Greg: On today’s episode of The Tim Fowler Show, The Dumpster Stops Here with Vaughn Royer, director of construction of Cain and Company in Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s going to tell us his strategies for keeping their clients happy by taking steps to prevent these giant steel containers from damaging property. Alongside Tim Fowler, I’m your co-host, Greg Wallach. Here is the Tim Fowler show.

Tim: Hey, everybody. I just love that introduction. So, Tim Fowler here. We’re going to have another great episode. I remember the other day I told The Office that we were doing a podcast on dumpsters, and I thought, you know, it’s going to be a great time. But as we always do, if you have ideas for us, send them to me, Tim at Remodelers advantage.com or to Greg, at Greg at Remodelers advantage.com.

Tim: So there was a thread traveling around in one of our production manager roundtable groups about dumpsters damaging driveways. And what do you do about that? And I know when I was a production manager, there were times when when we looked at it and we got, oh, we should have, you know, the we should have dot, dot, dot. And then like the plywood work the first time around, but the second time around it didn’t work.

Tim: And so, as the group was chatting, I eavesdropped in on it, through the, the email chain, and I showed up to be a big challenge for people. So I thought, well, let’s take you to the airwaves, so to speak. And our guest today had written in and what I thought was a really good synopsis of how they handle this, at his company.

Tim: So I immediately sent him an email and said, hey, how about being on the show? So what can happen, right? What can happen with a dumpster? Well, some driveways are asphalt, some are pretty expensive pavers these days, and some are that amazing white concrete. And I don’t know how people keep their driveways so beautifully pristine. I remember I had an old Volkswagen bug when we were first married.

Tim: We went to Florida to visit my wife’s family and visited with her elderly aunt in central Florida. Beautiful white driveway. Guess what leaked out of my bug oil right onto the driveway, right? So big, big spot. So you’ve got these amazing, concrete driveways. And then, of course, there what are the, you know, the wheels of the dumpster make dents.

Tim: They they cause scars. And then there’s all the different kinds of stuff that leaks out of them. And then there’s the bugs. Right now, I don’t know how many of you have watched Men in Black recently. I think I just started seeing it the other night. But toward the end of Men in Black, the first one, they’re chasing that bug up the ladder to get his, you know, his spaceship back.

Tim: And, agent. Let’s see. What is it? Agent J breaks up in the bottom of the dumpster and all these cockroaches come crawling out. And of course, he kills them, and the bug goes, you can’t do that. You can’t kill my relatives. And that’s where the big fight, starts there. So. And then, of course, the other challenge is just the smell of dumpsters.

Tim: And then there’s the neighbors who think, maybe we can just throw a few things in here. So at the risk of opening up our garbage for everyone to see, let’s talk about it. Greg, let’s get started.

Greg: Thank you. Tim Vaughn Royer of Cain and Company Construction in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a seasoned construction professional. He is thorough and hardworking when it comes to driving quality and profit. More importantly to Vaughn, though, is his dedication to not only the client experience, but the employee experience as well. Welcome to the show, Vaughn.

Vaughn: Thanks for having me.

Tim: Hey, as as everybody can tell, I’m pretty excited about this thing. You know, it’s it’s these, these sort of off topic topics that get me really going because I think there’s a lot to them. And maybe we just don’t talk about them enough. So long. Give us just a little bit more about the Cain and company.

Tim: what kind of work you do? Do you have in-house, employees or, how’s the structure of production there?

Vaughn: as a company with, Bennett, in business in Scottsdale for, going on 20 years, maybe just a little more. I’ve been here 11, we, focus on a, a high end, product, tight finish. we are specifically, design build, residential remodel only. And so, we we’re very dedicated to the client experience and a real tight finish.

Vaughn: And that’s our that’s our goal.

Tim: So we may have to do another, episode on the client experience, because this is something that I’ve been really keyed in, and I’m trying really hard to stop saying client satisfaction and really talk about the client experience, because I think those are two little bit different things that are probably important for us to talk about. So all right, let’s get right into dumpsters here.

Tim: And everybody listening to the show regularly knows we have some communication ahead of time. But there was something you said that that your company goal as it relates to dumpsters was something. And what is that and what makes it so hard to make that happen?

Vaughn: Our goal in general is, is leave no trace there. We do what we want. The only, end result of your project to be your completed project. We don’t we don’t want damage to your property, to your yard, to your grass, to your driveway. And, that’s in a part of the whole dumpster conversation.

Tim: And what makes it so challenging, for you guys to really make this happen. And then we’re going to talk about how you get it, how you make it happen.

