PIRTEK South End, Charlotte, North Carolina Franchise Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina - When February 14 rolls around each year, the independently owned PIRTEK South End in Charlotte, NC franchise marks another year of satisfying hose and fitting requirements of its customers by taking their needs to heart. This year the mobile-based hose assembly replacement business is celebrating a decade of manufacturing custom hose assemblies at customer jobsites. Since onsite service keeps their equipment downtime to a minimum, customers are offering wholehearted congratulations.
Proprietors Mike McArdle and Bob Kollar didn't start out as original owners of PIRTEK South End at 1515 South Mint Street, but their PIRTEK experience made them well suited for the helm position when they took ownership in 2008. Both began their careers with PIRTEK as mobile sales and service technicians (MSSTs)-the guys who arrive in a "hose shop on wheels" at a jobsite within one hour of a customer's call for help. Later both worked their way up to become operations managers and interim general managers, whose roles include dispatching mobile service vans when and where they are needed and keeping the home-base service center well stocked with hose and hose ends.
With their vast on-the-scene and behind-the-scene experience, the partners agree that customer dedication and teamwork are important keys to success. "We make a 110% commitment to each of our customers by providing top-notch technical, sales, and after-sale support," McArdle says. "We are able to do this by going after each customer with total team support both on the scene and back at our shop."
Already this year PIRTEK South End has been awarded a major contract that was a direct result of its astute customer care. The customer awarded it a five-year contract for hose assembly replacement needs within five departments. Also relying on the business are construction, airport, industrial, and refuse accounts.
PIRTEK South End's mobile fleet includes five full-time service vans that canvas customers and potential customers within a 25-mile radius. Behind the wheels are MSSTs Jeremy Allison, Paul Dugick, Dennis Levesque, Richard Morris, and Daniel Plunk.
McArdle and Kollar jump in yet a sixth van as customer needs arise and frequently ride alongside their MSSTs when sales calls are on the day's agenda.
"We make it a point to get out in front of our customers whenever we can in order to establish a relationship with them," McArdle says, "and to stress over and over again how we can save them time and money by making hose replacements right at their jobsites. Otherwise, they need to take failed hose assemblies off their equipment, travel to a hose shop for replacements, return to the jobsite, and then install the new assemblies. All that turns into hours of downtime, which we can virtually eliminate."
PIRTEK South End's staff also includes David Cook, administrative assistant.
Rockledge, Florida-based PIRTEK USA is the world's leading service provider of ETA 1-Hour On-Site Hose Replacement. PIRTEK offers 24-hour, seven-day service that caters to almost every facet of industry. Nearly 40 PIRTEK franchise service centers that function as home base to over 170 PIRTEK mobile service vans are operating in major metropolitan markets nationwide.