realize it.
That's how he's here.
Dad's going to make sure it's all right.
No problem.
And there was a customer of God, since my grandfather's age,
that had a big old house, Mrs. Cohen.
And she was very particular.
I'll use that word generously.

(01:05:48):
And she wanted Jack, my dad's 12-year-old older brother.
And then my dad had to go in, kicking and screaming
for her to accept him.
And then it was me to write a passage.
And when my dad was in the office, he's like, Mrs. Cohen,
I got the same job you do now.
Oh, what's that, Bobby?
I just get to sit around and bitch all day.

(01:06:09):
It was like, I'll take care of it.
I promise.
And that was it.
OK.
I promise that he would, too.
It's the same thing.
It gets passed down the line.
So when Rob walked in, what's the first thing on the wall
you noticed?
Indian motorcycles.
Yes, Indian motorcycles.
So Rob, you're a Harley rider.
Absolutely.
Hunter through and through.
Yes.

(01:06:29):
There's, I don't know what it is,
but there's a continuity line between all you Harley riders
for some reason.
You can always sniff it out.
I don't.
Well, you know, it's a group.
How long have you been riding bikes?
I don't know.
God, since I got my first motorcycle at eight years old,
trail 70 Honda.
Really?
Yeah.
We all rode it.
Really?
Yeah, that was right across the street.
That's not like a long roof for it.

(01:06:51):
No helmets.
I mean, that's yeah.
Yes, that's when the start.
Yeah, eight years old.
That was years old.
And I had a banana seat.
So it was like either one of us could ride.
I got you.
The other guy behind the back.
Got a 125 Enduro for a little while in my teens.
And then I got a three-wheeler Honda 250 R three-wheeler
and then moved.
Then I took a little bit of a break.
You had a trike for a while, huh?

(01:07:12):
Yeah, a lot of years.
And then I got my first quad when I was 28.
And then for my wife, actually, and me.
And then I got another one and another one.
And I got my first street bike at 35.
I got a Yamaha Maxim.
And then I bought a Yamaha V-Star.
And then I got a Harley.
And you got Dad's.
Yeah, now I have three bikes still.

(01:07:32):
You still have the V-Star?
Because I remember seeing it.
Yeah, 2004.
Custom paint.
And you're a quad.
You ride ATVs.
I'm a quad rider, yeah.
I mean, that's not so much of a fork in the road.
But it is a little bit.
It is very different.
It makes you a better street bike rider, though.
Riding the woods.
Oh, hands down.
Does it?
Just don't try to ride it.
You know.

(01:07:52):
It's normal.
Exactly.
No, it's normal.
A little bit of a different there.
You want to talk about a V.
Totally different.
Yeah, totally different.
You hang in the V.
You turn that thing.
You're not going where the steering wheel is facing.
No.
At all.
No, I know.
He doesn't want to get into it.
You don't want Paul Court's around you
when you're hanging in a tree.

(01:08:15):
He's not what you would call a first aid person.
No, I don't.
Ah, you're fine.
Get up.
You just got that wind up.
Go grab a matter of the tree.
I think what your podcast listeners
need to know is the start and finish of that story,
because that was a weekend to remember.
So we opened this weekend by unpacking at the motel
that we were staying in.
Let me start.
Let's give a quick question.

(01:08:36):
Was this had to do with business,
or was it just pure pleasure of a bunch of guys going out?
It was our supply house taking us, the three of us out,
for a thank you for your business trip.
Gotcha.
So the whole weekend was on the supply house.
We pull into the place, and we're unpacking to get ready
the same day.
And my brother had a really great bottle of booze

(01:08:58):
that a customer had given him that little closer to the mouth.
Homemade lemon cello.
Homemade lemon cello.
So he's like, we got to try this.
But the guy wants the bottle back.
Yeah, I have to bring the bottle.
That was like my instructions.
I mean, it was literally all the way up there.
We got to make sure we bring the bottle back.
So OK, we start unpacking.
The bottle goes, hits the ground,
and it explodes like a freaking grenade.

(01:09:20):
And we were all looking like that wasn't the bottle, was it?
We heard enough about the damn bottle all the way up.
Wow, wow, wow, the bottle, the bottle, wow.
And he's like, shit, I don't know what I'm going to tell this guy now.
Mike, well, Tom, you broke the bottle.
Well, I don't even know what the bottle looked like.
You're going to go get another one.
So we unpack, we go to breakfast.

