Building a Proactive Fleet Maintenance Business

In this episode of Know to Grow – A Light to Heavy Duty Podcast, host Chandler Kohn speaks with Josh Goodman, founder of Goody’s Fleet Solutions, about building a multi-state fleet maintenance business focused on reducing downtime through proactive service. Josh shares his journey from technician to operator, the evolution of Goody’s hybrid mobile and shop service model, and insights on technician staffing, customer relationships, fleet technology, and organic growth. The discussion highlights how relationship-driven service and operational discipline are helping modern fleet maintenance providers scale across light, medium, and heavy-duty markets.

Chandler Kohn: Hi everybody and welcome back to another episode of Know to Grow a Light to Heavy Duty podcast. I’m happy to have on Josh Goodman with Goody’s Fleet Solution based out of Tampa, Florida. Welcome Josh. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Josh Goodman: Oh, good morning. I started out in the business when I was about 18. Started out where everybody else starts out in the lube rack and slowly went through there, went through the asset program with Ford Motor Company and worked my way up and eventually worked overseas for a little while for Ford Motor Company and their export global market and got to know a little bit more about the internals of the business, how things operate from an operation standpoint. Obviously you know, a lot of technicians don’t get to see the, the inside inner workings of parts departments and KPI key, key performance indicators, things of that nature, you know. And when I was over there working overseas, I came back and you know, just, just saw the big need for, for fleet maintenance in our industry for, from the light medium and the heavy duty. You know the dealers, they just can’t, they just can’t keep up. There’s, there’s a lot of trucks out there and not a lot of technicians. So we, we like to fulfill the need, you know, goodies. Fleet Solutions is about heavy, medium, light duty fleet maintenance company company headquartered in Tampa. We have operating a 30,000 square feet repair facility along with mobile service units that support fleets across Tampa, Orlando, Fort Myers and into North Georgia. Our main focus is helping fleets reduce downtime through basically a combination of preventative maintenance, diagnostics and rapid response repair. Over the last decade we built the business around the long term fleet relationships rather than just track transactional repairs. So we’re basically, what we’re trying to do is become more proactive in the repair market than reactive. Yeah, you know, as everybody knows, come Monday morning their phones are starting to ringing, everything’s off the hook, everything’s broken and, and they’re in scramble mode. So we, we try and prevent that as little as possible.

Chandler Kohn: Well, good. You know, I appreciate you joining this podcast. I think since you do everything from light, medium to heavy duty, this is the place for you to be this morning. So tell us a little bit about how many employees you have in total across, you know, from Georgia to Florida and then the revenue of your company, if you’re comfortable giving that so.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, of course. So we flush obviously fluctuations, you know, anywhere between 20 and 25 people at any given at any given day. Unfortunately that is the world we live in right now. But we do about 7 to 8 million annually in revenue. Looks like we’re on track this year to probably do around, probably around 8 million, you know, and again, we’re trying to be more, less transactional and more relationship based. So it’s, it will able to kind of forecast predictable revenue.

Chandler Kohn: So let’s hop into the operations and service model you have. You’re based out of Tampa. That’s where your 30,000 square foot facility is. I think you have mobile units across Tampa, Orlando, Fort Myers, Florida and then you are in Georgia and kind of northern Atlanta. How do you decide what gets done? If we look at Tampa itself, how do you decide kind of what gets done in the shop versus kind of mobile in that area?

Josh Goodman: Well, the shop handles the larger jobs. Your engine work, your major diagnostics, electrical issues, suspension rebuilds, things that require lifts, equipment and that, you know, extended time. Our mobile service is more really about keeping the fleets moving. Preventative maintenance, minor repairs, breakdown response, you know, and on site diagnostics. You know, for many of our fleets, the truck has to, you know, never has to leave the yard, which saves them a lot of downtime. So it really just, it’s on a case by case scenario and that’s really kind of how we, how we split it up versus shop versus mobile. First and foremost, it’s all about the downtime. How can we reduce the downtime with our, with our fleet partners and you know, and eventually make it more profitable?

Chandler Kohn: Yep. What is the current split between mobile and in shop in terms of revenue?

Josh Goodman: The company, you know, as far as revenue goes and that it’s really 50, 50 to be honest with you, because of the fact that, you know, you have, you have two different things. You have your bigger, you know, your, your bigger jobs, obviously your engine job. You know, you might get a 40, $50,000 engine job and you know, it might take a mobile guy 30 days to. That’s a lot of oil changes, you know. So as far as revenue, it’s probably 50, 50, but as far as the work, I would say we were 70% mobile and 30% in the shop.

