The Critical Role of Preventative Elevator Maintenance | Johnny LeSalle

Today’s guest is Johnny LaSalle, COO of Mod Pros Elevator, and an industry leader with experience both in the field and in management. In this interview, we dove into current issues surrounding preventative maintenance, from overloaded service routes and growing financial pressures to why some modern elevators require modernization so soon. We also discussed essential steps to strengthen the partnership between property managers and elevator contractors.

Transcript:

Johnny (00:00)
And then you really end up with this thing where you think you fixed it, but you really didn’t spend the quality time there to fix it. So it’s a repeat call. You know, so there’s only so much that someone can do. So in order to avoid all of that, you just really have to do a lot of maintenance.

Matt Allred (00:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Allred (00:15)
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast brought to you by the Allred Group. I’m your host, Matt Allred. When talent is mission critical, call the Allred Group. With industry expertise, top talent, and exceptional customer service, you need the Allred Group on your side. Your priority is our priority. Call now 404 890 0445. Today’s guest is Johnny LaSalle, COO of Mod Pros Elevator.

And an industry leader with experience both in the field and in management. In this interview, we dove into current issues surrounding preventative maintenance, from overloaded service routes and growing financial pressures to why some modern elevators require modernization so soon. We also discussed essential steps to strengthen the partnership between property managers and elevator contractors.

Matt Allred (01:06)
Johnny, welcome to the show.

Johnny (01:08)
thank you for having me.

Matt Allred (01:09)
Yeah, no, I’m I’m excited. I always enjoy the the conversations and just kind of wanted to pick up on a on a conversation you and I had recently and you know, you made the statement that really caught my attention. You know, what happened to preventative maintenance kind of as a maybe a rhetorical question, but what what do you think has changed in the industry over the last fifteen, twenty years?

Johnny (01:29)
So from a manager’s point of view, I believe that there’s a financial thing going on there. companies are looking for more margins. things are getting difficult with maintaining the elevator because technology changes really fast, so the

culture of learning how to deal with these new products, you know, are much more difficult. So you have an old school guy, that works on generators and stuff like that and that stuff is no longer around. I know a mechanic that goes, I’m not gonna use a laptop. You know what I mean? I just don’t know how, right? It’s just not with it. but then there’s guys that are just, you know, they just embrace it.

at the end of the day, it’s it’s a financial thing, somehow the the companies not everybody wants to have more and more margins for whatever reason, So things that happens is that you get more units on a route. And there’s just a a certain amount of maintenance visits that you can do in a month.

Matt Allred (02:24)
When do you feel like that started changing? was there a turning point that you saw?

Johnny (02:31)
For me, I I think it was little by little, but there is a big turning point around the like financial crisis around two thousand seven, two thousand eight.

Matt Allred (02:42)
Okay.

Johnny (02:43)
That’s where it got worse.

Matt Allred (02:44)
Right, from from your perspective. Were you in the field at the time? Were you in management, I guess, weren’t you?

Johnny (02:48)
I was just transitioning. I was going from the field into management right around right around two thousand nine.

Matt Allred (02:55)
Right. you mentioned that a lot of building owners feel like they never see their mechanic and it sounds like that’s obviously part of the the same thing. is that perception fair? Are customers missing part of the story there when it’s like, hey, where where’s our guy?

Johnny (03:11)
you know, I run into that a lot and most of the time it’s tied to the amount of units the guy has, right?

So

if the guy at eight o’clock in the morning already has seven calls, he’s up against the clock, right? He’s gonna try his best, hopefully, to get to all those calls. Even if you take an hour, right, per call.

That’s that’s your whole day, you’re not gonna have enough time for maintenance, much less time to like wait for to be able to meet somebody, you know, go find them. sometimes they wanna talk to you, so you have to wait for them. They’re not in their office. and the way you really wanna deal with a customer on a service call is you want to meet them twice. You want to meet them coming in and when you’re leaving, but

the guys are pressured to get to the next call, right? You know, God forbid the next call is an entrapment. so they’ve gotta go, right? it’s a lot of pressure on them, I believe, when it they have that kind of setup. I’m sure not everybody has that setup, but that’s the common denominator when we hear that complaint from customers.

Matt Allred (04:15)
Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna kinda throw in a question here that again we we talked about this and that is that you know there’s kind of a market price, right? And so it it feels like the routes are getting bigger and yet the cost to the to customer to take care of their their elevator has has kind of stayed the same. How long has it stayed the same?

Johnny (04:35)
How long?

Matt Allred (04:35)
Yeah, yeah.

