
Cleaning Is In Jerry’s Blood
Jerry’s Beginning:
Jerry McMahon was born and raised in the cleaning business, with his father owning a cleaning business. After convincing his father to purchase a truck-mounted carpet cleaner in 1989, Jerry was hooked on carpet cleaning. In the early 1990s he went into business for himself cleaning carpets, started doing some restoration after floods, and was approached to consider owning a ServPro franchise. In October 2010 he bought the franchise, and has appreciated helping people through disasters. His business has 18-20 staff normally, with extra temp staff at times when there’s a disaster. In addition to carpet cleaning, his business does HVAC cleaning, graffiti removal, fire restoration, and flood restoration.
ServPro’s Beginning:
ServPro (and Service Master!) had an interesting beginning. There were two painters in California that started cleaning drapes, then carpets. In 1970 they had a disagreement. One ended up starting ServPro and the other started Service Master. ServPro has 1900 franchises in the USA, Canada, and even Europe.
Inquiring minds wanted to know:
- Yes, ServPro cleans oriental rugs and steps
- Equipment and products have changed, over time, for carpet cleaning. Truck mounts come a lot bigger, have more heat and more spray.
- There are some carpet fibers that should not have heat extraction but dry cleaning.
- Dry cleaning, or “chem dry,” has been big. That process uses “encapsulation,” where a dry product is scrubbed into carpet, attaches to soil, crystalizes, and then crystals are vacuumed up.
- The best vacuums are not necessarily the cheapest vacuums. In Jerry’s opinion, they all seem to break at the same time, so why spend the extra money?
- Scotch Guard is a great product in the right circumstances. It must be applied after carpets are cleaned and must be properly applied to be effective.
- To get your carpets cleaned, just call the office and book an appointment. That’s how to get the process started.