Chandler Kohn: Well, and do you see, do you see mobile kind of your, the percentage of your revenue being mobile, is that increasing as we go from 24 to 25 to 2026, or is that, does that remain kind of flat for you?

Josh Goodman: No, it’s increasing. I mean, mobile work typically carries a premium across the industry because you’re delivering convenience and speed. Fleets are willing to pay for uptime. Our focus is less about, you know, hourly rates and more about value. It Minimizes downtime. You know, you get predictable service scheduling and, and you’re keeping their trucks on the road.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, I read a national or a stat, a national stat that says that the mobile labor rate is about 149 an hour. How do you, how do you price your mobile work?

Josh Goodman: Well, you know, again, our focus is less about the hourly rate and more about the value that we bring to the customer. You know, we have customers that, unfortunately, if they have to get another vehicle, they might have to go to another state to rent it. So they’re willing to pay 3, 4, 500 in the middle of the night just to get it done. You know, so there’s different levels, you know, after hours, during hours, during service. We’re more focused on the value that we can bring as far as our service and reliability and the downtime more than we are the hourly rate. Yeah, you know, there it’s, it really just depends on. And I think once you take care of that, customers, they, they, they focus less on the price and they focus more on the value that you bring to their company.

Chandler Kohn: Are you seeing kind of a different customer or different customer demands across maybe northern Atlanta versus your customers in Florida, or is it pretty much the same?

Josh Goodman: It is northern Atlanta. We see a lot in the film industry. You know, obviously that’s a big, big part of Atlanta now is the, the film industry as, as they’re moving stuff across from California to Atlanta. You know, obviously in Atlanta you have Coca Cola, bigger units. Atlanta is very. It’s unique in the fact that if you’ve ever driven through Atlanta, you know, it takes an hour to go two miles. So, you know, there, there, there are challenges, but different aspects of it. But overall, the companies just want the same thing. They want reliability and they want to know why their trucks are down and when they can get them back.

Chandler Kohn: So you’re covering light to heavy duty. Was that breadth of product and service offering, was that strategic driven on your end or more demand driven?

Josh Goodman: That developed mostly from demand. You know, fleets don’t want to have five or different vendors. They want a partner who can handle the engines, the electrical, hydraulics, lift gates, things of that nature. And, you know, over time, we built out our capabilities to, to support the full cycle of the truck.

Chandler Kohn: Are you saying that there’s fleets with both light duty and heavy duty vehicles? I mean.

Josh Goodman: Oh, yeah. Construction companies, you know, down to their foreman, all the way up to their, you know, whether it’s a, it’s a dozer unit, you know, which we don’t really get into all that much, you know, but, but you got to get the dozer there. So you got, you’re going to have a Class 8 semi and you’re going to have a rollback. So, you know, you’re going to have all of these things. And the last thing that any fleet manager wants to do is have to worry about his trucks here, his trailers are here, his semi goes there. So realistically, over time, through customer acquisition, we were able to kind of branch out.

Chandler Kohn: Yep. And how do you staff for that? Because you would think covering everything up under the sun can dilute qual. Is that been a challenge?

Josh Goodman: You know, because we grow organically through our customers, it’s been more predictable and a lot of times we’re very upfront with people saying, hey, look, you know, this isn’t something that we do. But if the, if the right scenario were to come about, then, you know, we don’t mind sending someone to maybe go to an all tech school to learn the hydraulics and the PTO systems and things of that nature. Obviously, the more value that we can bring to a customer, you know, it’s more predictability, more revenue. And safety is a big key too. So we’ve been able to kind of grow organically through our customers just based on listening to their needs.

Chandler Kohn: Is there any portion of your revenue that is contracted?

Josh Goodman: I wouldn’t say so. I mean we work with fleets and construction, recycling, utilities, municipality, governments, logistics. You know, in the common denominator is uptime. Every, everybody, every fleet has the same problem. When they truck it down, it costs you money and our job just keep those assets moving.

Chandler Kohn: Yep. On your website you have a Florida and a Georgia client service portal. How important is that for your customers and what was the purpose of doing that?

Josh Goodman: Well, basically the portal, what it allows them to do is allows them to log in. And the biggest thing that we were hearing from clients was that a DOT officer compliance officer might roll into their, their, their office and want to see all of their dots. And then they, we were able to provide them with the digital layer. That’s becoming really important. You know, they, the fleet managers want visibility into their assets, the work history, upcoming services, invoices. So we built systems that give them transparency so they can manage their fleet a little bit more efficiently.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, let’s hop into the talent workforce and technician customers, or technician customer matching rather. First of all, hiring across Florida and Georgia. This may be an interesting concept for, you know, another operator independent of the Midwest versus the west coast versus the Northeast. What does that look like in Florida and Georgia, finding that talent, retaining that talent.