Johnny (04:37)
It fluctuates. the bigger companies tend to have these battles over price and there’s like a price war going on and it’s market to market. You know, Miami’s different than Broward, which is just 30 miles away, completely different than Atlanta, and completely different than New York, right? So the prices can change from geographical area, but

If there’s competition and competition is good, that competition is going to drive prices down. Right.

And there is a floor, and there’s a somewhat of a ceiling. Okay. So in that area, it’s what I believe is that that that space the cost has outpaced that.

Okay, so now companies have to do things different in order, to meet expectations financially. Right? So

when companies in order to get more market, they’ll go on the lower of that spectrum, even though it’s not cost effective. Right? Like you’ll get the contract already at a loss. for example, when a company uses like

This thing where

they where they say, okay, we’re gonna do a one visit a month, X amount of hours, one repair,

one test, add all that up, add all the other expenditures, margins, and then okay, that’s that’s the amount that we want this job at, right? But that’s a lot of assuming, okay, because what if you have two repairs?

Matt Allred (06:11)
Well what if what if one’s an expensive repair? I mean you can’t not all

Johnny (06:14)
Yeah.

Matt Allred (06:14)
repairs are are created equal, right?

Johnny (06:16)
Correct, correct. You know, you try to do your best with a survey and not include certain things that you see that are gonna go bad, but with the equipment that’s being produced in the last fifteen years, there’s less and less and less that’s in your control as far as being able to tell what is going to be needed to be done as a repair in the next five years, okay?

And then the inspection. You do an inspection, and on one particular elevator, you may need two guys. You may need, four hours, right? so there’s a lot of details in there that that people might miss. What about the re-inspection? What if it failed? What if it fails twice? So everything that I just mentioned.

Is going to blow you out of the water. Okay, as far as profitability. I didn’t even mention service calls. how many service calls are you going to absorb? And that’s that’s where really get it gets bad, right? Because now you’re talking about not just regular time calls, but overtime calls. God forbid it’s an MRL.

Now you need two people to maintain it.

Because how you gonna check? Well the the biggest the biggest problem in our industry with MRLs, in my opinion, is is the brakes, okay? The brake switch. You can’t get up there, do anything by yourself, right? Safely. I really don’t recommend guys need to be with somebody, you know, I’ve gotten stuck up there, right?

you’re dealing with something that’s malfunctioning and you’re gonna go into on top of a car, into an overhead where there’s barely any space, crawl on top of the machine, look at this little microscopic little switch with your flashlight, try to adjust it, run the elevator. It wasn’t done right, you’re shut down, now you can’t move the elevator, and you’re

by

Matt Allred (08:07)
Right, right.

Johnny (08:08)
yourself with no cell signal.

Matt Allred (08:11)
yeah. Yeah. So I mean part of what I’m hearing you say is is that there’s there’s some major pressures going on between, you know, market expectations with price and then costs rising. but there’s also expectation from customers, hey, I wanna, see you, so often or I want you to solve all my problems, right? Maybe and maybe there’s an expectation that, hey, if I sign this agreement, I’m not gonna have elevator problems. And so when there are elevator problems, it’s like, hey, you know.

You promised. You know, there’s there’s

Johnny (08:40)
Yeah.

Matt Allred (08:40)
again, there’s kind of that expectation that, it’s gonna cover everything and everything’s gonna be gonna be okay.

Johnny (08:45)
Yeah, it’s really important to set proper expectations, right? And and break the myth

Matt Allred (08:50)
Mm-hmm.

Johnny (08:50)
up front and let them know, look, this is a partnership and this is where your elevators are at right now. And here’s the evidence. One, two, three,

Matt Allred (08:58)
Right. Right.

Johnny (09:00)
right? we need to work together. You need to have some patience and you may need to invest into these things in order to get to where you want it to be.

Right. Well we want it to be there too, but sometimes it’s you know, it’s not just one sided effort.

Matt Allred (09:15)
Sure, sure. Yeah. well you you mentioned, you know, that the mechanics kind of start with, you know, maybe got service calls already and so so maintenance kind of falls by the wayside because that’s that’s proactive preventative. You know, like say if you’ve got an entrapment, if you’ve got something that’s that’s broken, obviously that’s gonna take higher priority and it almost feels like in a lot of these agreements, maybe there’s just not enough wiggle room to actually get out there and

Proactively maintain. and I’m not saying it’s just all the agreement, right? There’s obviously the the companies have to make choices, right? How much margin do they want? and yet it seems like some of the customers maybe get caught in the in the crossfire.

