Owner / Accountant / Chief Cook
I cannot talk about myself without also speaking of George, my best friend and partner for over 33 years. George was the strong guiding force in ALM’s success. His extensive and shared knowledge of the power sweeping industry continues to live strong in all our hearts. He never had a qualm in sharing his opinion and giving his guidance in the sweeping industry. He was once asked to give a lecture to fellow owner/operators, “Running a Cadillac sweeping business or a Volkswagen business”.
We started Alamo Lot Maintenance together in August 1983 and while I continued to complete my degree in Interior Design at Incarnate Word College, George began selling, sweeping and billing with 1 truck. He was literally a one man show. By the Fall of 1984 we had acquired four Tymco 210 sweeper trucks in our fleet.
Upon graduation in 1985 I decided to join up with George in running ALM, since it was continuing to grow quite fast. At that time, we had 6 trucks in the fleet and twelve employees.
In the first few months, I had to learn the company inside and out. I cleaned and pulled maintenance on the trucks to prep them for each night of sweeping. When I cleaned my trucks I cleaned them very well, my use of Armor All on just about every surface of the cab is remembered quite well. Then I stepped into sweeping parking lots at night with fellow drivers; bidding and providing proposals for contracts, which got me out to meet customers, this was the fun job and I completely loved doing it. We live by the motto that we never want our sweeping service to be a problem for our property managers, whose job is handling problems all day. I finally landed myself a cushy job when I started handling the monthly invoicing, paying bills, processing payroll and cleaning the office.
Sometimes working with your spouse can be a problem for some couples. George & I however enjoyed the same vision of what we wanted to do with ALM; how we wanted to help our employees, how we wanted to have a positive impact on the environment and our community and how we wanted to have fun in the process.
After George passed away, I was wearing many hats. The roles of owner, manager, chief cook and bottle washer; encouraging and patiently mentoring, but being guiding source of information have been the toughest to fill. We now have a full office staff and I’m proud to say we are back to having fun and sweeping day and night. I can’t think of any other job I would rather have than the one I do right now.