Josh Goodman: Well, the technician short is very real, that’s for sure. I think any, any operator can, can understand that across realistically, any blue collar jobs anymore. You know, we feel, we focused on building a culture where technicians feel respected and supported. That includes investing in the equipment, the diagnostics, and making sure that they have the tools to succeed. You know, we’re very big on culture, culture, culture, culture. You know, you can teach aptitude but you really can’t teach attitude. So we’ve really, we have a lot of younger guys that come in and because of the caring and the culture relationship that we’ve, that we put into it, we’re able to absorb a lot of younger, less talented technicians and really have them come along in a real world application.

Chandler Kohn: One of the things you guys are doing is you’re matching certain technicians to certain customer accounts. Seems a little unusual. Tell us about that. I want to understand this.

Josh Goodman: Well, we match technicians with certain fleets whenever it’s possible. It allows the tech to really learn those trucks and the customer’s operation over time it builds trust with the fleet manager and it improves diagnostic speed. You know, a lot of companies when they start acquiring trucks, they might buy 20 Fords or they might be 20 Dodges. So what we normally try and do is just the same as any other dealership. A Dodge dealer is not going to hire a Ford tech, Ford tech is not going to hire a Dodge deal from a Dodge dealer. So if we can match the technicians to a fleet manager and their equipment, again, it just goes back to downtime. If a guy is working on the same trucks all time, all the time, he’s gonna know the, the normal ins and outs of those vehicles and he’s going to know where to go to. We and then what it enables us to do is that technician, whoever he or she may be, is, has a really firm grasp on the OEM diagnostic software.

Chandler Kohn: Have you had any concentration risks here where you know, maybe, you know, you’ve bashed a certain tech to a certain account and that tech no longer works there. That tech’s out on vacation, that tech sick. Have there been any challenges with this model?

Josh Goodman: Well, we try to be as well rounded technicians as possible, but we always recognize the certain strengths. You know, some guys are exceptional electrical, some guys are others at engine, some a hydraulic. The kill. The key really is building a team where those skill sets really complement each other and we try and form a redundancy policy if, if, if applicable. You know, we’ll have technician meetings on Mondays where if someone has gone through something and seen something that is, that is new or he was struggling with it for a couple days, you know, we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about it. And so that way everybody has an understanding because it might be something new, it might be something that, hey, we’re going to experience this 10 or 15 times a week. Or, you know, even the fact multiple heads are better than one. So we always try and do the collaboration and it’s a good time that all the technicians are able to kind of talk about what they’ve gone through for the week, what they’re going through with their, with their customers and, you know, what’s going on a lot of times. What’s going on with their life.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, for sure. Over 60% of techs fill or enter the career with no formal training. You know, and from what I’ve read, they often need around 350 hours until they’re productive. Have you tried to hire any specialist techs versus kind of generalists?

Josh Goodman: Well, I mean, culture plays a big role in it. You know, you, you have to feel comfortable in the situations that you’re around, the people. One, you’re going to live with them for eight hours a day, every day. Technicians want stability, they want good equipment, leadership, and understands the industry. When those things are replaced, retention really follows. But yeah, we, we have tried to hire a few people that are dedicated, specialized in one thing, because it’s almost like hiring a professor to teach a school, teach a classroom. And once, once we, once we try and complement each other, I think a lot of it grows organically where one technician will start to learn from the other and the other will start to learn from one another. You know, the, the, the one thing I would say that people have trouble with is electrical. For whatever reason, electrical, it seems to be, you either know it or you don’t know it. Left range, left brain, right brain. So that’s one of the things that we always try and keep at least two or three people on staff that are really knowledgeable of electrical.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, I know the Southeast pays the highest tech wages nationally. I think it’s around $46 an hour, something like that. You know, I would, I would, I don’t know kind of how evenly or, you know, what, what kind of, you know, what the other shops in the area are paying. Right. But you know, what, what does turnover look like for you guys and kind of this general Florida region?