Vaughn: Well, dumpsters are big metal cans, right? But the wheels don’t work from the dumpster. Don’t go around. you got, the weight of the dumpster. You have, scuffs, chips, delivery. You’ve got the truck. I have stories about the dumpster truck who caught on fire in the neighborhood, and a job I was working on.

Tim: No way.

Vaughn: With our dumpster on it. you have van usage? dumpster. Once you get it onto the property, then you have. It’s used by everybody. You have traffic to it. You have what goes in it. You have the people that use it, tracks to and from. when I was a lead carpenter, sometimes I felt like my business card should say dumpster engineer.

Tim: okay. So what are some of the things that you do? Is some of the I’ve got it in my notes is sort of standard. Any, actions that you take to protect the client’s property from all of these things that you’ve just mentioned, and I really I hadn’t thought about before the traffic back and forth, you know, to the dumpster versus just the dumpster itself.

Tim: So give us a little bit of an idea of what some of your policies or your practices are that protect the client’s property from this big metal.

Vaughn: Can, our first policy is, all dumpsters get dropped on some surface that lands between the dumpster and the driveway. whether it’s, a wood runner, whether it’s OSB, and how that’s delivered can depend on, the location of the site, but it’s it’s at least a wood barrier. We have the advantage here in, our climate that it’s, a fairly dry area.

Vaughn: There’s a huge amount of risk, for weather related issues. So, our basic approach is that just, just a physical barrier. and then we talked about tracks. I mean, there are other steps you can take. Drop claws, plastic, big plywood, you know, entire sheets of area covered with plywood taped together. if you want, we can dig into the side effects of those decisions, because the decision you make, leads to consequences.

Vaughn: And, ultimately, we found, you know, just the basic barrier, but, to touch on the approach to the dumpster depends on the scope of work that you’re working on. But I try to have the path to the dumpster be clearly understood by all the people involved. It starts with my project manager. Also, if we have heavy demo gear carrying a bunch of drywall, these people, you know, sometimes spend a lot of money on their finishes outside the house that we’re not touching or only touching the inside.

Vaughn: have protection and barriers down of some kind that that gets you from point A to point B, so you’re not damaged because you don’t have collateral damage. My one of my favorite tricks is, one of my favorite tricks is to if we’re tearing carpet out of a house and it’s a 3000 square foot house, I just absolutely love this.

Vaughn: Using the carpet and the carpet padding as, drop cloth material. It’s sacrificial. It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s going in the dumpster anyway. very often we’ll, leave it on site. That’s for the path to the dumpster. That’s one of my secret tricks, but, always have a plan.

Greg: So. So one I want to go back to when the dumpster gets delivered. Do you have a site manager there to receive the dumpster? Do you put a sign out? Do you already have the plywood down? I used to use two by twelves, and I would sort of meet the dumpster there, and we’d line it up and we’d be real careful about dropping it off.

Greg: so just curious if you have a site manager or someone there to meet the dumpster.

Vaughn: Yes. Our schedule actually starts with dumpster delivery. and the Gantt chart is all that. Oh, that’s the first thing all the subsequent trades are after that. If I want to change the start date of your job, I move where the the dumpster drop date and the project manager meets the, the vendor, whoever it is on site.

Vaughn: of course, leading up to that point, we’ve had a conversation, we’ve had a pre-construction meeting with the client. We’ve talked about where the dumpster lands. We’ve talked about concerns they may have about, their driveway. and then, of course, how we’re going to mitigate those. And then we have a conversation about what we can and what we can’t do.

Tim: What can’t you do?

Vaughn: Well, you know, obviously it can’t stop the weather and I can’t predict the future. and, and I will tell them that, you know, we will do everything within our power, but, you know, rain happens. And if if rust stains happen to your driveway, we can have a plan to mitigate them. But, you know, we try to leave no trace, but that rusting will eventually fade, and, you know, you’ll at least, you know, have had that little reminder that we were here.

Greg: So are we talking generally concrete where you are? The driveways are concrete or the asphalt or concrete?

Vaughn: No, very little asphalt in driveways here. I don’t I can’t even think of a been on an asphalt driveway in ten years. It’s too hot. however, some some clients we work on, you know, we work on two, three, four, $10 million houses. And, you know, some clients have really nice paver setups or really beautiful paver setups and, you know, not to go too deep into a story, but we, we they had a very high end client, a very nice paver driveway that we really wanted to protect for, you know, it was a $2 million project.

Vaughn: And, you know, we put them in plastic and, and, plywood. And that was a lesson in unintended consequences because, you know, in our, in our world of wanting to leave no trace, when we were all done, there was efflorescence that showed up through the pavers in areas. And so you had this big witness mark of where we had put down protection and where we didn’t put down protection.