(01:09:43):
I think I was the only one that had eggs, hopefully, thankfully.
But we get our snowmobiles.
And my brother over here is the guy that's renting us the snowmobiles.
I'm like looking around the other side of the store.
We're paying through everything.
Well, Scott is paying for, you know, here we go.
Yeah.
There's the order in this.
And I'm like on the way to the other side of the look at that,

(01:10:04):
like shirts or something, right?
And they start talking about the insurance.
And I don't know why, but I yelled.
And this isn't me.
It's like a reflex.
Yeah, I just turn around.
The best insurance.
Get the best insurance.
And I don't agree with that.
But for some reason.
Scott Adams looks like Puzzle.
He's like, all right, give me the best insurance.
You know, whatever.
Five hundred dollars.
Paul has this.

(01:10:24):
Your uncle had this three person snowmobile because, you know,
he's a big guy.
He's huge.
He needed like the biggest horsepower in this.
He could have laid down on this thing and drove with his feet.
And it's not rich.
And so we get these three monsters.
Now, I've never been snowmobiling before.
I'm not sure about the rest of them one time.
So mine and mine was brand new.
Yeah.

(01:10:44):
Yeah.
It was like that.
Yeah.
So we get out into the woods.
And the first thing we do is out of sight of the owner and everything is we stop
and we start drinking beers and little shots here and there.
And I'm like, guys, I don't really feel too.
And it's like, what?
And I go, I think, I think I've caught a fever.
I'm like, did we go ride for another hour?
I stop.
I am sweating bullets.

(01:11:05):
I'm like, I'm sick.
Like I am dying.
We eggs from the eggs.
I had food poisoning and I every time we stop, I threw up a couple of times and I've
Oh, that is miserable pictures of it.
So I think it was probably the second or third stop for beers that we did.
And my we go to take off and my brother decides that he's we're going to slow.

(01:11:28):
So he whips around us.
He goes into this bunch of S turns and we come, you know, straggling behind to
see him stuck between a tree.
The machine is sitting perfect, but there's like it's a yard sale.
There's like a tree.
I'm here.
He was like the machine is facing the wrong way.
Yeah, what?
That's right.
It was facing the wrong way, but it was at least on its on its skis.

(01:11:50):
It's like a yard sale.
That's so funny.
It's like he's moaning like and he's stuck in the crotch of these trees.
I am the scarecrows.
I'm like, oh, my God.
That's what Paul says.
He's always thought it was too little legs sticking out of the tree.
And he runs over now.
You know, you're not supposed to move somebody.
It was he's like, oh, God, pick some.
Oh, you just had to win.

(01:12:11):
Knocked out of me.
Drags him out.
I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, man.
He could have spinal injuries.
I'm going to get a tree going.
He comes over.
He grabs me.
I'm like, don't move.
Oh, God, he pulls him out of the tree.
Literally, because, you know, Paul doesn't listen.
Wait a second.
The first thing I remembered from him through here, I hear everybody come up

(01:12:33):
laughing.
You guys are laughing.
They're like, we probably staged it.
They thought I staged it.
They didn't hear anything.
She was coming the other way.
And I'm like,
I'm going to die.
He was still moving.
Oh, my God.
I thank God.
Caught the tree.
There was a road right out the other side that I couldn't.

(01:12:55):
Was there really?
Yeah.
Oh, totally.
Yellow lines.
There was people flying.
So that's what the boys do, though, when you when when one of them gets injured,
you laugh for a first.
Well, we saw his feet were moving, so he wasn't.
And then Paul ganked him out of the trees.
He Paul gave him out the mouth and everything was fine.
Scott's like, I'm breathing just fine.

(01:13:18):
After that, Scott jumped up.
He was like, all right, I'm back.
So the red, we kept riding at that point.
And I was the first to the last.
And I got my brand new thing and I'm steering.
He's like, he's going right.
You know, we put the pieces in the basket on the back of Paul's.
Missing the windshield was in the back.

(01:13:40):
It was just like, oh, my gosh, the speedometer was 20 yards down.
We got everything decided.
I'm like, all right, I'm not going.
I'm not giving up.
We're going to do this.
I can do this.
I went through this.
Him.
Oh, so what do you do then?
You go to the first bar first bar.
We had lunch.
My food poisoning was cured there.