Johnny (09:56)
Yeah, yeah.

it depends on what the company wants to do, right?

one thing is the contract and the other thing is what’s happening in the field, right? because you know, it’s a the business, you’re in a van, you’re by yourself, you have the company shirt on, but it’s your responsibility, right? You’re running the company in a sense.

So now you you have to make a personal choice, right? what are you gonna do? Right now it’s it’s the pride, right? Like the pride of the culture. Are you are

you

gonna do the right thing? Are you gonna try to do the right thing? At least get as far as you can, you know. like we talked about the one service call, with the money bump. if you find one in a twin story building, more than likely there’s nine more, okay.

it takes seconds right so it it may take let’s say a minute that’s nine more minutes ten more minutes that it would take to go to floor to floor and just clean those off

That’s where that makes the difference a big difference, okay? in a obviously in a 30, 40 story building, you know, you might have to like break it up, right? It might take longer.

but it’s still doable. It’s still 30 minutes on a 30-story

building. It’s really not a lot. and that’s 30.

service calls that you removed from the next six months. that’s huge. Right? So as a mechanic, you really want to have the pride and think about what can I do better? What can I do now in order to improve upon this? Right? And every little thing just exponentially mounts up.

Matt Allred (11:35)
So

it sounds like even within those constraints, there’s a lot of discretion, right? As to, you know, do I go the extra mile and and take care of these things that I I know are gonna show up again? And if I can, then it seems like that would alleviate a lot of callbacks and and issues and so you can take care of other other things. Okay.

Johnny (11:55)
Absolutely, absolutely.

And and it’s chain reaction. So if you see one thing, there’s other things you can expect that are just low-hanging fruit, like I say, right? easy things that you can take care of virtually very quickly. it’s not hard, it’s just a lot of cleaning, just regular basic maintenance, you know? the happiest customers are the ones that get the maintenance.

when it’s needed, and that’s

something that’s been lost. Right. I remember I learned under a mechanic that had a a little notepad, you know, this is before cell phones and stuff. And he had a little calendar and he knew exactly to the day when the brushes on a particular motor or generator were going to be halfway used up.

And you know, there’s a lot of things

involved with that

because how much is that building running? One building is different than another building, right? The occupancy and all that and if it’s an office building versus a condo, but in that particular building and every other building that he had, he had a different timeline. So

it’s so six months for this job, a year for the motor, you know, a service car was every two months.

Matt Allred (13:11)
So he had really observed

Johnny (13:11)
In another building.

Matt Allred (13:12)
enough to to kind of dial those numbers down and and to where he he just knew based on like you

Johnny (13:16)
He just knew.

Matt Allred (13:17)
say usage and and all of that.

Johnny (13:19)
Yeah, and no

matter what, he would go do that because if he didn’t, it’s just gonna eat his lunch. You know, it’s gonna start

Matt Allred (13:26)
Yeah.

Johnny (13:27)
giving you service calls and leveling issues and then there’s other problems, right? You know, if you let a brush go bad, now you have commutator problems. Now you’re gonna have to repair the commutator, you know, it’s

Matt Allred (13:40)
Okay.

Johnny (13:40)
just a domino effect.

Matt Allred (13:42)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I hear people talk about, you know, number of units per route, but you brought up the sixty story building a minute ago and and obviously the big difference between a two, three, four stop and a and a sixty stop unit. I assume that that goes into the calculations, but I just don’t hear it referred to that way, right? It’s a it’s almost like we’ve got X number of stops per unit but unit count it seems to be the the driving

force, how does that figure out? You know, as far as you know, we talk sometimes about overloaded routes. is it just usually counted in units or do you look at the stops?

Johnny (14:18)
Yeah, you know, the rule of thumb, right? Because there’s an there’s an average. So

if you take any type of elevator, even contractually from like the consultant’s point of view, the average amount of elevators, not including an ultra high rise, okay, but just the majority of elevators out there is going to be a two-stop.

to like a 15 stop, right? Or and then there’s your 25, 30, and 40, right? But the majority is going to be an hour to two hours a month.

The the two stop hydros, you know, there, you know, there’s a lot of companies. I remember where they were all monthly visits and then all of a sudden, you know, they were like, well, let’s make it every other month. let’s make it quarterly. But in reality, you can visit every month.

For a half an hour, right? On

a two-stop hydro quiet job. And your mid-rise, even the beginning of a high rise, you can do you know two hours a month.

