A (16:49)
All right, so here's the importance of redundancies, you know, because the spill truck, the spill kit that was on that truck was good, but it, you know, honestly I'm looking at it now and all the materials that we used, I don't. It wasn't. Even though it was advertised for like a 200 gallon spill, we needed more. You know, that, that kit kind of this first time I ever had to use one to that capacity. It wasn't really designed to fully contain a compromised 200 gallon herbicide type tank. You know, and this is where kind of the redundancies, you know, really saved us. You know, Lynn called me like right away. As soon as like found out that the girl was, you know, I'm gonna say okay, she was not. By the time I was there, she was not there. So I mean it must have it probably 20 minutes or so since I don't know what the duration of time passed. But when I got there, I was actually not too far away with our truck and our big enclosed trailer which has bigger capacities, has bigger spill kit, bigger tanks. Anyway, I'll talk about that in a second. But anyway, from what I was told, she's okay. Again, I don't know what's going on right now because you know, her airbag was deployed. I know that the truck had the airbag blown up. And I don't know as of, you know, within about 24 hours, roughly right now from this incident. I have not been, I don't know what's going on with her. I. One of the. Throughout, during the process, I had asked one of the first EMT or the firefighter guy that was standing around, I asked him like, what happened to the girl? And he just said, well, she was complaining about a bump on her head. She wasn't bleeding or anything. And I'm like, okay, you know, but that doesn't mean like she doesn't have whiplash or anything. But I mean, I'm working. I'm like really worried about this. Even though we weren't driving, you know, but I'm just. Because of the combination of things, I'm just kind of, I'm still. I feel, I don't feel good right now. You know, I don't know what's going to happen. I hope she's good. I hope that only the vehicle suffered damage. Obviously, I don't think I'M going on a limb here and saying it was her fault because she plowed into my truck while it was parked stationary. And you know, the only thing we didn't have on there was flashing lights and you know, disco ball saying please don't hit us. But you know, it's, it's, it's, that part's unnerving too because, you know, from what I understand, she's a young girl and I probably too much vehicle for her to handle or something. I don't know. The way Lynn explained it, she was very young, probably just got her license or something. So anyway, let me pull back from that rabbit hole a little bit. I, again, I, I don't, there's a lot of information I don't know, but I'm just sharing my experience with what we did when I got there because she was gone. And after I found out that Lynn was good and I saw what Lynn had done, I'm like, okay, we're going to transfer the contents of the, of this, the broken, you know, the, the, his tank. We're going to transfer the contents over. And now this tank is, you know, like I said, it's a 200 gallon space saver and it was not being used to spray the lawn like pulling hose. Okay, what we do is Lynn's truck was set up for a ride on spreader sprayer. And that 200 gallon mix was mixed for, it's more concentrated. So it's mixed for a spreader sprayer. So that means that the herbicide that was inside there, I mean we're just using, you know, T zone. T zone se was what we're using at, you know, one and a half ounces per thousand. So for every gallon of mix that was in the tank, that is 6 ounces of T zone. And if you don't know, T zone is, it's got some 2 4D dicamba sulfentrazone and triclopyr. Now that's a really great herbicide, but it is not, you do not want to get it into any waterways. This stuff is, it's really toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates if you, it, you do not want it to get into the waterway. So this is, you know, for me, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, zoning in, I'm locking in and I'm like, okay, what's the first thing we need to do? All right, emergency, you know, cops and everything. I, I, when I pull up, I'm like, look, I'm going to transfer this to here. I need to be able to do that. I said, we won't be able to. The good thing is, I think on our, on that truck we had like a 400 foot reel. And you know, because it's not. Because it's meant for. We're using it as a nurse tank. Like we took the spray gun off of it and basically there's a dry poppet system on there, so where you could just plug into the. The machine and it just automatically fills it, right? So it's like kind of a quick fix. I'm like, does the engine still work? Like, did that get damaged? Did the pump still work? And everything seemed to be working fine. We fight, you know, fired everything up and basically just ran that hose without getting in everybody else's way. Just basically pulled that hose over to the trailer where I had an empty tank that we could transfer the, the contents, the remaining contents back in there. Now, the tank wasn't absolutely full because again, this, I don't know, this happened around like one o', clock, I think. So Lynn had already been