(01:14:01):
This lovely bartender.
Nice.
I wish I knew her name.
She gave me all kinds of medicines.
She saved your life.
She was amazing.
Yes.
And that girl saved your life.
No, no, no, no.
Scott nearly broke a rib because where he hit the tree,
his steel flask was stowed in.
So it was like it would definitely have broken his rib.
And as it was, he had a brock in blue that was square on his ribs.

(01:14:21):
That home of Tomah.
So girl even.
So the song was the Elton John song.
That was a theme of the week.
I think you guys can write it to it.
My plan saved my life tonight.
It was so good.
See what that story will be around forever.
Oh, God, yeah.
No, and it got better because after lunch,

(01:14:42):
we all decided to drive on this lake
that we didn't know really where we were.
And we just stopped in the middle of the lake for a beer
and these people come out of nowhere
and they're screaming at us.
No, no, no, the lake's thin.
You can't be out of here with all that weight.
Holy smoke.
Like oh, oh, oh.
Five was so close.
Oh, oh, oh.
Form machine.
What do you know?
Mr. Lightfoot over here.

(01:15:03):
I was like, would you 340?
And a three man snowmobile.
It was awful.
Like, oh my God.
I don't know how we didn't all die that weekend.
And then we returned their snowmobiles
and they did not like it.
You got the best insurance.
Angry.
He goes, which one of you guys
had the snowmobile upside down?
And he goes, technically, sir, it wasn't upside down.

(01:15:23):
He goes, yes, this was upside down.
He goes, no, it was at a 90 degree angle.
And he went in the tree.
Never was upside down.
He did not.
Those things are treacherous.
He didn't think it was funny.
No.
It's not like riding a quad.
It's not like riding a motorcycle.
Me and him went out.
We went out to, took a U of Charles trip with a bunch of boys.
And we did snowmobiling first time we ever did it.

(01:15:46):
Yeah.
The ridge was gorgeous.
The same thing happened to me that happened to you,
but I didn't crash the, and I didn't get the insurance.
I was the only one who opted out for the insurance.
And I crashed.
I went into a tree, but luckily no damage to the.
They don't turn.
They don't turn.
They do not turn.
And now you see.
I need to say a disclaimer, because a friend of mine
is going to be watching this.

(01:16:06):
And he's taken me snowmobile on with his machine in February.
Jason, I don't do the stuff like that.
I'll be very sensitive.
I'll be very nice to your snowmobile.
Don't feed him eggs.
I've got snowmobiles in my house.
Exactly.
Nobody flipped it, I swear.
Yeah.
Nothing happened.
We weren't even riding snowmobiles.
I don't know what you're talking about.
But if you look, we got the best insurance.

(01:16:28):
Just for that.
Paul Kitty Insurance Agent.
Oh my gosh.
See, that's so funny, though.
And that's the stuff you'll remember forever.
Oh, sure.
We've done, we tried to do something with the company.
Like, his brother, my brother, me and him,
we took an RV trip, stuff like that.
We've did for Christmas, because we're not a big company.

(01:16:52):
Like, you know what for Christmas we'll do?
Instead of having a party, there's no point.
We'll just go somewhere for the weekend.
So we'll bring some other people.
And that stuff's important.
Sure.
You know?
Oh, the bonding is incredible.
Exactly.
You got memories like him leaving a hotel room
in his underwear two in the morning
with a wanderer out, sleepwalking.
Oh my gosh.
Scott, you sleepwalking?
And he watched the leap.
You didn't know you slept there?
I haven't slept more since I was a kid.

(01:17:14):
And Paul's like, I wonder why you walked out in your underwear.
He watched me walk out.
Are you serious?
First night we were there.
All right?
Really?
No, alquimum.
Alquimum.
That was after you broke the chair.
Yeah, he broke the chair.
First night we were there.
We get there.
And I don't know.
Well, we had to sleep out on the couch.

(01:17:34):
You broke the chair.
And I got up.
And Scott, I got the first dibs on the bed.
Yes.
Scott, oh, Scott.
Yeah.
I walked out.
And he said, he goes, he watched me get up
and argue with the grapes.
Because that's rational.
Then turn around and walk out the door.
So what does Paul do?

