While at the 2024 IGNITE Construction Summit, which took place at the Renaissance Esmerelda Resort in Palm Springs, CA, I sat at a breakfast table with Andre Neidich, CEO and Co-Founder of Pothole Heroes, and his dynamic COO, Zach Young. Far from our original introduction, we first met at the 2022 IGNITE in Clearwater, FL, where I was originally exposed to their unique way of doing things.
At that time, only six-months since I joined the industry, Zach and Andre were my first experiences with infrared technology on asphalt patches, with their custom built work trucks and infrared heaters from KM International, and my immediate reaction was, "Why isn't everyone doing this?"
What they explained to me, a total greenhorn at the time, was that it was sort of a divisive technology even though it wasn't really new. It had been around for decades. Now, approaching three years of experience, I am still wondering the same thing while watching Pothole Heroes expand into new states every few months.
Raina Noel
And it's not just that they are expanding, because there are a lot of pavement companies and investment groups that are expanding these days. However, while they do it through familiar franchising methods (like G-Force Line Striping) or through acquisition and mergers (like Rose Paving) they have a completely different approach.
While sitting with them at that Breakfast of Champions, I jokingly said to Mr. Neidich, "If I had some investment capital lying around, maybe I'd hit you up to open a Pothole Heroes in Northeastern Ohio. We certainly have no shortage of potholes that need patching."
And, as serious as a heart attack, Mr. Neidich looked right at me and said, "You don't need any investment capital. We would set you up with everything you need."
Inception
In June of 2024, I received an invitation to join Mr. Neidich at the Mid Ohio Sports Track, not far from where I live. As we were planning on creating a future episode of my No Edge Lines video series, featuring me and Zach Young doing a ride along day where I get to patch a bunch of potholes in the blazing Florida summer, I took it as a good opportunity. However, I wasn't sure why we were meeting at a race track.
Pothole Heroes has a unique marketing partnership with Motorsports In Action (MIA of Canada) and their logo and colorway is plastered all over a McLaren super street car, speed machine. While it deserves mentioning that SealMaster does sponsor a Lexus race car in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar program, Pothole Heroes is a contractor, not a manufacturer of a pavement product, but one that uses those kinds of products to provide actual services.
"It's gorgeous out here, I love it," said Neidich standing on a hill overlooking the first turn of the street style track. "This is a really beautiful course, it was built by Jim Truman in the late 1960s. It's truly one of the great American race tracks."
As part of what's known as the Michelin Pilot Series, Neidich travels with the team to most of the races. He grew up around racing and was involved at an amateur level in the 1980s. But what I was most curious about, was how a young gearhead ended up in the pothole business, and why they had a McLaren with their logo on it.
"First of all, anyone can fix a pothole," he explained. "We are trying to build relationships with the customer that will last years. We want our employees to be safe, and we want to be profitable, of course, but our vision is of an overall branded experience for commercial property owners and municipalities. Those are our goals."
Seeing where the custom Pothole Heroes trucks were made at the KM International factory in Michigan.Brandon Noel
Launching in Southern Florida in 2017, they expanded to multiple locations across the state before opening new markets in Georgia, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and, most recently in the Southern region of Ohio. But they already have irons in the fire for Indiana and Kentucky, as well.
"The key for us is that we don't want to open the next office until the current one is operating in such a way that there's no gap in performance or quality across the board," Neidich said. "Once that's established, then we can add the next state, or the next area."
Just like the race we spent the entire day together watching, it's about setting a good pace, not leaping out in front from the start and perhaps not finishing. This is something we saw happen live, when one of the leading cars smashed into a wall and was taken from the race. [The driver was uninjured].
"I'm an entrepreneur," he told me, finally getting down to brass tacks. "I love building businesses. I love the challenge of it. It's kind of it's own race too."
Before starting Pothole Heroes, Andre and his wife Rebecca had a business that produced handicap accessible bathtubs and shower units. He sold that company a few years before he stumbled upon the world of asphalt pavement repairs.
Disruption
His first introduction was coming alongside and working with a friend who was already in the asphalt world, and had a business. During this essential time period he became familiar with the aspects we are all familiar with in regards to the commercial property management ecosystem. However, he immediately became aware of some of the "gaps" in the way the business was operating that he thought could be fixed and simplified.
What came out of this was a truly disruptive concept. A pavement maintenance company that doesn't have any pavers. The thinking behind this came from a winnowing process where they analyzed the needs of commercial property managers, and sought to offer solutions that would as painless as possible for their customers, while being more flexible and nimble scheduling wise than competitors who have large iron like pavers and milling machines to work around. 
Pothole Heroes
"We have clients that can call us in the morning about a pothole and we can be there and fix it in the same day," Zach Young explained to me. "And because of our process, from the time we get on site till the asset is repaired, it might be a total of twenty or thirty minutes tops."
That kind of ease of mind is part of what has fueled their rapid growth. In the post-pandemic economy, manager and public works employees have seemingly tighter and tighter budgets available. Fewer and fewer of them have the kinds of large maintenance budgets to plan out a whole year's worth of repairs. By necessity, they are working day-to-day, fixing problems as them arise emergently, whether that's the best way to handle things or not. Pothole Heroes meets these stressed, tight-budgeted, new generation of customer needs where they are at, and it is paying off.
How they accomplish this is with a series of ever-evolving custom built work trucks, originally built by KM International, many of which are still in use at several of their locations, and now a second generation is in production at [NAME] which has been refined, streamlined, and improved after years of experience and feedback from onsite work.
These trucks allow a two-person crew to carry a massive hotbox, an infrared asphalt heater, plate compacter, as well as every handheld tool they could need like lutes, rakes, and shovels.
Just because the original trucks worked, doesn't mean they were happy to sit pat, and that's true for how they do almost everything. It's part of their core approach to business, something Neidich referred to as a Process Driven mentality. They apply it to all their business decisions, which includes my recent inquiry with them about the non-franchising-method-of-franchising.
Expansion
"What's the most difficult part of starting a new business," Neidich asked me as I was stuffing my face with a breakfast burrito, the mountains of Palm Springs behind me. A shrug was all I could offer, and even if I wasn't eating at that exact moment, I might not have been able to offer much more.
"It's everything at the start and it's costs," he explained. "Most businesses fail in the first five years. Why? Because you have to take on an enormous amount of risk. Different kinds of risk. Personal. Financial."
The MotorSports In Action, Pothole Heroes branded McLaren outpacing the competition at Mid Ohio Sports Track.Raina Noel
And all the while, the stress of all that risk can jeopardize the quality and performance, and, in a worst case scenario, actually do damage to the brand. Their solution? If they select you to open up a Pothole Heroes branch, they want to remove all that associated risk, and set you up for real success. The areas where they do expand into are evaluated for their market potential before final decisions are made.
"A lot of new business owners are barely scraping by in those early days," he told me. "We set up a location, purchase all the equipment, take on all the risk, provide the location manager with a good salary, and show them the exact process to follow for success. The same process that we've been using at the other location. It takes the hardest parts of it out of the equation."
The obvious reality is that the Pothole Heroes method isn't a solution for everyone. We still need pavers and milling machines, and that's not going to change anytime soon. However, what is refreshing is seeing the industry evolve, react, and change over the short amount of time since I became a part of it.
One major takeaway any pavement maintenance business owner should have from the story of Pothole Heroes and their team, is this: Understanding the needs of your customers, and figuring out the best process by which you can meet those needs creatively can lead to more success. Don't be beholden to the way things have always been done. Be flexible. Think outside the standard box. Form a process that works for you, based in real data, backed up by results you can measure, and then repeat that process by applying it to every aspect of your business.