Vaughn: And it it had nothing to do with the work we did. It was just the result of the decisions we made. And, you know, thankfully they were kind to us, but, yeah. again, that’s that goes back to you can do so much, but you do have to manage client expectation.

Tim: Yeah. That’s like when you pick up an area rug off of a hardwood floor that’s been there for 15 or 20 years. And it’s, the the floors are two different colors because of the sun damage and so forth like that. So let’s just talk about, you know, you mentioned drywall. There’s all this solid product that goes into dumpsters.

Tim: And then there’s the stuff like Thinset mortar, drywall mud, buckets that have liquids in them. And dumpsters very often leak. What are you doing to help keep anything like that from either getting in the dumpster or from leaking once it’s in there?

Vaughn: Yeah. So ideally you’re going to get have no, no liquid products that end up in your dumpster that that can leak out. And we manage that. but oddly very early in a relationship with a subcontractor, all of our subcontractors, I meet with, they sign a trade agreement that, says that they’re going to behave in a certain way on our on our property.

Vaughn: and on the jobs that they work on. that includes, specifying clean out areas. So if you’re a drywall sub and you have mud, you’re cleaning up. If you’re a tile sub and you have thinset and water that you’re cleaning up after you have a designated clean out area. Now is that area, a, a tub, a kiddy pool that has been supplied by us, the builder.

Vaughn: And we’re we’re our project manager is communicating clearly with you that this is your place for clean up and clean out and that you know, your wet materials stay here until they’re dry, and then they’re put in the dumpster. You know, we communicate that upfront. It’s in the trade agreement. In the trade agreement, it does say if you violate that, that there will be a back charge.

Vaughn: you know, obviously you want to keep a good relationship with your subs, so they perform well and you don’t like to have the back charge conversation. But if the expectation is laid up front when the conversation happens later, at least we all know that that we did talk about this.

Tim: Yeah. Very cool. So dumpsters cost a lot. I think more and more and more, not only to get rid of the stuff that’s in them, but to have and brought out. How are you guys managing the cost for these, for these the dumpster projects.

Vaughn: Debris, dumpsters, aren’t they? Isn’t that crazy? So, the pricing has become so astonishing. And somewhere during Covid, something happened and everybody ganged up on us and decided the dumpsters are going to cost 30% more. And you have to lump it.

Tim: It costs more for a man with a mask to drive the truck. That’s what it is, I think.

Vaughn: and then they snuck up on us with it. With this process, the dumpster price was the same, but the idle time went from 30 days to 20 days. so my your dumpster price just went up 33%. If you do that many. and we really, that by itself was difficult if we’re going to talk about cost, and in talking about cost and talking about, mitigating driveway problems with a client, there is a cost associated with, clean up and management and all the, all the little bouncing around.

Vaughn: Right. And, we, of course, church management. Time to jobs like anybody to cover that. But I also round up all my dumpster prices by at least $50 so that if you’re on a job for, you know, real amount, you have 50 extra dollars to to clean the driveway. You’re two months, 100, three months, 150. So I think your risk increases over time.

Vaughn: And I think the budget increases with it. With that approach. It’s a little trick I do just to make sure there’s money in the budget to cover, you know, power washing and driveways. You have to do this to make somebody happy. I like to make sure that, you know, our back isn’t against the wall. With the budget. Right.

Vaughn: So so we’re not inclined to say no to the client. I can’t I can’t do this thing to make you happy because we don’t have the money. it bothers me.

Tim: But I. I really like that idea that that you’re. It’s kind of like the lumber yard run thing, and, I’m pretty well known around the country for. Don’t go to the lumber yard. But guess what? We have to do some of it. So put it in the budget. And I think this is a great example of how, you know what, sometimes a driveway is going to get a little messy.

Tim: So let’s have something in the budget to actually, take care of cleaning that up and making sure we’re not losing money by serving the client.

Greg: So you said idle time. And that’s something that, it never been an issue to me before. And I was with the production manager group last week, and, one company got one day. So basically what they do is they pile everything up, you know, they mitigated, put on plastic, the dumpster get delivered, they load it, they’d haul the dumpster out.

Greg: Now, I don’t know anything about the community, whether it was dated or not, but that is, that’s fairly new to me, where they’re not letting you keep your dumpsters for as long as you need them. That’s, I don’t know. That’s a new thing for me.

Vaughn: The issue is that approach is there’s a cost associated with it no matter what. Right. And that’s that’s always been my biggest thing I preach is there’s a minimum cost associated with this. No matter how you look at it, you can pile the trash up and have the dumpster in there for a day, but you got to pay some labor crew to transfer that stuff.