out for quite a bit of the day and most of that tank was used up. But, you know, we all we kind of had to do is remove that poppet off the. I think we just cut it off. We didn't even bother with trying to. Just try to get everything going. But anyway, just pulled the hose, pull, pulled it to my tank that was in the trailer and then filled that tank with the remains of the liquid. And you know, it, it just getting that taken care of made me breathe a whole lot better. You know, we. It was basically like just making sure that we're transferring any potential contaminants to that water and getting it into a safe vessel, you know, and that was what was nice. And then again, like we've taken the, you know, borrowing some of the pads and stuff from my kit that was in the truck or trailer where, you know, we're able to stop up like all of the things and there's. I don't even know how many pictures we got. It's just like tons and tons of documentation. You know, that before there's any other big service coming out to. There's so many things I need to say right now, but it's just hard for me to focus right now. So forgive me, but anyway, I come in, see what happens, see, see the, this, assess the situation. We start immediately pumping those products into an empty vessel. I'm talking with the cops. They're still calling out a response team for cleanup. And I said that that's fine, but let's try to secure this as quick as possible. So they allowed me to. To pump that into my empty tank. And because we take really good records, you know, this is where Yardbook is going to save my butt in a sense, not just because of saving me time, but because we use it for our chemical tracking. We. I could tell like, how much product we actually lost. We're not going to be guessing because every time Lynn would stop off and do a report, do a. An application, the system would track how much chemical is being put down on that property. And this way it was kind of nice because, you know, I could take a look at how much we recovered from the broken tank and see inside of our other tank that we transferred it to see what is inside the write on sprayer and look at. Okay, well, now we have. Yeah, you know, we. We've got like 90 gallons of mix that came from that tank. We got another 10 that came from the spreader sprayer. So now we got like a hundred. And we know he started with say, 200 gallons and he sprayed out, you know, 80 gallons worth of mix. You know, you get what I'm saying? I'm just. I don't know the actual numbers yet because I'm, you know, still in shock from the whole thing. But the nice thing was I was able to give them a ballpark, a very accurate ballpark of like how much we lost. And when the, the other couple hours later when the, the. I don't know who they called out, but there's a company that came out and we had to. Had to kind of stay there and report to them a bit and walk them through what happened on our end with, with the chemical spill itself. And you know, I'm like, you could see this is a 200 gallon tank. We recovered it and transferred it into this tank here in this trailer. You could see how much is here. This is how much was in the Spriter, you know, kind of going through the whole thing. And, you know, we still had all the, the. The dams and the absorbent pads. Like, we're still laying around on the ground. They had kind of soaked everything up. They. They saw what we did. We had our absorbent clay stuff. I forgot what it's called, but it's kind of like kitty litter. But it's not. It's meant specifically for, you know, cleanups and everything. And I don't know, you know, it was kind of nice getting a little attaboy because they were saying like, hey, you know, you guys did A great job. And even the, the cop, one of the cops that was talking to me and the fireman that was telling me about the girl, they were like, you guys got this done pretty quick, you know. And I'm like, yeah, well, I don't want any of this stuff going into the, the pond. And you know, the, the inspector walked down to the, the bat, the bird bath, the, you know, the, the thing covering the, the sewer and was, he's looking at it and he's like, yeah, this is. He goes, it looks like you guys probably prevented quite a bit of the product from going down the drain. He goes, a spill isn't really that bad. He goes, you know, based on where the crack is and where your liquid was. He goes, I don't, I don't think it's gonna be that much. And we're, we're kind of thinking it's around like maybe 30 gallons total. I don't know for sure, but that, I think that would be a pretty accurate loss. I don't know. Usually by the time of day the tank is a little bit lower, but you know, I don't know, low day. Anyway, I'm rambling here, but you know, you know, we obviously we reported the spill. If they weren't coming out themselves, if they weren't called by the police department and all that, I would have called them myself. In each of our trucks too, we have a card that is like on the visor in case there is a spill so we don't have to look hard for it. It's just like, hey, boom. You know, this is part of our emergency response type thing. It's like notify the proper people so that, you know, something happens. Then I guess they could come and blame us. But that