Real maintenance, okay, you know. And that’s good. Okay. So if you use that and you have that matrix and you

start adding units to it and you have a mix. Let’s say you have a 50-50 mix. You’re going to get to a number, right? And that number is gonna fall anywhere between 80 and 100 units. Okay. Maybe a little bit more.

Matt Allred (15:43)
That can realistically

be maintained is what I’m hearing you say. Okay.

Johnny (15:46)
Correct, right,

right. Because if you take, you know, there’s like this all that’s math, there’s only X amount of Workable hours in a year, right? Minus

Matt Allred (15:53)
Sure. Sure.

Johnny (15:54)
vacations, minus holidays, minus all this stuff, okay? so it’s like, you know, close to two thousand hours or something. And you take that and

you should be removing from those hours the average amount of call hours that you’re spending on the calls.

Matt Allred (16:14)
Mm-hmm.

Johnny (16:15)
Okay, so how many hours are you spending a year on those units on calls? Is it eighteen hundred hours? A thousand eight hundred right? Is it

Matt Allred (16:28)
Then there’s no maintenance

being done, right? ‘Cause you’re just running calls all the time. Yeah.

Johnny (16:31)
Correct. Is it,

50 hours, a hundred hours, right? So let’s take it the other way. Let’s assume that you got an amazing route. Okay. how many hours do you need in order to do maintenance? you just start taking that number down per per month, and you’re gonna end up with around eighty to a hundred units.

Okay, because there’s no way to go to all those units to more than that, right? And still do service calls. Okay. we dial in depending on that unit, you know, somebody else needs to take up the maintenance if somebody’s busy taking calls. Okay. it’s really important because if not, you’re never gonna control the calls.

I’ve seen really, really good mechanics, you know, but they get burnt out.

Matt Allred (17:18)
Mm-hmm.

Johnny (17:18)
I used to have a competition with a friend of mine in the field and we used to just be the ones to only take calls when they did the super route thing, right? We were one of the guys that that would only take calls and everybody else was doing maintenance. Well, we loved it, right? In a sense because we were competing with each other in order to

see who fixed

the most amount of elevators in a day, right? But but there’s only so much you can do, you know? And then you really end up with this thing where you think you fixed it, but you really didn’t spend the quality time there to fix it. So it’s a repeat call. there’s there’s only so much that someone can do. So in order to avoid all of that, you just really have to do a lot of maintenance.

Matt Allred (17:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Which and it sounds like if somebody has, you know, that their unit count’s not too high that they can keep up and they it can be profitable, you tell me you’re the business owner. is it possible to be profitable with given the kind of the ceiling of this is what the market rate will pay for for maintenance?

Johnny (18:17)
Yeah, it’s profitable. I mean, there’s a lot of companies out there, right? Not everybody’s going out of business or being sold.

so you just gotta want to do it right and you have to have the culture and the relationship with the customer, be able to tell them, Hey look,

this equipment, it’s aged, there’s only so much we can do. We really need to increase, and a customer, if you’re taking care of them, the customer is happy to pay more. You know, they’re paying a lot more somewhere else. And they’re not getting the service. that ceiling is flexible, right? you can push on it, but you have to prove it, right?

the customer is not gonna pay more for nothing right but if they’re getting good service you know we have somewhat of leverage right and be able to say you know this is not working out as far as a business is concerned you know we really need to increase the monthly

payment, right?

Matt Allred (19:13)
Yeah.

Yeah. No, it’s interesting thought. this question’s gonna be a little bit blunt, but I you know, as we talk about, you know, service and maintenance and callbacks are some elevators breaking down sooner because they’re not being maintained properly and therefore driving more mods, in your opinion?

Johnny (19:27)
Yeah, For sure. If all the elevators were working, you know, really well because they’re being maintained well, the customer’s not gonna even consider a mod until it’s absolutely necessary, right? Because for them it’s also a financial thing, right?

it’s a huge investment, okay.

I

worked in management in New York and you had elevators there and machines there from the twenties, the thirties, you know, these things that are just ancient and they still they’re still going, some of the New Yorkers that come to Miami, in New York we don’t have to do mods, the older equipment’s better. But there are issues with that, right?

There are issues like being able to get these components, people that know how to work on that stuff. Like that’s a specialized thing now, right? to compound the generator. I don’t remember the the last guy that I’ve met that remembers how to do that. You know, they’re all retiring.

Matt Allred (20:27)
Sure.

Johnny (20:30)
wow, I haven’t even seen a generator in the last two years.

So they’re still out there, but there’s not too many guys that are working on that or remembering how to work on that stuff, right? So

Matt Allred (20:42)
Sure, sure.

