Giovanni Recalde, President, Atlantic Sweeping & Cleaning, Inc., grew up learning from his father, Alfonso Recalde, as he built a thriving commercial pavement sweeping business from scratch and then scaled it to cover the Mid-Atlantic states at a phenomenal rate. The younger Recalde, just 38 years old, now leads a still rapidly growing enterprise. Headquartered in Sterling, Virginia, the company has grown throughout Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, West Virginia, and Delaware, and has even started providing service in Tennessee.
Building a Great American Business
Recalde tells of a time when his father worked as a parking attendant in 1977. He had immigrated from Ecuador and worked for a parking garage company after college in Washington DC. Alfonso noticed that the commercial property was not well maintained and asked his boss if he could clean the parking garage on the weekends, while still keeping his day job as an attendant. His employers were pleased with the quality of pavement cleaning work he performed and kept adding garages to his route. He later added shopping center parking lot sweeping and pressure washing to his side job services.
As that second job grew, Alfonso struggled through the challenges of working a regular job while building a business on the side. He decided to go full-time with entrepreneurship. He thrived, but also faced partnership issues, and ultimately restructured the company as a solo entrepreneur to keep it going. He had about 10 sweeper trucks on routes by that time. Giovanni recalls that around 2014 the company launched exciting changes. Below, he shares the story of the progress of Atlantic Sweeping through the years.
Leadership at Atlantic S&C, Inc.
Asked about management at ASC, Inc., Giovanni explains — I’ve been running the company since 2011. Before taking the reins at ASC, he had cofounded AG Capital Investments, a firm that manages his, his dad’s, and other investment stakeholders’ extensive array of thriving businesses. Giovanni says he reports to his dad frequently. My dad continuously monitors the other companies, more than I do, calling and staying apprised of activities across his entire range of diverse operations.
Giovanni graduated with a degree in finance from George Mason University. In high school, he showed interest in technical fields and took mechanics courses. He notes the advantages he’s gained in his endeavors from having both in his educational background.
One of the strengths I have built is knowing what the mechanics are talking about. Understanding truck issues is essential to making well-informed decisions in this business. Throughout my youth, my father would take me along to his client meetings and to check up on projects, and he taught me along the way. He recalls with amusement, from age 16, I never enjoyed a free snow day. I was always plowing snow. I really got immersed in it all, everything to do with the business. I’ve done all the jobs people here do in some capacity, from truck repairs to figuring things out for bookkeeping.
My younger brother, Richard, just started at George Mason University and works in various capacities in the different businesses along with my sister Gaby, who is in high school. It seems he may have the business in his blood too and may pursue a career in the company after graduation. They are both hard-working students and perform well when working in business.
The New Era of Atlantic Sweeping & Cleaning, Inc.
We bought our first construction sweeper, an Athey Mobil Broom truck, and we started doing construction sites in the area. In addition to the parking lot sweeping services, this new revenue line quickly grew from one construction sweeper to three in only about 8 months. We also joined 1-800-SWEEPER around that time. We recognized a need for quality highway construction sweeping and kind of steered the company toward growth in that direction.
Since about 2015, with help and knowledge from the Sweeper Summit and our association with 1-800-SWEEPER, we’ve now got around 51 trucks running, including 36 sweeper trucks. Those are parking lot trucks, broom trucks, and air trucks, a mix of XBrooms, Elgins, Tymcos, Nitehawks, and ODRAs. In 2021, we started doing more milling and paving sweeping. Just this year we’ve added 8 more ODRAs to the fleet.
We like the ODRAs because they’re comparatively very simple to operate and the cost of operation is low. The quick toggle switches are convenient, and my drivers like the enhanced view; they can see all around them without a big hood in front of them. The trucks can turn on a dime as well. It’s a less bulky truck, so it’s easier for drivers to get into tighter areas in the urban environment and to deal with city traffic. We mostly use them for dirt trackouts on urban construction sites and city street operations.