(01:17:55):
He goes back to sleep.
I was like, I don't know.
He's a grown man.
You're not supposed to wake a sleepwalker.
That's why.
So I get out.
He's a grown man.
I'll figure it out.
I walked three rows, three flights down.
Three floors in.
Yeah.
Bang out on someone's door.
I woke up with.
Holy cow.
Yeah.
And then had to remember where I was.
And I'm like, I figure out, I don't know how long.

(01:18:17):
You've only been in the room in a couple of hours.
Like knocked on the door.
A little bit of alcohol involved.
And he.
He went to show me.
He'll.
Ha ha ha ha.
The forest is the next morning.
I was like, I saw you leave.
I didn't know what the hell you were going to do.
And you didn't.
You already figured you had a plan.
Or I'm like, and you don't think you should come get me?

(01:18:38):
All right.
If he's leaving dressed, that's one thing.
But he's in his underwear, dude.
What the hell?
Where's he going?
That's a shame.
Thank you.
Oh, man.
Yes.
So you both have kids.
Yes.
You got kids.
You have daughters.
And after that story, I'm so proud of telling you.
Exactly.
So now it's officially.
Yeah, they've heard it.
They know I'm off the wall.
You have a daughter.

(01:18:59):
And a son.
And a son.
What does your son do?
Want me?
Does he do plush?
I was going to ask.
I was going to ask.
Like, are you?
He works for us.
OK.
Oh, he does.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When did he start?
Let's see.
He's 26.
He went to college in West Virginia for a year,
worked for a year, took a year off.
And he's been back pretty much since.
He busts his chops a little extra?

(01:19:21):
Yeah, but he's got things.
You know what?
He's one of the guys who gives it the most if not.
Really?
Yeah.
No, he's good.
OK.
Yeah.
So he deflects the giving it to him.
I got you.
Because he does what he's supposed to.
Because when I started, when I worked for you guys
immediately, you came after me.
Well, it's you.
And I'm like, well, yeah.

(01:19:42):
You're like family.
It's you and a Tim.
Yeah.
And I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm very, very sensitive around my own.
I'm sorry you have to be in the middle of that.
That's fine.
That's my effect of going out there.
He's getting used to it.
So I brought him.
Everywhere I go.
He's been around the family.
We had a, we went down to Kentucky.
My family did, the cousins did like a recent family reunion.

(01:20:03):
He came down because we did a show from Ohio.
So I'm like, what's just total on it?
Huh?
You did a podcast from there?
Yeah.
What number?
This was six maybe?
Seven.
I think it was.
God made a farmer episode where we interviewed 90-year-old
farmers.
Oh my god.
Still farming.
Still farming.
That's awesome.
Yeah.

(01:20:23):
They're amazing.
He's on a tractor.
She is bailing hay.
He's got hands like Mickey Mouse.
Oh yeah.
Just hands that wrap around your hand.
Oh really?
Huge.
Not a big guy.
And he's shorter than me.
Oh yeah.
But just.
Shorter than you, but hands that just.
Total mitch.
Like he comes in to shake your hand.
It's like, holy cow.
This is a whirl boom.
Yeah.
But that was really interesting.
So we were actually supposed to interview an Amish guy.

(01:20:43):
But he bailed on the last minute
because his church was kind of going through something.
He's like, I don't really want to get word.
I'm like, where are they going to watch this anyway?
You know what I mean?
They don't have electricity.
But I was like, all right, fine.
We'll figure something out.
But the farmers.
Do batteries count?
They do now.
They're all giant.
Do they do that?
The Amish have solar power now.
They're going to have electric cars.

(01:21:04):
So they have the electric bikes.
All the routes.
They can, yeah.
They have iPods.
They have roller blades.
I mean, my family grew up.
I've always known Ohio.
I've been going back to home because that's
where my mom's side is from.
I remember the Amish growing up.
They were always very reserved in the last 10 to 15 years.
Because of solar power, it's really changed a lot.