whole part was nerve wracking, you know, because, you know, your mind immediately starts racing and you're like, okay, what happens now? Are there fines? You know, are. Will regulators get involved? My insurance going to fight us on this? You know, is this going to affect my licensing? Could this become a major issue? Am I going to kill the whole pond? You know, and like I said, thankfully the, the damage to the tank was near the top part and not lower down where the entire load could have just drained out really fast, you know, but we, you know, like I said, we were able to contain and recover most of that material really quick. And I again, like, we got, got an attaboy from the cops and the, the firefighter, EMS people because they said we did a great job at, you know, controlling that situation. And, you know, that meant a lot to hear in the moment. But, you know, emotionally, I'm still feeling the weight of it, you know, because you realize how close things came to becoming really, really bad. And again, since, I don't know, the status of the young girl, I'm. You know, that weighs on me, too. We didn't do anything wrong. We didn't do anything wrong. But I'm still worried about her. And, you know, I'm thinking, I'm praying for her. I'm praying for her parents, because, I mean, I'm sure, you know, that's something I don't. I don't want to ever hear is, you know, getting a phone call from cops or somebody and saying, hey, you know, your daughter's been in an accident. She's in the hospital right now, and you're left with a bajillion questions, like, what happened? Who hurt her? But anyway, you know, this. This is like the emotional side that, you know, nobody's. I don't know, people don't really talk about this part. You know, this is. This is not about, you know, blaming the young girl. You know, she's young. She. You know, people make mistakes all the time. You know, maybe she was distracted. Maybe she was looking down for one second. Maybe the car. Maybe the truck is. Was too much for her. I don't know. You know, maybe she wasn't used to it. I don't know. All I know is that it. Her truck became one with my truck. Sorry for laughing. I. I'm not trying to make light of it, you know, but these things, they changed a lot of things for both of us. I know it's changed a lot because now, you know, hopefully she doesn't have any injuries. They're going to follow her throughout her life. Hopefully it's just a couple bumps and bruises. Maybe I've been hit in the face with an airbag before. It's not fun. Burns. Get that smell. I don't know if it's like, rubber burn or what, I don't know, but it's not a fun thing. And that dust gets everywhere. But what I do know about this whole situation is that business owners carry an enormous responsibility. One moment of distraction from someone else can suddenly become your emergency, and that's what happened here. You know, if you look at everything on paper, we did everything right. And I'm talking about before the accident. You know, we were parked legally on a residential street, something we've done a million times before. We had cones displaying around our vehicle, showing that we're working that the vehicle is stopped and you know, now somebody made a mistake and now it costs us our truck. You know, my, you know, if you look at it, somebody else's mistake can become your emergency. It becomes your truck, your equipment, your chemicals, your reputation, your cleanup, your insurance claim, your downtime. All. When all these situations happen, you quickly realize that leadership means staying calm. And while your brain is screaming internally, you know, I just happen to be really good in emergencies. It's this like this part now where we were trying to recover and we're trying to figure out what the next step is and everything. That's when I start to like, get out of my comfort zone and I start to get overwhelmed and get not panicky but like, oh God, well, how am I going to fix this? Oh geez. Like I really starting to look at the details. You know, it's a burning building. I'm the first guy to run in there and help out. And you know, I don't think about it. I just do what needs to get done. Just like with the spill, we, you know, me and Lynn worked together, got that tank transferred over very quickly, sucked everything out of it, removed all the, anything that could be, possibly become a, an emergency or, you know, we just took all that stuff out of there and then we waited there, waited for the people to report to, you know, tell them exactly what we were carrying, let them sign off on saying, yeah, we did a good job, or oh, you know, the EPA is coming after you and we're going to have to bankrupt you or something, I don't know. But you know, this is the part that nobody teaches you. So I, I'm sorry for going so long here. I still, like I said, everything's super fresh. But I'll tell you, these are the things I learned and I'm glad we were prepared for a lot of this. You know, every, every chemical vehicle, it, you should have a spill containment equipment. Like I don't care like the ones that we were carrying. Like the one that was in Lynn's truck, that was like a 500 or $600 kit that came in a duffel bag and it had like the dams and the pads and the, you know, we, we