Antonio Garza is a man with a very wide reach across the vast plains of west Texas, and his coverage of the region is expected to extend even farther as he continues operating through the coming years. His exterior property maintenance and construction site services business, Garza Facilities Services, Inc. and his more recently acquired Premier Sweeping Services, together feature a growing pavement sweeping operation that covers an enormous radius. From Lubbock, which is located very far from any other recognizable commercial market center, Garza traverses the high plains north into the panhandle, west to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and southwest through the Chihuahuan Desert.
Garza Brings Natural Business Talent to Lubbock
Antonio recalls his introduction to the pavement sweeping industry and his business’s progress over more than a decade of its development: While I was in the army, I didn’t have anything in mind for work afterward. Coming back to civilian life, in the beginning, it was hard for me to adjust. I just couldn’t adapt to working for others. So, I started doing lawn care jobs as a last resort. It started picking up pretty fast. I got four employees, and business kept growing pretty rapidly.
It got to a point where it was really stressful. So, I decided I wanted to let that go. The opportunity to do the parking lot sweeping came up. It required less equipment, employees, and paperwork than the lawn care business. Plus, you could only do the lawns once a week, but you could do the parking lots every day, which meant more profitability with fewer customers and I could stop hiring more and more workers. So, I gradually transitioned to the parking lot sweeping only.
Growth by Acquisition at Garza Facilities Services
I started the sweeping business around 2013. I got out of the military in ‘09 and started doing lawn service around 2013. After some months, there was the opportunity offered by a gentleman who was selling a sweeping company here in Lubbock. He had been running his company since the ‘70s. By 2013, he had downsized to just a couple of remaining accounts he had left. So, I bought him out.
I started doing the local Walmart parking lots and a couple of other accounts. I phased out the lawn care service entirely. More recently, I bought another sweeping business, Premier Sweeping Company. I kept the name of that business as it was, so I have two companies, Garza and Premier.
Every year we’re going up in the number of accounts we serve. Right now, the majority of our business is parking lots. I’m looking to do more in construction. I’m looking to hire, but also to control costs. I have a lot of expenses. When I started, I bought nothing but new equipment. I’m now paying everything off. Within a couple of years, we’ll be debt-free. It’s an obstacle to doing much hiring right now, even for expansion that would keep more workers busy full-time.
Marketing and Sales at Garza
Asked about the beautiful Garza website and Facebook page, Antonio explains the management of those valuable digital assets. I have Scenic City Studios, a web marketing company, for the website. Derek Rayburn is the person there who handles it and the Facebook page. They keep up with it all every week. We get a lot of calls from the website. Having the NAPSA membership is good for us too, to help build [consumers’] confidence. And, we recently became connected with 1-800-SWEEPER. I just started with them, but it does help. I’ve already seen the difference. Our trucks have the logo, and I have business cards. Other than that, we don’t really do much more for marketing or sales. Our uniforms are just reflective clothing.
I’m pretty much busy all the time and don’t need to sell. I do service work, equipment maintenance, invoicing, and other office tasks myself. My wife helps with ordering parts, office work, phones, and other things. But, it’s mostly me. I’m doing almost everything at this stage, so I don’t have time to do sales calls.
But, we get a lot of opportunities for new business where we are, without selling. There are 2 or 3 more sweeping companies where we are. I’m open to buying those when they’re ready to sell. Eventually, I want to own all the sweeping services in the area. I’ve already advised one of the other business owners, who is nearing retirement age, of that.
About 95% of our business is currently parking lots and about 5% construction. I’m trying to venture into more construction and street sweeping to grow. We live in a medium-sized city with lots of construction. So, we’re in a good location for growth. We do Costco here in town, and they want us to do pressure washing. That will be big growth in the parking lots sweeping for us. I need to find a person to cover some of my sweeping schedule so I can do that. Right now, it’s a labor issue.
Operations at Garza
I have a shop down the street from my home. I have my office there, and it’s where we keep all the sweepers covered. We do 95% of everything ourselves here. We do our own gutter brooms. We do oil changes every 3,000 miles or every two months. We keep a log of all that and write down the dates oil filters need to be changed. I have one employee, and my brothers help with mechanical work, as needed. They’re mechanics. We grease up the sweepers, check the air daily, and keep up other routine truck maintenance.