(01:21:24):
Bringing them in, huh?
It's bringing them.
They have electricity now.
Rum spring.
Yeah.
It's got a whole new meaning.
The guy that I was supposed to interview,
his rum spring, you know what he did?
For two years, he followed Johnny Cash around the country.
Wow.
That's admirable.
I know.
And he loves Johnny Cash.
I've been really smoked.
But for his rum springer, he followed Johnny Cash

(01:21:44):
all across the country with a couple of his Amish buddies
who did rum springer together.
This guy's awesome.
He's mad.
I've met him.
He's really cool.
Really nice guy.
His wife is awesome.
And they're so friendly.
They'll sit that they bring you into their home.
They'll talk to you.
But unfortunately, and I would have
loved to get them on the show.
But at the last minute, he was like, my church is here.

(01:22:05):
You're not over.
You're going to go into.
Yeah, maybe we can.
You've got to go back down.
Yeah, I will do that.
This is only the beginning.
But I brought him to.
After that, we went down to Kentucky.
And I had a little cousin's reunion.
And that was just a madhouse.
Yeah.
If you can't.
He got a taste of the courts family.
If you're not on your toes with this with the courts family,
then they're going to eat you alive.

(01:22:25):
They're all the only ones with T. Kentucky.
You know what I mean?
My brother is the only one.
They came from Alabama.
My brother came down from.
Makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
I'm putting the pieces together.
A whole bunch of things.
What, Alabama?
Alabama, the whole area where you're coming from.
Yeah.
Oh, we busted their church.
There was a bust in breeding going on.

(01:22:46):
Yeah.
Are you just saying that because my eyes don't face
the same way?
They move like chameleon eyes.
First thing we had to reiterate to them is that we won.
So.
Oh, yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
But we did a stupid little.
I don't care how you do it up north.
Yeah.
I'm actually trying to bring.
So Paul's son is 14, right?

(01:23:07):
Yes.
And my cousin's son is 15.
And I want to bring them up.
I want to get Nicky to work.
I'll put Nicky in a truck with Max.
I want to take Mason and start bringing up
the next generation.
Yeah.
Which would be awesome.
And see how long they let you do a summer.
See if they want to come back.
Listen, the way they're programmed, 100% they're plumbers.

(01:23:28):
They're plumbers already.
That's hard working.
Yeah.
Yep.
Polite.
They are.
Nicky's very polite.
You know what that's unique?
You need both of those.
I'm sorry.
You need to.
You need crackless.
Oh, yeah.
No.
Crackless, polite, hardworking.
Crackless?
Like doesn't smell crack?
No.
Like not showing crack.
Oh.
We are.
We are crackless.
OK.

(01:23:48):
Crackless.
I thought that meant like a hard skin, like a hard shell
that you can't.
We are crackless plumbers.
Although we're going to hear that.
We have taken credit for making buck cleavers.
It's popular.
Yeah.
That's it.
We are anti that.
You need a belt.
You need pants to fit.
Yeah.
Crackless plumbers.
So are we.
We always have a belt on.
That's it.
And with that buck right hanging out.
I want to double up and wear suspenders too.

(01:24:10):
I was like just so.
That's a different word.
He wants to go with suspenders.
Around 35 get that belly and it's not.
Their hips kind of disappear.
Yeah.
But I want to move it up to the next generation.
Mr. I can't open a bottle over there.
How long you been out of the field, man?
Can you put a water heater in skill?

(01:24:30):
Still.
Has he ever been able to?
I'm going back.
I'm going back with that.
It stopped.
No, it's black and white.
Oh yeah.
That's fine.
It goes on a sleep mode.
It kind of saves some energy.
No, I still go to jobs where Paul's water heaters are still
in there.
I replaced the boy.
I think he was on the job where my grandfather put the boiler
in originally.
A couple of them.
I still see his stickers on the boilers.

(01:24:53):
Yeah, now we do them.
Now we put them in right.
But I tell people.
That's what it should be.
I tell people, like, oh, your uncle came in here and put this
I was like, what's wrong with it?
Because we fired the guy.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Right, tonight.
He's no longer with us.
We won't even let him answer the phone.
Yeah, we got rid of him.
But the warranty has expired.
Leave us alone.

(01:25:15):
So what's the plan going forward with WIC?
Short term, long term.
So how many guys do you have right now?
We're down.
We're down because we wanted to keep the quality.
You want to keep the quality?
Are you guys in maintenance mode, like, maintain this?
Well, I'm sorry.