threw in the clay stuff, the, you know, whatever. There's a shovel that I, I need to upgrade. I need to get full size shovels. I think because we had like one of these little mini shovels to help spread that and it's, it was not ideal. I know a full size shovel is going to take up more space. But if this happens again, I think that the full size shovel would be much more helpful, make our job easier. But anyway, I'm not in the business of trying to make chemical spills here, but at the same time, like, this was not our fault and we still took responsibility for it. The second thing, second lesson is you need to train your technicians before something happens. Now luckily for me, you know, Lynn's been doing this for a long time. He's already understood a lot of the things we kind of went over. We never, we. I know for a fact I need to have like hands on training, like maybe have like a tank of water that we spill on purpose. You know, just clean water and then try to mitigate the, the spill. You know, be kind of expensive using those kits. But you know, it would, it would show real life, like situations like how do we, how do we manage this? How do we deal with it? Third, have some redundancies built into your operation. You know, that one truck, that kit kind of, it did its job. But in reality, if the whole tank would have just blown out all at once, we would have been in a totally different situation. We kind of got lucky that the, the upper part of the tank cracked versus say the very bottom. I mean, I don't know what you can truly do to like if that happens. How do you save anything at that point? You know, I'm sure if the bottom would have blown out that, you know, that I know that chemical probably definitely would have went into that drain. They said it was maybe about 25 yards down the curb line from us. And water moves pretty quick, you know, even if it's just a gallon of water, once it gets put down, you know, it paves that way and then the, the next bit of water is going to follow the same path. But yeah, you know, we, I had redundancies because like one, we have the truck that I drive in the bed of the truck, it's kind of got the old camper top, you know, not old, it's not a camper top, but it's the old man top on the back. There's a spill kit in there. And then in the trailer itself, it has another spill kit. So between the two vehicles, you know, the two trucks and the trailer, we had enough spill kits to like, you know, clean up something that was much bigger or contain something that was much bigger. And you know, that's why you got to think beyond minimum compliance. You know, like if you're carrying lots of product, you know, you got to make sure that you you could clean up whatever it is. I mean, obviously I'm not going to carry around, you know, a bin, let's just say, for granular fertilizer, right? Let's just say something catastrophic happens and, you know, all the bags rip open. I'm not going to carry a bin that, that has the capacity to carry all of that or, you know, scoop all that up and put it into buckets or something. You know, this why we have like garbage bags, all the other stuff on board, because we're just doing the best we can to make sure, you know, the product should be going into people's lawns. That's why we bought it. That's why people pay for it, is to improve their lawn. It's not to, oh, let's, you know, get into a wreck or be careless and drop our load and then, oh, we got to clean it up. It's like you have the capacity to clean up one ton of granular material. You know, obviously we're not going to be carrying around that. It just doesn't make sense, you know, but this is why again, like, you know, having backups, having the redundancies, that having these things available to you are going to be key, you know, and under you. One of the other lessons that you need to understand is that risk management is part of being profitable. You know, a lot of operators think profitability is just sales and marketing and production. No, profitability is also surviving disasters. You know, it's, it's not a, we don't want this to happen. We don't ever want this to happen. But this is why, like when you race to the bottom with your pricing, you're like, well, I could do it for this. You know what, you're only thinking about the materials you're putting down. Maybe you are considering all the other things like your overhead and your payroll and maybe you are considering all that, but maybe you're not charging enough. Above and beyond. You're like, well, I want to be fair priced for everyone, right? Well, be fair to yourself. You have to look at the risk that we're taking. Again, this situation, we had no fault in it. We did, we were doing everything right. We were conducting ourselves in a professional manner. I'm a steward of the environment. I want to make sure that my guys are as well. That's why we invest in all the kind of equipment that we use so that we don't have spills and drips and, you know, all these things happening. I see other guys, you know, they're, they're you know, I saw one, one particular truck just recently. A guy was filling up on the, on an open trailer, and there was so much liquid that was coming out of his machine and drips from his hoses and everything. I