Vaughn: What is that cost burden? Yeah. You know, is it going to be equal to having the the dumpster there for 20 days anyway?

Greg: They were talking like 800 bucks a day for their dumpsters. I was I was blown away. I was just completely blown away. And if there’s no other option, you know, it’s like the monopoly on the dumpsters.

Vaughn: I work in one of the most expensive markets in the country, and $800 a day is absurd to me.

Greg: So yeah, I was there to man.

Tim: So, Vaughn, I know that. I know that you have some language in your contract that talks about the dumpster, the the contract with the client. What? What is that language? And say, does anybody ever tell you you can’t have a dumpster in my driveway because I. I don’t want the risk of some kind of damage or anything. And then.

Tim: And then if you do, what do you do?

Vaughn: the, the language in the contract. I didn’t pull it up in front of me, but it rather than just to save this conversation for the pre con meeting, in the contract, we do say, you know, we’re going to supply a dumpster during the schedule of this project. And then there’s a sub bullet under that that, that says, you know, we will take every effort to protect your driveway from damage.

Vaughn: But, you know, there are things that happen that are out of our control, such as, weather rust, and, the one clause I just put in recently, I was actually inspired by having this conversation. It was something that happened last year and I hadn’t updated our clause. And that is a properly the clauses in the contract, a properly installed driveway should be able to support, a bin and the vehicle delivering it.

Vaughn: it is our assumption that your driveway is capable of doing this. And if there is a problem, then, you know, I forget how I worded it, but basically it passes the burden on to the client data because we had we delivered a dumpster on to a, flipper special house. they’re very popular here in the Valley.

Vaughn: You know, you buy them, flip them cheap, and it was an improperly sold paver driveway. And, of course, where do you think the client wanted the dumpster dropped? And, man, that truck just put two great big troughs, and they just, like, laid it over the dirt, I guess. And, and the client was good, the profit was good.

Vaughn: And so we just took care of it, and we didn’t have a clause to protect us at the time. Right. but, certainly if corners are breaking off and, and, and, troughs are being plowed into paver driveways, your driveway was not set properly. And I can’t own that. So anyway, that’s a side tangent, but, we do have a clause in that.

Vaughn: That way they see it when they sign the contract before we, you know, because first they sign the contract, then we have a pre-construction meeting. And what I don’t want to do is, is, is drop a bombshell on at the pre-construction meeting that they at least didn’t see coming. And so anyway, that’s that’s how we manage that. and then no dumpster on my driveway.

Vaughn: I don’t believe it’s only ever happened once.

Tim: Okay.

Vaughn: and that comes down to just having a conversation with managing their expectations. Why? What’s the risk? And we move around it this way. Can you accept a certain amount of risk? If the answer’s no, can we back up to in the driveway? We have a very difficult time in a lot of the neighborhoods here in that, very often you can’t have a can in the street.

Vaughn: Right? we may have a rule that you can have a cone around, but even then your, your, your time window is small. And we do what Greg suggested, you know, create a pile and then transfer it. And again, it’s very nice to make sure we have these conversations at contract. So if I send the client the contract and they see, oh, I have these risks, and they say, hey, wait a second, I don’t like this part of the contract that says dumpster stuff.

Vaughn: then estimating I can plan and say, hey, you know what? In the estimate, I’m going to have to plan for a labor company to to move trash from a pile to a can. I’m going to have to, you know, plan for this dance. But it where do you put the trash? you know, you put down a tarp.

Vaughn: We don’t have a lot of grass out here before we guards, but, you know, is your tarp going to damage the turf, the sod, the plan for it and estimated. And, you know, I don’t know, I just I try to I try to do my best to set clear expectations, budgets for it and let everybody involved know what level we’re playing at.

Vaughn: And 99% of the time it comes out fine.

Tim: This is a great concept overall where sales and design and whoever’s executing that original contract is basically setting production up for success. And I think these are the expectations that probably more and more need to be talked about way, way further up front in terms of how are we going to end a job, how, you know, what are we going to do for trash?

Tim: All that kind of stuff needs to be talked about further up front, because then it just sets up the production team, for success. We’ve on this has been a lot of fun, and, I hope people get a lot out of it. I’ve learned a quite a few things. I got some notes here and, just any last little bit of, wisdom that you can give to everybody and, just to encourage them to, to make this work out the best way for them.

Vaughn: I’m going to use a cliche, failure to plan is planning to fail. Some people hate that statement, but yeah, it is true.

Tim: So only people who don’t plan it.