We have 10 or so field support trucks, including pickups, utility trucks, dump trucks, a roll-off truck and 3 mechanics’ trucks with cranes, compressors, and welders. We operate 2 shops with a total of 3 full-time mechanics and one part-time. We keep brooms and a selection of other parts, including a few hard-to-find parts at each shop. That’s proven to be a key practice, especially during COVID. That experience taught us to stay stocked up on what we know we’ll need.
We start early to accumulate the parts for yearly rebuilds. We use a fleet tracking app, pre-trip and post-trip vehicle type-specific inspection tracking software for air trucks, broom trucks, pickup trucks, etc. The reports go to operations and the mechanics. A few times a day, there’s a truck getting triaged and determinations are made about priorities vs. what gets scheduled for another day, etc.
We’ve been expanding our service area and just moved to a new office this year. We now have 2 offices – this one [Virginia], and one in Annapolis Junction, MD. We’re moving into other areas in all directions, just growing along with the demand for our services. We now sweep all the highways in Northern Virginia, we have municipal contracts, and we work for all the larger and some smaller contractors.
We have been building our team as we’ve grown the business over the past 10 years. In the last six months, we’ve hired more office staff to get things precise. Businesses have growing pains, and to remedy that, you need the right people in the office to meet your goals and vision. We just hired a new billing person, bookkeeper, dispatcher, additional account manager, and operations people.
We’ve also just brought in an HR Manager and a Marketing Manager. Marketing will collaborate with HR on employee retention strategies. We now have 10 people in the office, including these two new professionals.
Advanced Technology at ASC, Inc.
Our internal motto is “We just want to do good work, and we know people will ask us to come back if we do.” We do that by making sure our drivers are all well trained and having good equipment for them to use. We know that the answer is not just having a new sweeper truck, but also having a good driver for it and a good organization supporting our service. So, we’re committed to giving our entire team, in the field and in the office, what they need to be successful in their jobs. I think that’s been the key to our growth and continued success.
We are very tech-heavy in this company; everything is app-based. From software for knowing where the trucks are and what’s happening there to completing mobile forms, to app-based dispatch technology, to dash cams, both inward and outward looking from the truck, we max out the field technologies. In the office, our staff has the latest touch-screen laptops, mobile hotspots, and cloud-based technologies. Just having the right software that works for special purposes, for example, though it may only be used a few times a year, is critical at those moments in time.
Everyone in the office can see anything driver-related. That doesn’t have to be one person’s job. Successful operations come from finding the right people and building the right team. Each person should understand that it’s for the good of the company that everyone takes responsibility, as much as possible, and that it’s not just about each individual’s position, whatever it may be.
Company Culture at Atlantic Sweeping & Cleaning, Inc.
We have an all-hands meeting every Monday to give everyone a rundown of the past week and the week ahead. Our management approach gives a sense of ownership to the drivers for their areas of responsibility. I go out and see some of the guys and/or meet some of the clients, if I feel the need to have my voice heard or get more involved in providing a solution.
Sometimes knowing the president of the company has come out to talk with them helps customers’ confidence in our level of commitment to solving their problem(s). I go to assure them we will provide a solution to the issue so that it won’t happen again. When equipment or service breaks down in some way, what matters is how you resolve the customer’s problem. We’re a problem-solving business.
Our big push is safety. We want to provide the right training, signage, other resources, systems, and protocols to make sure work safety is maintained as everyone’s top priority. ASC is part of NAPSA. We use the association’s sweeper school. We have a long training process and use it to weed out people during that phase. Yearly training is emphasized and multiple checks and balances are used to ensure that the training material is taught, tested, and learned. Employees who do well in the training receive a certificate that validates the educational accomplishments that help qualify them for their roles in the industry.
I think the main thing is that here the drivers, even in the job interviews, see that they’re in charge of their own destiny with the company. You can only guide them so much. They have to have the capacity to manage themselves. One of our drivers has been with us for 39 years. A couple have been with the company 20 years or longer, and others have been here for various other long terms.
The account managers field the calls, do the direct contact after the pricing, and manage the relationships with the customers. We want the customer interactions to have that small-company, personalized feel for all involved, but we also prioritize efficiency.