was just like, man, that's, that's, that does not look good, man. I'm like, I don't know what you're spraying, but that, that, that's really bad optics. When you leave and there's a big puddle underneath your damn truck or your trailer because, you know, you're just hurrying up and not, you know, you're wrapping duct tape around the damn hoses because there's a leak in there somewhere. Instead of fixing that, you're just pushing through. It's like, look, I get it to a degree, but you know, again, you know, that's going right on the pavement. And then the pavement, when it rains, it's going to flush right down into the drain. And what's that going to do? Oh, well, there's engine oil and all the other stuff. Yes, I understand the world is full of contaminants, but, you know, we're trying to, we're doing what we can to make sure that we're not contributing, you know, more harm to the area around us. So it's. Anyway, getting back to my profitability point, there's a lot of things I'm diving off here. If you're, when you're pricing your stuff, you gotta start thinking about these types of instances. Like, there's no way to predict it. Right? But the way that I look at it is we're dealing with these chemicals where we have a lot more risk that we're taking on. It's different. Like if you're mowing a lawn and you mess up and you put the blades too low, no big deal. Usually as long as you didn't scalp the lawn completely. If you cut it a little bit too low, guess what, you could raise the blades and you could wait a week and a half and the grass will usually recover. Okay. No harm, no foul. When you're out there spraying chemicals and you make a mistake and you burn along, now that's. That could be permanent and you need to replace that lawn. Or in this case, you know, we have not to any fault of our own. We had a chemical spill that could get into the freshwater aqueducts and all of the stuff. Right. It could affect the fish, it could affect the plant life, it could affect everything. And that's not, it's not like, oh, I'm going to make sure I have a line item for that. No, you don't. But how you protect yourself is by making sure that the margins that you have are higher. You know, you can't just say, well, I'm going to price match this because, you know, I know I could get my, My, my product for this much, and I. Everything's paid for, and I really want to make sure everybody gets, like, a super great price. Well, yeah, that's good. But when some. When you're taking on that much responsibility and you're not being compensated for it, that. That's dangerous. Because in this circumstance, like I said, I'm in the middle of this right now, even though I've gotten a couple, you know, attaboys and pats on the back saying I did a good job. I. I don't know what's going to happen in the next 72 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, the next week, maybe the next month. I don't know what's going to happen. And now that we're down in production, I'm not making money off of that truck. That truck has become a liability. It's become something that can potentially, you know, cost me a ton of money. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm freaking out a little bit. You know, I spent most of the morning, you know, trying to make phone calls and find out from insurance and find out from all these things. I've contacted an attorney just to be on the safe side. You know, just let them know, hey, listen, I don't know if we're gonna get sued or whatever. We. I don't. I don't think so. But I'm like, at the same time, I'm like, I don't know. We're in a very litigious environment where, you know, people will sue us for just about anything. And again, I'm praying that the girl is. Has, you know, just maybe a bumper bruise or something like that. Nothing serious. I hope, you know, that she's okay. I hope that everything's going to work out well for her. I just don't. I don't know. I think that's the scary thing. You know, it's just like when people don't know their numbers and I tell them it's okay. We're gonna. I got that super bright flashlight, and it's kind of like these, you know, the numbers that you don't know about are the monster lurking in the darkness. And guess what? I got a really bright flashlight. We're gonna shine light on it and Find out if this monster is really how terrible it really is. And most of the time, when you shine the light on things, you could say, oh, that's pretty ugly. But it's not that bad. It's not as bad as my imagination led me to believe. But right now, that's where I'm at. I don't have any light shining on this situation. I'm concerned, and I don't normally ask you this, but if you could just help me pray on this, I. I'm very thankful that Lynn is good. The only damage seems to be done is the equipment itself, the machines, the. The trucks. I don't think there's any damage. The. The person that showed up on the response team to the cleanups team, they said that we. They didn't. They didn't need to do anything really. We. We contained everything. So it. The impact on the environment seems to be minimal at most. But I do pray that there's more light shined on this for me and that we proceed. I think first and foremost, I want to pray to Jesus and ask him to please