(01:25:36):
Go ahead.
Like, are you guys in?
You're trying to maintain a certain number and a certain
quality because before you said, we grew.
In the beginning, when you guys took over,
you just wanted to grow.
It was six months and you grew and grew and grew.
And eventually you hit 28 and you realized, oh, this is too much.
So you scaled it back to something more manageable.
We're trying to really work on the quality end of it
and just be like, all right, let's be honest.

(01:25:57):
The business isn't the same in the last four years.
So we had 18 employees coming into COVID.
A lot of them were in their 60s.
So when the smoke cleared, we're 12.
Gotcha.
A lot left.
And some just younger guys, some Spanish guys,
never just never came back.

(01:26:19):
We don't know where they went.
But we lost a lot of guys to not death, but to COVID itself.
Yeah.
They just decided to not die.
Just wanted to get out.
Not die.
Changing careers.
It was crazy.
And the communication just got.
And the workload has been hit or miss since then.
It's been, at times, difficult to keep 12 guys busy.
This summer was really up and down.

(01:26:41):
Oh, yeah.
It was very, and we're not sure about parts anymore.
There's a back order.
That's huge.
Back order on inventory is like across the board.
Doesn't matter.
And customers don't understand that at all.
Not at all.
I'm hearing crazy stuff from that you can't buy blue paint
to make the green ground wires in boilers.

(01:27:01):
You can't find insulation for boilers.
They have all the parts, but they don't have insulation.
22 week wait for hot water makers for apartment houses.
18 weeks on sections for commercial steam boiler sections.
It's all over.
And now a lot of these companies have been bought up

(01:27:21):
and said, what, whether COVID took them out
or the climate with the oil crisis
or whatever they're doing to war on oil.
Like H.B. Smith isn't making boilers anymore.
US boilers is buying up all these little crown boiler,
velocity boiler, and vertical.
Yeah, if you look, all the force boilers coming out

(01:27:41):
of Ferguson are made by US boilers.
I didn't know that.
I thought crown was still making them.
No, no, no.
Not for how long?
Since like a year?
It's hard to get a, like I'm selling brand name to a customer.
I sell the branch manager.
I want a crown boiler and 103,000 BTUs.
And it comes, it says, force on it.

(01:28:02):
And I think, why?
I wanted a crown.
Well, crown makes it because crown was bought by US boilers.
And here, look, they make you to put this and that.
He wants stickers, I can put stickers on.
I could cover it up with something.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
I mean, we've been feeling the brunt of it.
I remember three months into COVID, supply chains,
boom, completely tarnished and destroyed.

(01:28:26):
I don't think a lot of our customers
are taking that stuff seriously yet.
And we're the ones feeling it.
Well, they had a lot of inventory through COVID.
So I didn't see other than like high demand items
like the sensor faucets.
Yeah.
Couldn't get them through COVID at all.
Well, I couldn't get a peerless boiler.
Well, again, that took a little while to weed out.

(01:28:48):
Like it wasn't immediate.
I believe that we were back to work three or four months
after the big shutdown.
We never really had that big of a slowdown.
No, us.
Well, we were down.
We had two employees.
I was on unemployment.
Sarah was on unemployment.
You were the only one in the office on the books.
Oh, that's right.
And one of the employees we had was Joe, Kyle, and Alex.

(01:29:11):
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
My perception of him was different
because I was doing estimates the entire time.
Well, when Murphy said you can do schoolwork.
Once we could open up schoolwork, that's open.
That's when you started hammering down.
Yeah, that just, I just.
We reopened in three months under that.
Well, reopened.
We were still working.
We still were.
Whoever would let us in their house,
we would, you know, those three guys would do.

(01:29:31):
COVID transformed a lot.
Sarah would come in one day a week
and do like 10 invoices and payroll.
And that's, you know, and I'd stat at the desk
on unemployment and answer the phone every day.
Yeah.
You know, but you had to reinvent the wheel
just to stay open.
I know.
And we kept the crews staggered time.
So nobody got contaminated.
One crew came in the same two guys, seven o'clock.

(01:29:54):
The same two guys at seven 30 and another two guys at eight
o'clock.
How long did that last?
Until the CDC said that it wasn't a 14 day wait
if you were exposed anymore.
Because again, I got to follow the CDC rules, which we all
knew we couldn't have BS.
The rest, the same people in the backyard at all.
It was and trying to shift them through.
The guys like, oh, I want to come in early.

