“A unique and diversified family-owned company providing street sweeping services to multiple industries in Delaware and surrounding areas.”
Connor Sweeping is a family business in Newark, Delaware. It was launched in 2005 as one of a group of companies operated by the Connor family in between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. Over the past two decades, the organization has built a strong local brand on its reliability, performance quality, and ability to meet the unique needs of local builders and other clients. The company is further known in its market for exceptional responsiveness and flexibility when called upon to help contractors with emergent issues.
The company serves the residential construction industry, commercial and industrial property management, municipal governments, and road construction and milling contractors. The Company’s service area covers the state of Delaware and extends to parts of Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The Connor crews operate from the shop and headquarters in Newark, Delaware, and a satellite depot to the south, in Milford Delaware. Here, we’re fortunate to have RJ Andrews, President, Connor Sweeping, Inc., share his company’s story with NAS readers:
Connor Sweeping Leadership
The company was founded in 2005 by three brothers, my uncle Mike, uncle Pat, and my grandfather Paul. Mike also started an excavating company in the 1980s. I own that company now too. They discovered there were no sweeper companies to clean up the sites they worked on. My uncle Pat was retiring, so he started the Connor Sweeping business with the other two brothers.
Pat was the president till 2021. I started getting involved in the sweeping business around 2018, running the daily operations, and Pat was overseeing things. In 2021, I bought the company from the three brothers. Today, my brother, Connor Andrews, and I own Connor Sweeping. Connor is my mom’s maiden name, which the business is named after, not to be confused with my brother’s first name, Connor.
Highly Diversified Family Business Model
The larger organization under RJ Andrews’ leadership is multifaceted, crossing a range of related industries. The business has expanded across a wide range of heavy construction services. RJ talked briefly about the various companies he and his partners operate and the kinds of services they provide.
The other business I mentioned we own is Christiana Excavating, a general contracting business. I started with that company in 2009-10 while I was still in high school. I worked in the field till 2013. Since then, I’ve been working in the office. My brother, our two other partners, and I took over Christiana from Mike and Paul officially in 2021.
In addition to Christiana Excavating Company and Connor Sweeping, Inc., at age 30, RJ Andrews also co-owns a third business, Sussex Materials. This most recently added company is in the market of selling topsoil and fill dirt.
We’ve purchased over a million dollars in equipment in the past two years. We’ve got the total revenues to back our building stage, and in addition to building up the business in Delaware, we’re ready for added operations here in Delaware. In this area, from the river to the bay, many job sites are required to increase the grade of their ground because they’re so low to the sea level. Site contractors like Christiana need the material to successfully establish the grades to the designed plans, which makes Sussex Materials an ideal fit.
Delaware is flood-prone, and to get the construction lot grades above the floodplain, the coastal tides are a challenge our crews deal with. Fortunately, we haven’t had any major flooding in recent years.
Long History of Promoting From Within
The two remaining partners, Kenny and Donnie, transitioned to ownership of Christiana along with me and my brother Connor. Those two partners had been with Christiana for many years — Donnie since the late ‘80s, and Kenny’s since the early ‘90s. They had started with the company as laborers and worked their way up through the ranks to ownership. My uncle and grandfather were looking to retire, so they promoted them as skilled and trusted people who were competent to keep the business running.
For Connor Sweeping, I run the day-to-day operations. We have a good company structure, with a foreman, 3 full-time drivers, a full-time mechanic, and a bookkeeper/secretary. So, we have a total of 5 employees in the sweeping business. That’s not including anyone working at separate real estate in other operations. At Christiana, our crews work on customer sites. At Sussex, our equipment stays on our site, and clients come to us, and we fill orders for them. We do have delivery that we manage in that business, but not with our own trucks. We deliver 100 to 2,000 loads at a time in that operation. Business is very strong there.
Overall, we cover everything from construction sweeping for national builders, residential site work, general contracting, industrial site work for warehouses, the City of Wilmington Port, and other construction, and miscellaneous parking lots. (RJ clarified that Connor does sweep parking lots in some cases, perhaps associated with other work on a site, but that they generally do not handle routine commercial parking lot sweeping accounts.)
Our foreman has superintendent responsibilities with full reins to run the schedule as needed, order parts as needed, etc. He started in about 2006 as Connor Sweeping’s first employee. He still loves getting in the truck. But, in management, there is less driving for him now.
RJ Andrews’ Crews
Managing the day-to-day operations at Connor and Christiana are my responsibilities. Running Connor takes only about 10% percent of my time each day, and Christiana takes up to 90% of my day. Connor administration is all digital. Everyone on the team knows everything that’s going to happen on any given day up to two weeks in advance. Many functions are, to a large extent, self-managing. Whereas, for Christiana, all the bids, insurance, payables, and everything else you can think of goes through me in the office.