Johnny (20:43)
if you absorb a a building like that, you know, you gotta be ready.

Matt Allred (20:48)
Right. Right. you know, you you had mentioned again in a previous conversation that the older equipment was built super robust, like a tank, and yet you know, as value engineering came in and and things aren’t necessarily designed to last as long or to be as robust. I hear about, you know, the the the mod window used to be, longer, it’s getting shorter. What is assuming

maintenance is happening, what’s a reasonable mod window to say, hey, yeah, you need to modernize, you know, is it is it twenty years? Is it twenty five? Is it fifteen? Is

Johnny (21:20)
That that’s changing from year to year. So it used to be twenty-five, okay, then you know it’s around twenty. I’m modding out buildings that are 17 years old.

You know, and the biggest driving factor on that, besides the value engineering, which is like the most disgusting word I’ve ever heard, circuit boards, for example.

Or semiconductors, the IGBTs, you know, you can’t get them anymore. And that’s not even the manufacturer or OEM’s fault, right? That’s just technology. And the manufacturing of these things are not happening. You went through a phase of a lot of production because all these companies were buying this equipment. and technology changed.

Okay, so the IGBT and the chipsets changed, right? how they make it, the factory no longer makes that particular, chip or IGBT. It’s more expensive now to make it because they’re only making special runs.

At some point, the factory’s not gonna make them anymore

So then what happens is that now the board can’t be manufactured the same way. So it’s it’s more expensive to redesign the board, they’re forced to in a way obsolete that board, make a new board, or make a whole new controller.

Right? and that’s happening.

Like almost every seven years. So let’s say seven years ago, the XYZ controller was the top of the line for this company, right? They’re already making something else.

Okay? So that’s this whole 25-year 20-year window is like out the door.

There’s machines out there that are being installed with with a X amount of cycle life that doesn’t even reach 15 years if that elevator’s in the wrong building. Okay.

Matt Allred (23:14)
gonna

say you get a lot of traffic, it’s it’s

Johnny (23:17)
It’s done.

Matt Allred (23:18)
done. Yeah.

Johnny (23:18)
Yeah, so I don’t know if you know, like the phone, you know, there’s like somewhat of planned obsolescence built in. you know, you hate to be pessimistic like that, but maybe some that some of that is true, but

Matt Allred (23:31)
Sure.

Johnny (23:32)
there is supply constraints, you know, that’s a real issue.

all the devices we’re probably using to talk on are probably obsolete already. There’s something ten versions already newer, you know, at I know my computer.

Matt Allred (23:43)
Right. Well, and to your to your point as far as obsolescence, I mean, you know, got a new iPhone not that long ago just because, hey, the old one’s, three years old. Time to upgrade.

Johnny (23:53)
Right, right, right.

Matt Allred (23:54)
obviously an elevator is much more expensive, but it it is electromechanical. It’s got, all the the chips and and things. And so it makes sense, you know, when you look at a twenty year old automobile and I have one, right? It’s like, wow, you know, that thing’s super old.

it doesn’t surprise me that that technology is kind of driving some of that that change at such a rapid rate.

Johnny (24:17)
Yeah, it’s scary, you know, even the design of the elevators themselves, MRLs, the tanks and all this stuff in the pit, right? You know, all these things are basically really new and it’s changing the industry, right? It’s changing

how you do maintenance, it’s changing, how you train the guys.

It’s changing safety protocols. it’s complicated. And all of that at the end of the day, means you might more time to do maintenance or more time to figure out what the problem is, And that turns into costs that you have to, somehow bring to the customer so you don’t end up with a problem, a financial problem, right?

Matt Allred (25:00)
Right. Right.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like there’s a there’s a lot going on, right? There are a lot of lot of different forces. and maintenance obviously is is an important part of that. But it sounds like even even with proper maintenance, you’re still gonna run into those technology issues where hey, this board just does not exist anymore. I’m curious, just your opinion. Like how much does proper maintenance affect that?

That mod cycle. percentage wise, I guess, just let’s say you don’t maintain something and it’s it’s totally trashed, how much sooner is it gonna need to be modernized versus something that’s well maintained?

Johnny (25:35)
Man, I’ve seen some incredible things out there. I’ve seen buildings they wanna get rid of that equipment as soon as possible. it might be, as soon as two or three years into it, right? If they have

Matt Allred (25:46)
Wow.

Johnny (25:46)
enough money and they hate it that much, they don’t want that proprietary equipment, they’re they’re ripping that sucker out. And somebody’s paying for it, you know.

