Everyone in the pavement maintenance industry found their own way to it. Yes, some are born on the blacktop, but not everyone follows in the footsteps of those who came before. Who knew watching a morning talk show with your cup of coffee could change your life?
Such was the case for Rob Young who, after working 18 years as a machinist in a factory, decided to get into striping.
"I saw Jack Child on a Veteran's Day episode of Fox And Friends," recalled Young. Child is the founder of the G-FORCE Parking Lot Striping franchise, the first to award franchises exclusively to U.S. military veterans. "They were talking about veteran-owned businesses, and something about it just stayed firmly in my mind."
Young wasn't really happy any longer at his machinist job and wanted to make a change in his life. Remembering Child's TV appearance, he decided to look him up and give him a call. At first, things didn't go as he'd originally hoped they would.
"I originally told him no," Child explained, as he had gone through training in the military from the very same site Young worked at, Fort McClellan, and was aware of the rural nature of the area. “While many franchises are eager to sign anyone who comes through the door, I wanted to be sure Rob would succeed. I had serious doubts about the viability of a northeast Alabama location.”
Young remembers things unfolding a little differently.
"I don't think he really turned me down," said Young laughing at the memory. "He wasn't sure about the market, and so Jack was a little stand-offish."
However, Young wouldn't take rejection and decided to pitch Child on why Alabama and he were worth betting on.
"I think I'm a pretty good salesman and I just had to sell him on me and on Alabama," said Young. His branch became the fourth G-FORCE striping franchise. G-FORCE currently stands at 48 locations nationwide. "It's turned out pretty well and we've been in the top tier for sales out of all franchises every year."
The growth has been outstanding. After starting in 2019, while still working his job as a machinist full-time, he was able to do about $30,000 worth of work in less than six months. His local G-FORCE website started to drive online traffic and he was able to grow to $250,000 in his first full year, despite the pandemic.
The next year that doubled, and then doubled again. The last two years they've managed over $1 million in sales, boosted by adding sealcoating to the striping work.
Young recalled that at the time when he started he didn't really know anything about parking lot striping, pavement maintenance, or the equipment used to do the work.
"Having a mentor like Jack Child has been a huge help," said Young. "I had just a little mechanical ability, some mathematical knowledge, and he showed me the basics. Then he sent me to train with Chad Jung (G-FORCE initially outsourced training with Jung). I still call them both to this day if I run into a problem I can't seem to fix.”
The Award Winning Project
G-FORCE of Alabama took on their largest single project to date when they were hired by car maker Hyundai to re-stripe a massive parking lot for their nearby factory. It required G-FORCE to paint 600,000 lineal feet of 4” striping, 204 oversized directional arrows, 6,509 letter and number stencils, 90 stop bars, and a large amount of various blackouts.
The G-FORCE team completed the project in under seven weeks’ time, with a relatively small but strong crew.
"This is their logistics location, where they load the new vehicles onto trucks or stage them for trains," explained Young. “The cars come over fresh from the plant, go through a few processes, and then they start parking them in these spaces. Each space has a block, each block has its own bay, the blocks are numbered and lettered, and the bays are numbered with a tic-mark. The tic-marks help the drivers park precisely for critical spacing needs”.
G-FORCE was first contacted by Hyundai to take over the job from their contractor who was retiring. Hyundai trusted him so much they hired him as a consultant to oversee the project.
“The gentleman came out to meet us and discovered we were using lasers with our Graco machines. He had never seen this done before. After the first day he realized we knew what we were doing and he said ‘Good-bye, you got this’ and we only saw him a few times after that”.
The Hyundai property contains multiple massive parking lots, and for just this one section of the overall property they striped four thousand parking stalls. Once they complete all the parking zones there will be upwards of 17,000 parking stalls.
"It was overwhelming when I first saw the drawing," recalled Young. "I was trying to figure out where to even start on something this scale."
With the tic-marks and the changing numbers and letters for the parking stalls, they used the skip-line feature on their Graco auto layout machine to ensure the space between each painted detail was correctly placed. They often worked at night to avoid the Alabama heat as well as to better see and use their lasers.
With this being the VERY FIRST Superior Striping award, it certainly sets a precedent for the immensity of scale and complexity of execution. For every year to come and every new Superior Striper from here on out, this is the project that started it all.
"My goal is just to improve each year," said Young. "My biggest goal is just to put out high quality work. That's the thing you can be the most proud of, that customers like this keep inviting me to come back.”
Oh, and Child happily admits he was wrong. “Rob is one of our greatest success stories at G-FORCE, and a story I love to retell”.