Josh Goodman: Well, I mean, you know, retention, it’s a difficult time. It’s difficult time in the economy with Florida with insurance and h. You know, insurance reasons and, and things of that nature, whether it’s car insurance, home insurance, you know, outside factor always plays into it. We try and retain technicians through. Again, I can’t say it enough is the culture that we, that we build into. Money’s not everything with people. Certain people want stability in their life and with the way that we operate, we. I don’t want to say that we, you know, we created stability in a chaos world with the way that we approach our repairs. You know, it’s not a three alarm fire every time they come into work. So, you know, and they’re not getting pulled in in 12 different directions because of the way that we operate through the way, you know, the way that we interact with our fleets. A lot of it more is proactive repairs than reactive repairs. So it tends to take the stress out of the job. You know, we have a saying around here that the job stressful enough don’t make it any harder. You know, so it’s really team building and knowing that you’re not competing with the guy next to you. You know, you’re all moving in the same and you’re trying to work towards the same goal. So I think that’s really how, and we’re pretty honest when we, when we hire people, what we’re expecting out of them and, and what they expect out of us.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s hop into this customer acquisition and go to market. So, you know, mobile repair is a visibility challenge for you outside of Tampa, where your shop is, you don’t have a storefront. Tell us a little bit about kind of what your go to market strategy is and how you’re getting new customers in these various markets.

Josh Goodman: Well, it started out organically, but we’re, you know, we’ve learned diversification is actually a strength. You know, different industries have different economic cycles. So a diverse fleet base really helps stabilize the business. You know, that it, it’s. We branched out into certain areas where we felt that certain industries were being hindered based on their, their downtime. Atlanta being one of those, just because of the fact that the amount of traffic that they have, you know, here in Tampa, if you’re two hours away, it’s not all that big an ordeal. But if you’re two hours away in Atlanta, it might as well be six hours away.

Chandler Kohn: Now how are you, even though you diversified, how are you actually going and getting those clients right?

Josh Goodman: Most of our, most of our growth has come from relationship and referrals. You know, we do some SEO and some Google Ads and things of that nature. You know, fleet manager, they talk to each other and when you consistently solve problems for them, the word spreads pretty quickly. Yeah.

Chandler Kohn: And are you guys doing any digital marketing? You mentioned some SEO, but any other type of marketing or. Not really.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, we do. We, we primarily do SEO marketing through Google. We don’t really get into a whole lot of LinkedIn. You know, again, this is, this is my first podcast, so I guess this is the start of something else besides SEO. But, you know, again, a lot of these fleet managers, through either their own or no intention of their other, you know, they move around Sunbelt Rentals, United Rentals, a lot of those guys, and they talk, you know, they go to uniforms. And their biggest thing is, you know, I lost this account because I couldn’t get a scissor lift and because my truck was down. So when you get into those concepts, that’s how realistic, you know, that’s how we grow. We don’t really market. We. We like to grow through, organically, through word of mouth.

Chandler Kohn: Love that. The city of Tampa is a municipality. A lot of government contracts require RFPs, you know, clients, certain procurement cycles. It’s kind of a different approach to, you know, sales versus private fleets. Tell us a little bit about what you have arranged with the city of Tampa.

Josh Goodman: Well, municipality fleets are definitely interesting because they operate differently than private fleets. They require more process and compliance, and they also represent long term stability. We’ve primarily focused with the city of Tampa. The city of Tampa right now, with any municipality actually, you know, the amount of trucks versus the amount of technicians, it’s just not feasible. I think at one point we had one of our municipalities, I won’t say which, but it was 300 trucks to every one technician. So, you know, they do operate as their own entity, but basically we are their subsidiary when they really, really need things to go down. Garbage trucks, even, even some of their trailers. Right now I think we have almost 15 trailers from the city of Tampa alone, you know, that we’re dealing with. And it’s only because of the fact that they’re dealing with the same thing that we’re dealing with, which is a, a real tech shortage.

Chandler Kohn: And going back to this concept of mobile kind of emergency roadside assistance, you mentioned that you could get a call in the middle of the night, right, and be able to charge $500 an hour. You know, how do you, how do you actually, how do you actually implement something like that where you can have your mobile technicians prepared to go out in the middle of the night. How often does that happen? I’m just trying to understand that concept.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, it doesn’t happen that often. You know, a lot of, a lot of these fleets, they understand things happen in the middle of the night. And it goes back to relationships. I mean, emergency response is both a revenue stream and a customer retention tool. That’s how we look at it. And you know, when a fleet knows, you’ll answer the phone at 2:00am and you know, that relationship becomes very, very strong, that you’re going to go out and you’re going to do whatever’s needed. We rotate technicians based on that need and that reliability. But at the same time, we also hire and because we assign technicians to certain fleets, they already know going into it that, hey, they might be on call for X amount of days and then it’ll rotate off to somebody else. But that all goes back into the pay plan, you know, so we don’t just have people that work 7 to 4 and then, oh, hey, if your phone rings at 2am we’re going to need you. People go into it with clear eyes, knowing that that is part of the job because you’re assigned to a certain, a certain tech or a certain fleet.