Matt Allred (25:56)
wow. Yeah, that’s

that’s super expensive. you bring up an interesting point. And and I guess my question is.

If they hate the equipment and proprietary piece of it, does non proprietary equipment tend to last longer and and not have to be modernized as quickly?

Johnny (26:11)
No, well, there’s there’s good equipment and there’s good equipment, right? So we started with the idea that the equipment’s not being maintained, right? It’s trashed, So

there’s a way to get out of that, okay? which is maintenance, But if the customer has you know, they’re up to here with all the problems and

not being able to get a board from the manufacturer for months then they may have to do something drastic they may have to do a mod and just go with something that’s more accessible from our experience you can get non-proprietary equipment

Quicker than you can get the proprietary equipment. I mean, that’s been of our experience, right? it’s kind of weird, but sometimes you can get, we as an independent can get the parts quicker than the OEMs, right?

Matt Allred (27:06)
wow. Right.

Johnny (27:07)
You know, sometimes it’s just not in stock or whatever. A lot of times it’s the OEMs are overwhelmed, right? You know, they get out the part.

But they can’t send anybody to put it in. Why? Because that guy’s got ten calls. You know?

Matt Allred (27:21)
Right, right.

Johnny (27:22)
There’s nobody, right?

Matt Allred (27:24)
think

what I’m hearing you say is is it’s not that the equipment is is better or worse. It’s but you said more accessible, meaning, maybe pull this out. If if it’s non proprietary, then I can find more people to work on it and therefore I’m not locked in if the company’s just not providing the service I need or meeting my needs, then I may have to spend a million d dollars to to pull out the equipment so that I can

Change the equation.

Johnny (27:48)
Yeah, yeah. So you know how much pain do you want, right? let’s say this is a big issue here.

Say the ropes,

okay.

Matt Allred (27:55)
Mm-hmm.

Johnny (27:56)
The design on these ropes, no matter how much maintenance you do, okay, because that’s maintenance is a big thing, right? It’s the core problem. So you can overcome a lot of things and a lot of problems with maintenance, But there are just no matter how much maintenance you do, in a hotel with a particular machine and with a particular set of ropes, you’re only gonna get two years.

Matt Allred (28:21)
Wow.

Johnny (28:21)
That’s crazy, okay? But there’s no way around it.

Matt Allred (28:25)
I I’ve gotta poke at that a little bit. Two years, is that because the shape of the sheave? Is because the ocean breeze

Johnny (28:33)
Yeah.

Matt Allred (28:34)
that that rusts the ropes? I mean what what’s going on there?

Johnny (28:37)
All of the above.

But in a lab on a test tower, it’ll last two years, right? Why? Because mathematically, in perfect conditions, you’re only gonna get let’s say a million runs,

In a hotel, you’re gonna get a million runs in two years.

Okay, so what do you do? What does the customer do? they’ve already exhausted everything they can they got rid of the company. Well, first they get rid of the tech, then they get rid of another tech, and then they get rid of another tech, and you know, because it’s all the tech’s fault, right? And then

They they bring in engineers and they do all these things and you still only get in two years. then you bring in another company, they tell you you’re only gonna get two years. And you’re like, so then what do you do? these elevators are ten years old. Okay. it’s the wrong machine. It’s just the wrong design, you know? well prove it. Okay, no problem. Let’s do one.

Right. Let’s put a different design machine with the right ropes that as a matter of fact is much more similar to what you had before. Okay, the mod, right? Ten years ago. And how long did those ropes last? never we never had to change ropes. There you go.

Matt Allred (30:03)
Interesting.

I’m just curious what kind of machine Maybe we shouldn’t

Johnny (30:07)
Yeah.

Matt Allred (30:07)
say this out loud, right? But what what are we talking about? Is this an MRL or something? Because I’ve heard that they’re harder on ropes.

Johnny (30:13)
Yeah. So mathematically speaking, what happens is that I like to call it the Toyota effect, right? You know, Toyota crammed a lot more stuff in a little little space. the the elevators went through the same thing, okay,

Matt Allred (30:25)
Mm-hmm.

Johnny (30:25)
where the sheave size used to be, 40, 50 inches, okay,

Matt Allred (30:30)
Sure, sure. Massive. Mm-hmm.

Johnny (30:32)
massive sheaves.

Right, so that circumference of the sheave allows for the bend on the rope to be much more gradual. Okay, now you’re getting into 15-inch sheaves. doing the same thing.