protect the girl and I forgive her. I'm not worried about that at all. I just hope that she is good physically and mentally. For Lynn. I pray that he was not. I'm so happy that he wasn't in the truck when this happened. And Lord, for any. I don't know. I don't know how to pray this one. I just need a little bit more light because ultimately, even though it's not our fault, all of these things, they fall on me as the business owner, to follow through on and to take care of. I know this is why we have insurance and this is why we have all these things in place. But it's just not fun at all when. Especially when it wasn't due to anything that we did. And I'm just hoping that even, you know, I'm starting to think more and I'm being selfish right now and thinking about, like, all the potential things that come of this, like our insurance rates being going up and our policies may be getting canceled, or I'm thinking the worst things right now. And this is why, again, everything is super fresh. Maybe I shouldn't put this one out right now. But, you know, thank you for listening. I know this has been a. Probably a difficult listen because I'm not as concise as I normally am, and there's a lot of emotion coming through. You know, I try to keep on point, but I keep rambling. But I'll tell you at the end of the day. I am incredibly thankful that no one was seriously injured. The spill was contained, and my technician, Lynn, he reacted quickly and professionally. But you know, this ultimately, I mean, if you could learn anything from this right now, I mean, I will probably have to do a follow up here because like I said, I'm in the middle of this right now. If you're doing anything with chemicals, audit every vehicle for an emergency preparedness. Like actually it doesn't matter if it's chemicals or not. I'm just thinking that because this is what happened. But I'm just saying, like, make sure you got a first aid kit, you got a fire extinguisher. If you're carrying chemicals, have the spill kits ready. Cones, road flares, tools, spare tires, all that stuff. Make sure that that's in your vehicles. Train your team specifically on emergency procedures before you need them. Like if somebody doesn't know how to change a tire on the side of the road, you should probably train them how to do that. You know, how to do it safely. Maybe you shouldn't do it on the highway that you're on. If you can safely get off on the next exit or you know, say you're in a neighborhood, maybe just pull it out of like, you know, main traffic, just pull off into a side street. You know, if the rim gets damaged a little bit, hey, that's it is what it is. You know, make sure you're protecting your people. But the other thing I, I think, you know, the thing that comes to mind is, is building those redundancies into your business because, you know, one failure point can become catastrophic really quick. So make sure that you have redundancies like on our truck, which was nice. Being able. The fact that the, the tank that got cracked, the pump and everything still worked on it is amazing. But we also had another pump that was ready to go. So there's this little. It's actually meant for water, but at the same time it's got like a little two cycle motor on it. And you basically just put your intake, it's got a, it's like a weed whacker mower, a weed whacker engine. And it's hooked up to a pump and you basically just, you know, one side sucks in, the other side blows it out. And you know, having one of those in the trailer was nice just as a backup. We didn't end up using it. But you know, if that failed, then we had a backup. We had a contingency plan to pump that tank out without any, with, you know, without running around with our heads on fire. But anyway, that this whole situation just reminded me of something important. You know, be a prepared business is A prepared business is not a business that avoids problems. A prepared business is a business that can survive problems. So I again, I want to challenge you. You know, walk outside tomorrow morning, take a look at your trucks, like an accident is going to happen today. Because someday it just might. And when it does, you know your preparation could be the difference between a stressful day and a total disaster. So thank you for listening. As always, I want to just say God Bless, Keep pushing through and we'll catch you on the next one. Thank you once again for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with fellow business owners. Your support means the world to me and helps keep the show going strong. I want to give a special shout out to our friends at Yardbook. Their continued support has been instrumental in bringing this podcast to you week after week. If you haven't checked them out yet, visit yardbook.com and see how they can give you the tools to streamline and manage your lawn care business. Also, don't forget to explore the resources and upcoming events that I've collected just for you in the show Notes. These are curated to help you stay ahead in your business with the latest tips, tools and networking opportunities. Whether it's a new tool, an insightful article, or an event you don't want to miss, I've got you covered. Until next time, keep pushing through and God bless. Sam.