Chandler Kohn: Yep. Let’s hop into technology tools and diagnostics here. What, what tools and kind of diagnostics platforms is goodies running?

Josh Goodman: So diagnostics are becoming an, a bigger investment every single year. Modern trucks are essentially computers on wheels. So having the right diagnostic equipment and training is very critical. We have both aftermarket and OEM diagnostics depending on the needs of our customers. We carry most oem, Ford, Chevy, Dodge, you know, and then you get into your heavy duties with your, you know, your international, your Cummins Insight, you know, Mac is another big one, Volvo. So it really, just because of the way that we approach fleets, we’ve been able to quantify the diagnostics tools that we have and at the same time really rein in predictability because we know that we’re going to be working on 100 Fords. So we have to get that equipment and that we’re not all over the map.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. In terms of telematics data and what fleets are sharing with you this concept of being more proactive versus reactive. What does that look like for you?

Josh Goodman: Well, you know, a lot of, a lot of fleets are using Samcera, which really, really helps us out. We’re starting to see more fleets share telekomatics data with the service providers. It opens the door for more proactive maintenance rather than reactive repairs. We know where the trucks are at, we can dispatch technicians to exactly where they’re at. Instead of word of mouth, anybody that does mobile will tell you it’s how you approach that whole scenario. Our technicians will check in with the point of contact before they even leave the shop, knowing exactly where they’re going. And then with systematic, you know, shared telekomatics, it’s very easy to know exactly where the customers are at. Again, it just improves uptime. We go out a lot on the weekends. Some of the foremans take their trucks home, some of the workers take their trucks home. So if there’s something that needs to be done, instead of bothering them on the phone when they don’t answer on a Saturday because they’re with their family, we’re able to locate where the truck is, go to that truck, fix it, do whatever needs to be done without really interrupting our customers, either their workflow or their home life.

Chandler Kohn: Where is goodies on the technology curve for internal operations? So, you know, shop management software, some of these other platforms that service providers use.

Josh Goodman: Well, you know, we’ve been using Mitchell one for a very, very long time. We use their Mitchell One Enterprise Pro. It allows us to keep a little bit more accurate track of the internals. We’re able to. We’ve invested a lot in our dispatching systems, technician tracking activity, and improving customer communication. The goal is to create really a seamless experience for the fleet manager. So we incorporate everything from, you know, vertical integration. We use some AI tools to be able to either answer the phone, create an automatic automated response. You know, whether it’s an email form, we have a lot of redundancy in our email systems. And that way it doesn’t just see one set of eyes. I’m sure. Just the same with you, you can get an email at 10:15, and by 10:18, that email might be on the bottom of the page where you don’t even see it. So, you know, we. We really, really try and do redundancy where one person’s email will be sent out to three or four other people so that nothing gets missed.

Chandler Kohn: Do you mind providing an overview of the tools that you’re using for each kind of workflow or process?

Josh Goodman: Well, with the initial internals, it’s. It’s Mitchell 1. And then, you know, with the dispatching, we provide wex for all of the technicians. And then what we do is we populate the wex. We give them access to the GPS coordinates because we populate it where all of the parts outlets are, where the art, where the parts Vendors are. And then also we’re able to kind of copy and paste from Samcera over to WEX so that we can efficiently locate where the truck is, we know exactly where the parts outlets are, and then we keep in constant communication with the, with the technician and with the customer at all times.

Chandler Kohn: Good. Appreciate that overview, that’s helpful. Let’s go into some of this financial architecture and scaling, if you will. I mean there’s this whole podcast is about growth and scalability with kind of valuation in the back. You built this from, you built this and you started this in 2014 and built this to a multi state operation with 30,000, you know, square foot shop. How have you funded that? Have you bootstrapped it? Have you gone through a credit facility? What does that look like?

Josh Goodman: It’s, it was, you know, anything worth doing, you know, you got to work. We started out in a thousand square foot shop in 2014 with just myself and my wife and built it, built it, built it. Just built it based on organic relationships. You know, like many businesses in the industry, it started small and it grew over time with reinvestment and strategic financing. The focus is always building, has been about building a sustainable operation where, you know, you, it’s building a business that revolves around one person is not, is, is not smart for growth.

Chandler Kohn: So it grew organically. Have you had to take on any commercial lending or anything? Any, any, any type of facility for, to, to maintain working capital?