And on top of that, it’s it’s double wrapped, two to one. So the the RPMs are double of what it used to be. So imagine that rope, that steel cable, around a smaller radius. The the bend is much more aggressive. The RPMs are much higher. Not only that, get this, they went from

a rope that is a size of a quarter, diameter-wise, down to something that’s closer to a dime or smaller. Right now, all of that weight, the speed, the heat, the friction, that the rope sits in a undercut U like this, okay. It’s more like this, right?

Matt Allred (31:30)
Right. Right, right, right.

Johnny (31:33)
And then what happens is that

friction on that undercut, you have to have the undercut in order to get traction.

Matt Allred (31:40)
To get enough traction, sure.

Johnny (31:41)
so that weight on a small rope going that fast, that many cycles, just adds more and more pressure and chews it up. Exactly.

Matt Allred (31:50)
Choose it up. Yeah. Hmm.

Johnny (31:53)
Right? Exactly.

the design is not right for the application. that design is great, for a very quiet, low occupancy building, right? But for a hotel, it’s a disaster.

Matt Allred (32:07)
Gotcha. Gotcha.

yeah, obviously design plays a huge part and it sounds like they had something that worked. They changed it out for modernization and put the wrong thing in.

Johnny (32:17)
Correct. Correct. Now you

Matt Allred (32:18)
Yeah. That’s

Johnny (32:19)
You know, on paper everything works,

What they don’t put

on paper is

How long it will last, right? So I remember when this stuff started to fail on us us, and my boss at the time had me be the subject matter expert or whatever, right? On this.

Matt Allred (32:36)
Mm-hmm.

Johnny (32:37)
So I was chasing engineers from different rope manufacturers. You know, what’s going on here? We’re losing ropes every day. I remember there was a cold snap in Miami and

We had 186 shutdowns in one day. Okay. All because the ropes stretch. And

Matt Allred (32:53)
Hundred and eighty six.

Johnny (32:55)
186 elevators shut down because the rope stretched too much, because it got cold. Okay.

And a lot of people kind of like like it gets cold in New York. That doesn’t happen here. It’s just different, right?

The amount of humidity in Miami is just off the charts a hundred percent of the time. And the minute you get into the 30s and that humidity is drawn out of the rope, something’s going to happen. You

know? talk to any rope engineer and they’ll tell you the same thing. but whatever, it happened, right? So we had that many failures. And like, why are we going through this? And then why are we losing ropes?

And losing ropes and all these problems. basically it’s just that’s the design. And there was a company that made a rope calculator. You put in the sheave size, you put in the groove profile, you put on how many ropes, the rope size, the speed of the car, the weight of the car, and it’ll spit out how long that rope will last. Okay.

Matt Allred (33:52)
Interesting. Okay.

Johnny (33:54)
And there is just no denying it, right?

That’s the science. Okay. So what do you do at that point? You know, you gotta let the customer know. hey look, this is what you’re gonna be living with until you can change it. it.

Matt Allred (34:06)
Yeah. Well and and hopefully unlike the hotel you talked about, you gotta change it for the right design because, it sounds like an expensive mistake to make. Yeah, yeah.

Johnny (34:15)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt Allred (34:17)
If you you know, If you were a property manager inheriting a building tomorrow, what are three questions you would ask your elevator contractor immediately?

Johnny (34:26)
Well, I don’t know if I’d ask the elevator contractor, but I’d ask the route guy that they’re gonna assign how many elevators do you have on your route? Okay. I’d interview the mechanic.

How many calls do you have, on average every day first thing in the morning? And that’s really important, right? and then the contractor.

give me the reality. What is the condition of my elevators? what do we need to do in order to get to a better place? You know, those those are the things that I’d ask, right? And then from that, hopefully we get some honest answers, and some proof behind it, right? I mean, you can say a lot of stuff, but you know, show me, right?

what is it that’s wrong on my elevator and what do we do about it, you know?

Matt Allred (35:11)
No, and those are very insightful questions. And like you say, if you if you’re getting the right answers, you know, at least you’ve got something to to go with, right? And and who knows, maybe you need get a different service provider but least you got some some insight. part of what I’m hearing you say is, it’s partnership between ownership, between property management, between the elevator contractor.

to make sure that elevators run, right? It’s not just a a one sided story of, hey, I paid you X number of dollars and you just have to do it all. I like the way you you kind of look at that as a partnership. And and if you could change one thing about

that partnership would you do?

Johnny (35:46)
So there has to be a plan. Okay.

So, you know, once we get to understand what’s the baseline, what’s the reality of where we’re at right now? how do we move forward?