My normal schedule is working nights. Through the years, it’s been a struggle to keep good workers. I don’t know why; they just don’t want to work. When I bought Premier Sweeping, I kept the two employees but then ended up letting them go. The worker I have has been with me for about eight years now.
Right now, I’m working full-time and have the employee working with me doing the out-of-town routes. My son helps too, mostly doing portering on some properties and trash can service on other sites. He will soon be graduating and plans to come on full-time then.
For equipment, we currently have 2 street sweepers and 3 parking lot sweepers. Two are Victory sweepers that we use every day. Those are fairly new, and I’ve got a Schwarze Gale Force and a Sweeprite mechanical sweeper.
We provide general maintenance services, including pavement sweeping for parking lots, construction site dust control, track out, site cleanup, industrial sites, HOAs, milling cleanup, apartment complexes, warehouses, and other kinds of properties.
We sweep the Pepsi terminal monthly, and we do highway construction cleanup in Amarillo. We provide warehouse sweeping service a couple of times monthly for a client, and we sweep the semi terminal for a milk company. One customer builds gas stations and calls me when they’re nearly done, and I go do the site cleanup. A company out of Dallas does highways. We go out every two months or so and clean the work areas. We do get snow here, maybe twice a year. We may get some heavy snow. We get huge dust events. We got one last week. We stay really busy having all that sand to pick up during those times.
Out of town, our main customer is Walmart. We have all the Walmarts in the area now. We service those in Clovis, Portales, and Hoss too, and pretty much all of eastern New Mexico. I have good friends I respect who operate toward this direction from the east, so I try not to go as far as their territory around Ft Worth. If I need help, I ask a gentleman from a competitor, and the same goes for him when he needs help from me. He gave me two Home Depots. I had a small town I had to sweep and couldn’t do it. So, I asked him to take it on.
Garza Property Maintenance Services
Garza and Premier Sweeping are the leading pavement sweeping companies in Lubbock and the greater west Texas and eastern New Mexico region. The combined range of services Garza and Premier provide is as expansive as the land area the organization covers:
Pavement Sweeping Services
Garza Facilities Services and Premier Sweeping Service both provide porter service, bulk trash removal, parking lot sweeping, construction sweeping, retail sweeping, debris hauling, industrial sweeping, residential complex sweeping, commercial complex sweeping, HOA sweeping, and milling cleanup services.
General Maintenance Services
Garza Facilities Services provides a wide range of general property maintenance services, including painting, light bulb changing, small replacement and repair tasks for commercial businesses, day and night portering services, and various cleaning for retail, residential, and industrial complexes. Garza also provides clean and safe bulk debris hauling, oversized trash item removal, and tenant unit clean-out and prep service. The company offers 24/7 response.
Advice for Industry Newcomers from Antonio Garza, Owner Garza Facilities Services and Premier Sweeping Services, Lubbock, TX
I would say, if I was to do it all over again, I would not take on as much debt at the beginning. When I started, I got in debt because I didn’t want to deal with used equipment. Now, I want to hire for growth but have more debt than I want while expanding. My advice would be to start with used equipment.
Another thing I would suggest is getting a professional website. People ask me, “How much do you pay for your website?” They say, “It’s too much.” But, at the end of the day, your website will pay for itself. If you don’t have a professional website, you’re losing money. People see a professional website and they want to call. So, have a good site built.
Also, I would recommend connecting with 1-800-SWEEPER. They’ve been really helpful, a big asset. And, you need to have patience when you’re starting a business, and you’ve got to be ready to work 7 days a week. There’s a lot. It’s not just in sweeping. It’s in any kind of business. You’re doing a lot of sacrificing. It’s not easy. I think it’s worth it though, to be independent and succeed with your own goals.
For information about Garza Facility Services or Premier Sweeping Services in Lubbock, Texas, you can call (806) 239-9375 or visit garzasweeping.com.