Vaughn: You know, plan accountability, communication, manage expectations, budget for issues. And, you know, you’ll you’ll will succeed.

Tim: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Well, thank you so much. This is great. Thank you for taking a little bit of time out of your day. And, we really, really appreciate it. And let’s circle back on the client experience thing, because I really like to pick your brain on that as well, because I think that’s a hot, hot topic already.

Vaughn: Thank you.

Greg: David Vaughn, thank you for taking the time to join us today on The Tim Fowler Show. We are grateful for your dedication to the silly little things that make a project run smoothly. So keep up the good work and we hope to have you back on the show soon. So, Tim, I didn’t know what to expect coming into this one, but very much like the whiteboard one.

Greg: This is the stuff that I like to talk about. And you know, one question I wanted to ask you sort of brought it up about the sales process, but I wonder what the relationship is with the dumpster companies. Are they taking part in this as well? oh, yeah. We’ll have to get some feedback from Vaughn on that another time.

Greg: But, Yeah. What did you think?

Tim: Well, I love the fact. I love the fact they started with the client experience. And again, anybody that has heard me speak publicly in the last couple of years, this has been a hot topic for me. And I think we have to think more about this is not just about getting rid of trash. This is about what happens to the client and to their property.

Tim: You know, I love this. leave no trace. I think just as a general rule, that ought to be our motto, our our theme, you know, and I heard it in the ecological systems. You know, you go out hiking on a trail and you don’t leave anything. Leave no trace. Right. And so this is the same, kind of idea, I, I really like that.

Tim: And then I kind of got excited about, you know, I’ve, I felt a lot of dumpsters, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought about the impact of people walking from the dumpster, from the door to the dumpster and what that does. And in our part of the world, that would be grass. Nobody walks on the sidewalk, you know, that would be a, path worn in the grass.

Tim: And in that path would be, you know, chips of drywall and and little and and a nail or two and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so I really like that it isn’t just the getting it in the dumpster. It’s like, how does it get there? And I thought that was a really, really cool thing. And then of course, the carpet thing that’s for free, you know, enjoy it, you know, put down the carpet.

Tim: Careful. The grass everywhere except Arizona. But, you know, put down the carpet. You can roll it up at the end of the day, then roll it back out the next day, that kind of thing. Make it look really nice. But I thought that was a great tip as well.

Greg: So in in this area that we’re in and when the budget allows, I’ve actually built paths out of like a five quarter spruce fence board. So I’ve had these little paths and stuff to sort of protect, you know, worked in some really sort of extensive gardens. One thing I wish I had thought of was the kiddy pool idea to clean out I like that was just brilliant.

Greg: You know, I’ve basically, you know, I’ve done old, you know, mixing tubs and stuff that the Masons have left behind. But a kiddy pool just go down to the Dollar Tree or whatever and get a, you know, the small kiddy pool. Yeah, yeah. Just, I somewhat of the conversation.

Tim: I usually find myself sort of like I’m like, I’m grout and tile and I go, like, all right, now what? I haven’t even thought about what to do with the extra grout is like, where does it go? You know, most of my jobs didn’t have my recently didn’t have dumpsters on them, but I like, what do I do with this extra grout?

Tim: I don’t know, and then you can always find a little place to put it and then pick it up after it dries. Things like that. But but thinking about that ahead of time, and then the whole concept of getting your trades to focus on that as well. And this is a huge challenge for people to get their trades to take responsibility for something like that, because I got a sense that they don’t have somebody standing on the job saying, hey, be sure and clean out in the kiddy pool.

Tim: I think project manager is going to be in and out, I think. And and so these trades, they have to be willing to say this is my responsibility. And, that that was another one of those really cool things.

Greg: One last thing. If anyone needs a lesson on how to use a tamper because their dumpster, you know, fell into an ass hole, you know, the heat created. I’ve fixed that more than once.

Tim: So I got one more thing, Greg. I just want to this this $50 extra per dumpster. again, it’s like it’s so simple. It’s brilliant. Like, don’t don’t pay for the. This is part of the job. The client has to pay for this. If an accident happens, you can always give it back to them if you really want to.

Tim: If you don’t have to pressure wash the driveway. But the whole idea of having that budget so that you’re not stuck with that cleanup is, is incredible. So I just thought that was another brilliant thing that comes out of this podcast.

Greg: Well, I could go on, but I won’t. We want to thank Von Royer from Kane and Kane and Company of Scottsdale, Arizona, once again for joining us on The Tim Fowler Show. And of course, thank you, the listener, for tuning in again.

Tim: And remember, at the Tim Fowler Show, we’re working hard to eliminate it is what it is from your vocabulary.