My brother Mikey and my secretary provide critical support in the office structure. In the field, Kenny Webb and my brother Connor Andrews run the southern part of Delaware, and Donnie Pfahler runs northern Delaware. We have 4 lead guys for our work crews for Christiana. That includes 2 concrete crews, 2 pipe crews, and 2 general work crews, which consist of bulk grading operations. We have full time drivers, 2 mechanics & a crew that works in our Milford yard running the crushing operation for Christiana. The general work crews do various jobs, like sediment and erosion controls, bulk grading earthwork, and utility work, like water mains, sewers, building roads, building stormwater management systems, etc.
Sweeper Trucks at Connor Sweeping
Our Connor Sweeping fleet currently includes mechanical sweeping trucks — an Elgin Broom Badger, an Elgin Broom Bear, 2 Stewart-Amos trucks, an MT4H ODRA, and 3 other ODRAs.
Asked what he looks for when buying sweepers, RJ considered his recent purchases. We look for reliability in a sweeper truck. We want to make sure you can depend on the truck to complete the task and that no major breakdowns are likely. We look for a truck that is efficient at the work it is doing, and at the satisfaction level of the drivers with the truck.
Drivers like the ODRAs. At first, they were hesitant, given the size of the truck. But, once they were in operation and saw what it could do, it was almost no different than what an XL-sized truck can do. Since I bought the first one of the ODRAs, I’ve already bought a few more. They’re smaller and easier to work on than others made for the same use. My drivers and mechanics like them. They also hold their value on resale.
It’s important in milling to have a good street sweeper. On milling, and on tar & chip areas that we sweep up, I’ve had certain clients request only an ODRA be sent because they could see the difference in what’s being picked up.
All our trucks are new and are the best of their kind for their purpose. We use heavy-duty mechanical brooms for various environments. The trucks are equipped with water systems for dust control. That produces more thorough sweeping results and promotes a healthier work environment by avoiding generating the dust clouds you see on sites where contractors are using traditional street sweeping equipment.
The big hoppers on our pavement sweepers hold large quantities of surface dirt and debris for dumping at approved sites. Our sweeper trucks are also equipped with high dumps for depositing into onsite trash containers or trucks if that’s the arrangement. Our powerful equipment is ideal for taking up sand, dirt, and debris common on paved areas in industrial and municipal environments.
Advanced Technologies at Connor Sweeping
It’s fair to say that the Andrews leadership stays up to date on new and emerging industry technologies. RJ explains, Connor Sweeping was the first of the three businesses to use digital timekeeping. The employees clock in and out that way. The digital system auto-generates paystubs, and it drives the general accounting system.
Everything is done on phones. Connor Sweeping is a paperless business. That includes our fleet management program. It’s also wireless. We use QuickBooks for the larger accounting work, and Fleetio for our fleet management.
Growth at Connor Sweeping, Delaware
We are well equipped and organized to serve our customers efficiently. With two locations in Delaware (northern and southern), we are in good positions to help customers in many areas of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and, of course, throughout Delaware. We’ve been working for some of the same clients forever, and we’ve developed strong working relationships over many years.
Connor Sweeping is a member of the 1-800-SWEEPER organization, the Home Builders Association of Delaware, and NAPSA. Our memberships in those associations help us adhere to industry best practices and guidelines and support our commitment to quality.
The new website does what it needs to do, and we’re satisfied with its performance. So, besides the website, we do not do any marketing. To answer the question of how many contracts/customers we routinely serve weekly, AJ simply replies — plenty.
The growth we’ve experienced has been mostly from word of mouth. I don’t want to stress about the growth of Connor or Christiana. Our growth plan is just to stay the course. If more clients in the region come in and I need to cater to them, fine. But, if we keep it at the status quo, we’ll continue to be plenty busy.
Advice for Industry Newcomers from RJ Andrews, Newark, DE
We asked, what ae the most challenging aspects of your business and industry that you would warn new business owners about, or what general advice would you give them? RJ offers the simplest and most encompassing advice: The biggest advice I would say is — when called upon, show up.
We asked about the competitive environment in his market, and RJ reflected on the history. We have two primary competitors. We really haven’t had issues with each other. We don’t need to be aggressive on pricing. We asked if competitors did come into the market and started undercutting prices, what his solution would be. RJ again responded in plain and certain terms that he would double down on quality and not compete on price.
Thoughts On Connor Sweeping, Inc.
The Connor Sweeping team clearly takes pride in their dedication to excellence. The company has grown through the reputation they have established job-by-job, year-by-year, and continues to develop daily, backing up their commitments with a full 100% customer satisfaction guarantee.
RJ Andrews and his partners are a team proven to be consistently successful as a calculated risk takers, building a strong collective organization through the complex engagements of the heavy construction industry. In the Connor, Christiana, and Sussex group of businesses, Andrews and his partners offer Delaware and the greater northeastern US region a compelling bundle of construction services, well-experienced project management, and money-back quality guarantees.
Further, based on the pavement sweeping company’s performance over the past 20 years, RJ Andrews’ bold collaborative approach to service channel diversification, and the business’s digital maturity, the Connor Sweeping division of the partnership’s collective Delaware enterprise is one to watch for growth in the northeast US through future new revenue lines and innovation.