I think with our hyper-growth, people have confidence that the company is doing well and that contributes somewhat to longer-term staff retention. But, it’s not just about how many trucks we acquire. Reinstilling in our team every year that we care about people, by showing them appreciation, is essential to employee satisfaction rates.
We brought in our new HR Manager literally for that reason — to keep better tabs on how things are with our team. There are a lot of different personalities and understanding the right ways to work with all of them can be challenging over time. So, I don’t want to say it’s perfect, but we’ve been striving even more this year to build a team for the long-term future and have been putting the right resources into place to do that.
ASC “Service Branding” and “Employer Branding”
We are continuously enhancing our marketing through our website. Our logo is also featured prominently on our trucks, and we have a range of branded items, like clothing with our logo, pens, notepads, etc. Our new marketing professional is managing our social media presence, including on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other platforms. One of her initial contributions has been upgrading the staff uniforms as we approach the holiday season.
Additionally, she will be involved in employee relations, working with drivers and new recruits, in collaboration with our new HR manager. She has already started the early stages of a program of accompanying Account Managers to construction sites.
Advice for New Entrepreneurs in the Industry from Giovanni Recalde, Atlantic Sweeping & Cleaning Inc.
My advice is to keep in mind that you don’t know it all and never stop learning. Keep your ears open for advice on operations and follow up with good work. That is the key to success. It may not all happen right away, but learning and improving will prepare you for your future, when you do encounter those opportunities to realize new growth for your business.
Reflections on Atlantic Sweeping & Cleaning, Inc. – Leadership Innovation
Beyond ASC’s dazzling growth, the company leadership represents a strong innovative management model for the industry. From driver training to cohesive team building, to internal employer marketing, to advanced technology, to expansion strategies, the decision-makers appear to be intensively engineering an infrastructure for a more broadly scalable operation and administrative system.
ASC demonstrates the wisdom of maintaining a robust employee skill-building program as a primary motivational system, vs. relying solely on practices like granting token rewards. With the addition of Atlantic’s new cross-functioning service marketing / employer marketing agent, Giovianni Recalde is taking this higher approach to long-term competitiveness in the employer market to the next level. This creation of a marketing role that pivots to HR collaboration on employee retention cracks the code to access professional resources that elude so many small and medium-sized business operators.
It, in effect, creates a wealth of crossover benefits for a growing business and its workers by fusing, anytime needed, two otherwise often unaffordable advanced business units. This level of interdepartmental teamwork also presents a deeply enriched integrated role for a talented marketing professional up to the unique challenge. It represents quite a sizable step beyond common management problem-solving in terms of its potential effects for a small to medium-sized business in this or any industry.
The ASC management has also established a policy of cross-departmental responsibility sharing in its administrative offices to monitor and support the field services team more efficiently. The company has put advanced digital systems in place to ensure that everyone is equipped with the means to help track and respond to what’s happening in the field. The company president emphasizes this kind of overlap and discourages rigid interpretations of roles that disregard emergent needs of other team members or customers.
The company has further effectively tailored its growth through wide-ranging strategies that we cannot cover here. Along with the sustained rapid growth of the business and its apparent functional stability and resultant low attrition rates, the above forward-thinking ASC programs and strategic practices stand out in the industry. Giovanni Recalde and his team appear sharply focused on steady development of all the systems and talent needed to sustain an agile team highly equipped to keep delivering optimally for customers.
Due to the transformative vision and drive of Alfonso Recalde, an immigrant parking lot attendant in the 1970’s who rose to entrepreneurial greatness in the USA, Atlantic’s current leadership appears especially well-positioned internally to continue flourishing in a B2B service environment of ever-increasing expectations and operational cost factors.
So, it seems fair to expect that the company, under the direction of Giovanni Recalde, will continue fostering organic growth in the east and increasing its resources and the sophistication of its processes as needed to reach farther west across the US market.
For more information about Atlantic Sweeping & Cleaning, Inc., call (703) 684-1095, or visit atlanticsweeping.com. For more information about Atlantic leadership, see linkedin.com/in/giovanni-recalde-99213332/.