(01:30:16):
One guy comes down with COVID.
What am I going to do?
Close.
Right.
We wipe out one of them.
No, we know.
We lost the crew.
Yeah.
And we kept working.
All right.
Well, you rode in the truck with them.
So we kept.
That's actually a smart way to do it.
We tried.
We tried.
I mean, if I was in the five years size,
and I wouldn't have figured that one out.
We would have all had COVID all the time.
Well, you know.

(01:30:36):
I'm being told now that you can't get COVID
if you don't test for it.
That's it.
Well, that's always been true.
You know how you avoid COVID.
Exactly.
Just pretend it doesn't exist.
The biggest thing is to take your TV
and throw it in the dumpster.
Do you know how you get your name on a list in Hack and Sack
for being kind of questionable?
What?
You have two business owners who are brothers

(01:30:59):
apply for a pistol permit at the same time.
At the same time.
Yes.
And have your friend who has to apply for it, like sign off
for it.
Go.
Are you guys having a problem?
They're about to duel.
They're about to duel.
We had to go down over there.
We had to go down and pick up our permits at the same time.
I don't mind.
So they're devil's playground because we're sitting here

(01:31:20):
looking at each other doing nothing.
Like, hey, we can go this out online.
He's like, you two guys getting along?
He's like, you got a lot of time together.
I can't look at his face anymore when I come into the office.
Three steps, three paces, turn, shoot.
The Nerf gun wasn't satisfying enough.
You've been working out of Hack and Sack.
You've got to be probably know all the cops.

(01:31:41):
Oh, that was our boy.
Yeah.
Our friend of ours.
Now it's a whole new generation coming out.
Yeah, it was one of the last guys retired.
So you don't have to answer this,
but we'll wrap it up with this one question.
Thoughts for the future for the company?
I know we started to talk about that.
But would you guys probably just run it out
and pass it to the next generation,

(01:32:02):
or would you think of selling the whole thing
and getting out completely?
You know what?
I'll go either way.
Yeah.
Yeah, either way.
We'll see what happens.
If the generation wanted it, there
might be some interest right now.
But can I tell the funniest story that I've ever had
out of all the years that we've been dealing with this?
Sure.
I'm sorry.
And you could edit this, because it may not be as funny,
but I think it's hysterical.

(01:32:22):
All right.
This is going to be good.
Funniest story that I ever had, and I know you've known this.
So I was on a sewer call with my father way back.
I was a young kid.
And a nighttime sewer call.
We come out, and this guy was a pain in the ass.
Nicely done.

(01:32:43):
Nicely done.
Pain in the ass.
And he's complaining, complaining, complaining.
We show up there.
It had to be like 10, 11 o'clock at night.
We come through.
We pull the toilet out.
He's going, I don't understand.
He goes, this toilet is housed.
You guys were here.
You guys were here a month and a half ago,
and it's clogged again.
So we come through with our sewer cables,

(01:33:04):
doing the whole thing.
We pull out the sewer cables.
We can't get this line.
Go back in, back out, back in.
We finally pull out.
We're going to change the head.
And we have green grass cuts.
Like, it's green on the end of our sewer cable.
And we're like, the father and I looking at each other.

(01:33:24):
And I'm young.
I'm going, I don't know where they're coming from.
I don't know.
Green.
It's green.
How the hell do you get this?
So go outside.
He look.
I can picture him.
Get the flashlight and look in the outside.
See where it's coming up.
We're there till one o'clock in the morning.
OK.
On a sewer?
Like a sewer clock.
OK.
I'm looking over neighbors, fences.

(01:33:46):
I'm looking for where our wire came out through a sewer crack.
That's crack.
Right.
Up.
And we got to be laying in somebody's grass,
ripping it across.
Like, nothing.
I don't understand.
We pulled back out.
But I cannot find anything.
The guy finally comes down in his boxers.
And he's like, you think my grass clippings
clogged this up?