What is the solution here? Right? Is it is it going to be, you know, X amount of maintenance? You know, maybe we can take these repairs and segment them over time.

what’s the path to being at a good place? do we start working on a two-year plan to mod your elevators? does the customer buy extra components to keep on site? whether that’s ropes or sheaves or whatever,

how do we go about this So it’s not a surprise, right? I mean, customers really don’t want surprises, you know. that’s what gets companies in trouble, I really do think that honesty is better, right? And and like you said, you know, you have that partnership with them and let know this is what’s going on. A lot of times customers get turned off by all of that, but maybe that’s not the right customer,

Matt Allred (36:39)
the question is kind of pointing at yeah, there is a partnership, right? That you’ve got to be able to communicate. And like you say, the the customer may say, No, I’m gonna just pay you this amount and shut up and go fix it, right? And yet if you’re able to build that kind of relationship, say, listen, here’s what’s really happening, right? and maybe it was

A bad design and maybe it was the last service provider didn’t do good maintenance. Whatever it is, right, this is the real situation. And I think the hard part for customers has got to be it’s unknown, right? They don’t see into the shaft. They don’t even if they could, they don’t know what’s going on. And so you know, there’s a there’s a lot of uncertainty on on their part, but but building that trust so that they can hopefully, work with you.

to maintain their own equipment is has gotta be a huge step.

Johnny (37:27)
Right. So knowledge is key, right? You know, and that’s

why a lot of customers go to consultants, okay? it’s like a third party the expert, right? And if we go to a customer and say, Hey, look, you know, this is what’s going on, and the trust is not there yet, well then ask the third party. You

know, we’ll pay for the third party,

you know, if it’s a customer that we really value and we we want this building, right? And you don’t trust what we’re saying, okay, then you pick a third party of your choice and we’ll pay for that cost, obviously we have to back up what we’re saying, right? It’s not like, you know, you need new roller guides when

when you only just need rollers and it’s part of your maintenance, right? But we’re you know, we’re talking about big things, big challenges like whether your D D is right for your building or not, or if it is obsolete or it isn’t obsolete, or if that design motor and rope is right for your building or not, you know, these big challenges where it’s like there’s no way to overcome these things, you know, unless you’re making a big investment.

normally buildings are already with a consultant, you know, these days, but we have seen plenty of buildings that don’t have one. And once you tell them that, they’re like, you know what, just show me, right? Or we’ve already shown them or we’ll take them to another property that has had this issue and they’ve overcome it. And they talk to that customer, and you know, there’s more confidence that way.

Matt Allred (38:56)
Cool. Cool. And I really like that that solution, right? Because I’ve heard that a lot of the bigger buildings probably do have a consultant, but that there are a lot of people, a lot of units, a lot of companies that just don’t yet have that. And so being willing to to provide that, I think is a huge step in building trust and and building the

Johnny (39:11)
Absolutely.

Matt Allred (39:12)
ability to to move forward because hey, you need a second opinion. I get it. Right. I totally understand, respect that, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.

So that we can move you forward. I think that’s great.

Johnny (39:26)
Yeah, yeah. It it it does build a lot of trust. and once the customer sees the confidence and like you’re talking to them in a way where they can understand and you’re breaking it down even like on a scientific or just, you know, this is why it’s happening and they get it, then there’s some trust there, you know.

Matt Allred (39:49)
Good. Yeah. Absolutely. Because you’re educating them, right? And they can they value that and feel like, okay, I have a a little bit more knowledge, awareness to direct the path of my my maintenance or my equipment. So very cool. Johnny, I I appreciate you being with me. We’re out of time today, but it’s been great as always. anything you’d like to say as we wrap up?

Johnny (40:09)
I thank you for this opportunity. it was great. I’d like to say that, you know, just the guys to be out there, be safe, take one at a time, right? take the extra effort have pride in what you’re doing and you know, make sure you’re going home, you know, with all your fingers and toes,

and you’re doing the right thing and then, you know, keep learning, right?

and everybody will be okay. The

Matt Allred (40:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Johnny (40:33)
customers will be happy with you, right? Because you did your best.

Matt Allred (40:37)
Yep, agreed. Well, thank you again. I’ve enjoyed it and appreciate you being with me today.

Johnny (40:42)
Thank you. Appreciate

Matt Allred (40:44)
Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast sponsored by the Allred Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting. Please visit our YouTube channel @ElevatorCareers or check us out online at elevatorcareers.net. Please like and subscribe and until next time, stay safe.