Josh Goodman: Well, we’ve been able to really partner with a couple companies as far as our leasing of our, our, of our trucks. Obviously nobody wants to come out of pocket 80, $90,000 in cash, you know, but we’ve been very fortunate with the partners that we’ve, that we’ve had and the companies that we’ve had where we haven’t actually had to go out and, and get lending, lending. It becomes very scary when, you know, because you’re not always, not always busy. You know, the economy can play into it. But the focus has really always been about just building a stable, growing, sustainable operation. And it’s hard for any one person while trying to grow a business having to worry about the builds. So I think with controllable growth not taking on and biting off too much, you, you can grow vertically at a controllable rate.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, you know, a lot of companies and I know you’re reinvesting for growth, but you know, it’s 7 million in revenue, close to 8. You know, your EBITDA should probably be, you know, maybe around 1.5 million you know, which is the metric for cash flow.

Josh Goodman: Very close to it.

Chandler Kohn: Have you thought about capitalizing those trucks and really kind of purchasing them and getting off the lease or do you, are you happy with leasing and don’t.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, you know, I think we’re pretty happy with just leasing them out. The biggest thing with, with the leasing, it’s not more about the, the financial aspect of it. You know, it’s going to be what it’s going to be as far as the financing, what we try. The reason we try and lease is because we want to keep our people in a new truck where they can be proud of where they work. You know, they’re, you know, down here in the south heat. So you know, we, we want them to have, you know, when you have to spend eight hours a day in a vehicle, you want it to be, you know, have heat in the winter, you want to have ice cold AC in the summer. And the fact that we can turn in those vehicles every three to four years and, and get something back that, and it helps with customer, you know, we go going back, it helps with the customers as far as how we look, but also at the same time it helps with the employees with retention, with the tax. They know we’re not going to put them in a 20 year old truck.

Chandler Kohn: You’re in the business of fixing other folks trucks, not your own, right? Correct.

Josh Goodman: We try not to be fixing our own.

Chandler Kohn: You don’t want those to be a call center here?

Josh Goodman: No.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s talk about the profitability. I’m not sure if you break it down between markets, but do you know the profitability between, you know, let’s just say Tampa to, to Atlanta. Like what are those differences or maybe broken down between in shop versus mobile?

Josh Goodman: Well, each market has its own dynamics. You know, as we go back we, you know, we were talking about Atlanta with being traffic and flow and things of that nature. So every one of them has its own metrics. So we, what we try and do is we try and design key performance indicators for each one of those different locations. I don’t know if you remember years back, Fort Myers got flooded and, and it, it took us out. We had to bring technicians from Fort Myers and relocate them to Tampa for the time being because after it was all said and done, everybody was waiting on their insurance money. So being here in the south and there’s a lot of different vectors that you know, you got to go through. Some are more mobile driven than others. More rely, more of them rely on shop work. The key is structuring operations to fit the market and you know, as best you can. Nobody could have ever seen a Fort Myers almost being taken off the map. But because of the way that we structure the business, to give you a little bit of an insight on how we do that, going back to Fort Myers is yes, we lost almost all of our customer base in Fort Myers because all of the trucks were flooded. Everybody was waiting on their money from the insurance company, which obviously, you guys know, it takes a while. But where, but where we did make a lot of money in Fort Myers is we, we were working with the company, we still work with them today. Pike Electric, they had to go down and completely rebuild the entire electrical grid. So at that time, even though the guys were up here living in Tampa because their homes flooded in Fort Myers, they were back down in Fort Myers helping rebuild the electrical grid by keeping Pike Electric’s trucks up. So there’s a lot of different scenarios that play into it. It’s, it’s a wild ride when it comes to two different, to different areas, especially with, you know, things like hurricanes and floods.

Chandler Kohn: Do you have any, any strategic inclination or thought process around getting a service shop in another market outside of Tampa? I mean, you have 30,000 square feet there.

Josh Goodman: Yeah.

Chandler Kohn: Any, any need to establish one or any business case to do that?

Josh Goodman: Well, I think that, you know, it’s, it’s really interesting when it comes to the market and the needs of the market, the more we get asked about it, I think is, is really the, is the key scenario. We look at it the same as, you know, when you go to look to hire another technician. Can we provide this technician with 40 hours of stable income? Can, can the company sustain that? So as we get larger and the needs of our customers increase, we definitely always are keeping an eye on the pulse of, of that because the way we build through our company and we build through our employees and if I have to go in and we have to get a, a shop in say, Atlanta, you know, that, that you’re looking at at 30, $40,000 a month in rent. So, so we have to immediately probably increase our pricing. You know, we’re, we’re probably not going to be able to pay the text as much as we normally would in a truck. So we look into all of those different things and really just see what the market’s doing because we never want to be, we never really want. There’s never a good time to buy a building. But at the same time we don’t want to over promise and underd deliver and put our staff under that kind of stuff. Stress.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. I hear that. You run a mobile and in shop service business. Where is headcount most needed?