(01:34:07):
Oh, the guy was dumping his grass clippings.
From his lawn mower.
From his lawn mower, flushing him down the toilet.
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
Are you kidding?
I'm not kidding.
We didn't think to tell us that.
Yes.
You didn't say it from the start.
We were there from like 10 30 to 1 30 in the morning.
Oh, my.
Every little bit.
Dramatically.
But that was like, we drove home, the two of us,

(01:34:29):
in our car on the truck.
Oh, do you believe that just happened?
You believe that that is the stupidest individual I've
ever met in my entire life.
That is unbelievable.
I would be livid for years.
Yes.
Well, that's why when you asked us to come here, I'm like,
he was 17 when that happened.
He's the number one story that I'm like, all right,
what do we talk about?

(01:34:50):
That is what I got to talk about.
Oh, my gosh.
Where is cooking down a basement toilet?
We had.
We pulled out a toilet.
I pulled out a chicken carcass one time,
and I had to call him and tell him this.
The maid was eating chicken wings over the toilet.
Yeah.
And she would throw everything in the toilet.
She would just shove it down.
Oh, no.
And I pulled it out.
I pulled out.
I was there twice within, same thing, like within a month.

(01:35:11):
And each time it was chicken bones.
And she didn't speak English.
She didn't understand.
There's nothing you can do.
And I was like, you can't put food down here.
Like, no bueno.
No bueno.
Like, what are you supposed to do?
I think women dump potatoes, like whole potatoes
from stews and like.
Why?
It's a big hole.
What do they think magic happens down here?
We had a lady that was putting batteries in a garbage

(01:35:32):
dispenser.
Oh my god.
Yes.
Oh my god.
I mean, literally, we redid her kitchen.
And I won't tell her name, but her husband was on TV
for a long time.
I think that's worse than that.
The whole bottom fell off the garbage disposal.
It was blowing up the motor.
And I mean, a month, you change it out on warranty.
A month later, it goes again.
And I'm like, lady, what are you putting down here?
Like, you're not.
She's like, oh, I put batteries, this, bones.
I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that.

(01:35:54):
She's like, uh, it's a garbage dispenser.
No way.
And I'm like, oh my god.
I go here, it's a food waste grinder unit with.
Yes.
What a joke.
And they'll talk back to you with confidence.
Oh, yes.
It's garbage disposal.
Well, he says it on the label.
He always told me, don't trust what the customer says.
Like, if you go there, just don't trust what the customer says.

(01:36:17):
You're a detective.
Yeah.
If they say that it's been fine, nothing's no problem.
Like, I just throw regular stuff down here.
No, you're not.
I see it energize the battery bunnies, shittings.
Regular to them.
They're not lying to you.
They may not be lying to you.
But what they think is regular is not what we know is regular.

(01:36:37):
So clearly you're going to try to sell the business.
Hey, listen, can I get one more grass clipping sewer line?
I'm out tomorrow.
Us too.
See you.
Oh my god.
Listen, guys, we've been talking for a long time.
This has been a lot of fun.
But let's wrap it up.
And we're going to get Scott on for another episode.

(01:36:59):
We're not going to disclose it now,
but Scott's got some stuff to bring on.
I've got some stuff going on.
We'll talk to him in the future.
And Rob, you're welcome on any time to tell stories
and as a little brother.
I appreciate you having us, Phil.
No, it was a lot of fun.
I'm glad you guys came.
It was a good time.
Good luck with you, man.
It was all fun and games to Paul showed up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Folks, Scott and Rob Wickersheim from Wickersheim and Sons
Plumbing in Hackensack, New Jersey.

(01:37:19):
Go check them out online.
What's the website?
Wickersheim.
Wickensons.com.
There's also, you know, Court Plumbing is fantastic.
They'll take care of you too.
You don't have to do that.
No, no.
No, no.
He's got four cameras.
No one else is his company.
If they can't get to you, they're going to call us.
Exactly.
It's all good.
Night or day, we're there.
We want to shout out the phone number.
If you throw grass clippings in your sewer line

(01:37:40):
where you call them, we're going to get a Wickersheim.
201-343-4157.
Awesome.
All right.
And we've been working together for a long time,
and I hope that continues.
It's all good.
Good relationship.
Folks, thanks for tuning in to Plumb Bums.
We appreciate it.
Like, share, subscribe, share this, get the name out there.
There's a lot of good content coming out.
We have a lot of good guests coming up.

(01:38:01):
So share with your friends, post it to Facebook, everything.
We appreciate you listening, and we'll see you next week.