If you don’t work in the cold in Northwest Montana, you’re going to miss a lot of the year! Sam Rowe works through it all from his headquarters in Kalispel. “Of course, we are in Kalispel, right by Glacier Park, so we have issues with the cold weather. But with our American Caddy Vac, it’s really easy to keep things running. I put a heater on the compressor and just recently we were working a job when it was 7 degrees below zero outside. Everything worked great. We just added antifreeze to the lines, sealed up the house and everything worked great.”
Sam started cleaning furnaces in 1996 and bought his first American Caddy Vac in 2000. Over the years he built things up and was running two Caddy Vacs at one time with two employees. But he sold that business and now he runs HVAC Power Vac Duct Cleaning with one Caddy Vac as an owner/operator with one part time employee.
Sam runs about half and half residential and commercial. “We clean just about any type of commercial building, from hospitals, to schools to banks… just about anything.” Because of the commercial buildings, Sam also runs a couple of portable units but the American Caddy Vac is always the first choice. “Rule number 1 is that you always use the Ameircan Caddy Vac if possible. It has so much more power. But sometimes you just can’t get the truck to the site. For instance, we just did a job in Butte where we just couldn’t get the Caddy Vac to the building. The good news was that we could get close enough to reach it with the air lines and the compressor from the truck, and that helped a lot, but we couldn’t get the suction up there so we had to use the portables for that part of the job. Even then, we were hooking two portables together on a main trunk line to get the suction that we needed. That worked, but it still didn’t give us as much vacuum as the American Caddy Vac. The other major problem with the portables is the filters… they plug up so quick! Because you have a filter that’s just basically 2′ x 2′ on the portable and then you have a Hepa Filter behind that… so of course when you’re cleaning a big commercial building those filters clog up really fast. But when you’re running the American Caddy Vac, you’ve got fifteen filter bags that are basically 5 feet high and 18 inches around and when they pop up… they never get plugged up!”
Sam also appreciates the storage capability and the ease of maintenance on the American Caddy Vac. “Everything’s just so easy to get to! Especially the compressor. I just changed to my winter oil on my compressor and it took me 15 minutes! It was so easy and quick. Back at the beginning I had an old Pringle and it was so tough to do anything! You had to take the hoses out. You couldn’t even see the compressor! It was buried down behind your suction hoses and it was almost impossible to get to. But the American Caddy Vac is just so easy to maintain. For instance, it’s really easy to access and grease the drive lines, things like that. It’s designed to be easy to operate and easy to maintain. That’s because Mac has his own Duct Cleaning business (B & F PowerVac in Lewiston, Idaho) and they design these trucks the way they would want to use them and maintain them.”
Sam has a tip for future American Caddy Vac buyers, “My latest truck I purchased I did something that I should have done from the beginning… I got the electric hose reel and boy is that nice to work with!”
Sam has the enviable situation of getting along well with some of his competitors. “A couple of my competitors run just portable systems and porta-brush systems but they really aren’t a lot of competition. But one of my competitors is my old company that I sold 6 years ago, so they are running two American Caddy Vac trucks. If we have big commercial jobs we have a total of three companies that we work with and they all run American Caddy Vacs. Sure, we’re competitors but we’re like a community. We work together all the time.”
Sam appreciates the personal service he gets whenever he calls American Caddy Vac, whether he is talking with Mac Mattoon (Owner), or Steve Cox (Office Manager), or one of the other guys, he knows he’s going to receive their professional and courteous attention.
“I’ve recommended American Caddy Vac to a lot of people and I will continue to do so! These trucks just run and run. There’s not a lot of service issues but if you do have one, those guys really take care of you. I just bought my latest truck from them last year. I’m loyal to them because they have a great product and they take really good care of me.”