Josh Goodman: Well, I mean, you know, technicians are always the bottleneck in the industry. It’s just how it’s going to be. It’s always how it’s been. Beyond that, strong service advisors and dispatchers become critical as you scale. So there’s, you know, there’s, there’s always, there’s always that give and take.

Chandler Kohn: You and your wife Melissa, run the business together. I know she stepped back a little bit. Y’ all have a young child, but she kind of. Her historical role has been director of operations. How have you divided those responsibilities historically in the business?

Josh Goodman: You know, it. We did the old fashioned way. You know, you do what you’re good at, I’ll do what I good at, and we’ll stay out of each other’s way. It’s kind of, you know, I mean, it’s just like anything else with marriage. You know, it’s a, it’s difficult to do it. But, you know, they’re, they’re. You play off each other’s strengths the same way that we’ve built the company. Having that division of responsibility helps the business move faster. You know, a lot of people, you, you never want to create a bottleneck with anything in the industry, no matter if it’s on the money side of it or the service side of it, of it. We’re very big on. Hey, you do what you’re good at, I’ll do what I’m good at, and I’ll meet you in the middle somewhere.

Chandler Kohn: I love, I love life lessons on the show.

Josh Goodman: Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s great. Well, you know, happy wife, happy life, you know, and that’s. She is definitely smarter in a lot of things, for most things in life than I am. So, you know, it’s just like anything else in life, man. You, you hire people that are better. Better than you to do the job that, that you can’t do, or you’re just not as good at.

Chandler Kohn: We’re coming up on time here a little bit, but I do want to talk about Rider acquiring Pit Stop, Fleet Services, the Truck Pro and Fleet Pride merger. Does this entry of national players threaten the mobile repair business for you?

Josh Goodman: No, I think it validates the model, to be honest with you. Fleets clearly want the service delivered where the truck is at. You know, we’ve been offered several times by several different companies to be, to be acquired. And, you know, I’m, it’s Not something I’m interested in now. I want to see it through. You know, we’ve got some pretty exciting things in, in our system and but yeah, it’s, it’s very complimentary torque by rider, you know, and other people in the industry. But I think it validates the model. It doesn’t really threaten, you know, competition is always good for business and it just shows that, you know, that, you know, maybe we had the right idea and you know, and the big guys are getting, trying to get into it now.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s say you did accept a check from a private equity firm where, let’s just say that was $10 million. Where would you invest that $10 million over the next 12 months?

Josh Goodman: Well, after I get done paying Uncle Sam, you know, the 10 million, you know, it’s, that’s a great question. Actually. My wife and I talk about that all the time. You know, I think I would probably go with something more again with a service based industry. Obviously I’ll have a no compete clause. I wouldn’t be able to get back into this industry, but it would basically.

Chandler Kohn: But this would be. If you had a ten million dollar check right now from private equity for your business only right now, how would you grow goodies?

Josh Goodman: Oh, I apologies. Yeah. Our expansion approach is to establish a strong presence in a market with mobile service first and then evaluate whether a physical facility makes sense later. So probably we would invest it. Communication would probably be the key is how do we better communicate with that fleet manager where we always do it on a daily basis. Where are we falling behind? Where can innovation complement the services that we already provide? You know, everything is centered on downtime. Time is the one thing in life that’s, that’s unbeatable in competition. So you’re always trying to compete with the clock. So I, I think with the 10 million we probably. I’d like to, I’d like to explore more of, of AI and how it helps the, what we’re doing now but also at the same time how explore the different areas. You know, it’s such a fast paced growing world right now and it’s really helped a lot of. I know the medical field, it’s helped out.

Chandler Kohn: TMC and Nashville is next week. I know there’s going to be coverage on AI. I’m looking forward to listening in on those conversations, reporting back. Right, let’s go ahead and wrap it up. I think we’re at the 45 minute mark.

Josh Goodman: No problem.

Chandler Kohn: A smaller company, you know, with a two to three mobile truck operation. What is one thing that you would tell them that would enable them to scale to 10 plus trucks? What should they do now to really kind of grow that business and 10 take it to the next level?

Josh Goodman: The biggest mistake mobile operators make is building a job instead of a system. You need dispatching, you need processes and procedures, you know, and you need customer relationships before you can scale trucks. You know, you have to figure out the model where you are not the employee. You know, you have to figure out your processes so that, you know, you’re, you’re building a system again, not a job.

Chandler Kohn: Awesome. Life lessons and Advice all in 45 minutes. Josh, I appreciate the time and thank you for joining the podcast. We’ll be in touch, my friend.

Josh Goodman: I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Chandler Kohn: Did you enjoy it?

Josh Goodman: Yeah, I did actually. Thank you. That was, that was really good. That was. I actually really like that. I gotta be honest with you. Yes. What. You know, that’s funny you mentioned torque by rider because they’ve, man, they’ve, those guys called me a few times.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And hey, this is, you know, this is what I do. I do mergers and acquisitions, primarily in the heavy duty truck space. To FOCUS Investment Banking. We cover 11 industries and then within that we cover automotive service. And then within that we break it out between collision auto and heavy duty. I’m spending 90 to 95% of my time in heavy duty. And I mean it’s consolidations rampant, man. And they’re, they want, you know, they want these mobile businesses and it’s crazy. That’s why you’re getting out, you know, this outreach so many times. And the process, you know, the process is very, very competitive. There’s a lot, the multiples are good. A lot of folks really want to hop in the space and they are buy, not building. They want to buy, they don’t want to build. Turnkey operation. And you know, for something in mobile, man, six times ebitda, you know, that’s, that’s very realistic. You know, if you’re sitting at, you know, a million and a half ebitda, that’s, you know, nine. A nine million dollar valuation business. So it’s, it’s something to seriously pay attention to and you know, of course you want to, you want to build the business in the right direction where it looks good.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, you know, we, we approach it a little different we have a, A reoccurring membership model that’s proprietary to us, so we have upfront revenue, reoccurring revenue that hits the books whether we pick up a wrench or not. Yeah. So we’ve split the company into, into two divisions. The reoccurring membership approach and then the repair side. Repair side as well. Yeah.

Chandler Kohn: That’s awesome. I love that. Well, great, man. I, I appreciate you taking the time to, to chat today.

Josh Goodman: Oh, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I enjoyed it. I really did.

Chandler Kohn: Really good. I’m gonna get this thing over to our marketing team and, and I’ll let you know when it’s done and it’s live. I’ll release this one probably next Friday and just try to space them out.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, sure. Sounds great.

Chandler Kohn: And let me, let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss anything on the M A or capital raising front. As offers come in and thinking through evaluation. This is all I do.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, no, no, I’ll definitely, I’ll definitely keep you, I’ll definitely keep it in the, in the books for sure. You know, I don’t really get into a whole lot of private equity and venture and VC money, but at the same time, having somebody like yourself to be able to bounce ideas off of or anything of that nature, it’s valuable to me. I see where the value is and what you guys bring to the table. And just from, you know, not just from a money standpoint, but also from, you know, just, hey, listen, you got, you got your pulse on the, you got your finger on the pulse of the business in the industry, where it’s headed. So there’s, Everybody’s always trying to reinvent the wheel. So two heads are better than one.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, no doubt, man. And the process is an arduous journey. It is. It is a process going through an M and a cycle. It’s not easy. Right. We have careers as investment bankers. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Josh Goodman: Yeah, I heard that they gave me a. What was it? Cox Automotive tried to buy us years ago, and they were, they were trying to tell me the list. I said, guys, I can tell you right now, just stop. Don’t waste your time. This is going to be. I don’t want to waste your time. You don’t want to waste my time. Let’s just call it a day. That’s because, you know, they were working me through that. They were talking me through the process you guys go through and the links. It’s not a Everybody thinks that it’s 30 days, we’re going to get the deal done, and that’s just not how it works.

Chandler Kohn: Not nine months minimum, so. Well, cool, man. I’ll let you go. I don’t want to take up the rest of your day, but thank you. Thank you so much for joining. And hey, if you have, if you know of anybody else in the space, any peers looking to make a move and having an investment bank, advise them on, on the process and actually going through it, please keep me in mind.

Josh Goodman: No, absolutely. Like I said, I, I. The fact that I’m on your podcast, you is I usually hang up on anybody, private equity or venture capitalist. And that’s why I’m on your podcast, I promise you. So, yeah, I definitely will, you know, if you have some kind of email flyer or whatever that you normally put out to people or whatever, please include me on it. But, yes, I will, definitely, definitely. If I know of anybody. Hey, I don’t know, I might want to, you know, I might want to acquire a business. So you guys might be able to help us out if, if we want to, you know, buy somebody out. I don’t know.

Chandler Kohn: But, yeah, and we do that. We act as extensions of management teams on the buy side.