Using only a Truck Mount - Is this Possible??

Welcome here.. In these troubled economy diversifiing is your best bet.. Offer all you can.. And 500cfm's is more than plenty for any type of sucking..

HomeDepot has some nice power washers....

I used my TM for this Hood Degreasing twice a year running 3200rpms @ 1500psi..

 

I have a Panther 25 and I am extremely happy with the power of the unit and the price. The unit costs about $13,000-$14,000 brand new (bought mine new) and compares to $25,000 units. It gets 550 CFMS, but that doesn't mean anything without comparing it to mercury lift. It gets up to 22 (pushed 25 once) inches of mercury lift which is WAY too much for carpet cleaning. The blower is adjustable but you'll never be able to push your wand at that high level. So I keep mine around 15. Stairs always dry instantly and my carpet cleanings dry in about 2 hours average (but I have methods to dry in as little as 20 minutes). I clean with about 500 psi too so I'm using tons of water, getting great heat and it's sucking up everything it puts down!

Now the bad news.

My machine is two years old. At two years old, EVERYTHING started breaking down aside from the blower, the engine and the water pump (thank GOD and knock on wood!). My heater coil busted (luckily it busted at the compression fitting so I didn't have to replace it, just cut the coil and put on a new fitting), my couplers been replaced several times, the tempature send unit's been replaced, the the thermostats been replaced, all of my floats have gone out (sometimes twice) and my freaking stainless steel fresh water tank sprung a leak at the seems. I've even had to replace stupid things like the spark plug connections and my oil drain sprung a leak at the connection on the hose. They put a freaking swivel on it too so that meant I had to take the engine completle off and flip it on it's side to fix. Recently my manifold snapped in half too out of the blue as I was changing my coupler. I feel these things are due to poor workmanship in parts rather than a fault in the design of the machine or wear and tear. But if you know how to fix it, they are easy fixes. Just a pain in the ass sometimes getting the old nuts and screws off.

I've put a couple of thousand dollars in it for repairs in the course of time but I've learned to do EVERYTHING myself which saves a sh*t load of money on labor charges! I even installed it into my new van by myself and ran the fuel tap. It's really simple. Just put it together the way you found it.

With that said, it's a powerful unit if you understand how to fix it. I don't know about hydramaster and prochem units (as far as maintanance) but I know Chemtex is really finicky so consider that. But you can buy two Panther units for the price of an equal Hydramaster unit and three units for the price of a Prochem. All do the same thing. Extract the same, same tempature and same water pressure.

Victor specifically told me to NOT use this for pressure washing. I don't like to take mine past 1000PSI anyway because it seems to really put a load on the water pump. So pressure washing, definitely stay away from with your truck mount. The rest though like Air Duct cleaning, hell yes! It's a great selling tool too. Just tell the customer you have 300 ft of hose to work with where a portable unit only has 50. They'll get the picture ;).

Tile and grout cleaning.. oh man, no comparison. There is no way you can get tile and grout as clean without a truck mount. There are portys that claim to do the same but seriously, (and here is one you can use) "If we could do a better job with a $1000 portable unit, we would buy 50 of them and do 200 jobs a day". That goes for anything you do with your truck mount and customers understand this 100%.

So to sum it up, yes, you can do everything with your truck mount and do it much better and much quicker.


My advice to you though. If you are mechanically inclined, DO NOT buy a brand new unit. I'll never buy a new unit again. There are good units in vans for $10,000 and $15,000. Get a good used unit and learn to work on it if it breaks down. I see guys with $80,000 trucks and a $2,000 a month payment. Screw that. Customers don't care what you pull up in, they care if you are doing a good job. And if you have a good work ethic, you understand the cleaning procedures, pH levels, your chemicals and you convey this knowledge to your customers, they will use you over and over and over again.

I started with a brand new unit and used van that I wrapped and spent tons of money on uniforms, hats etc. etc. Now I drive a completely WHITE 1994 Ford E-150 and wear kackie pants and a black t-shirt and my in home sales have significantly gone up.

I had the game backwards. I thought a big company image would bring me more customers. But frankly, people like to deal with small local businesses and they'll use you over and over not only because you do a good cleaning but because they like YOU and they'd rather give their money to you than a big company.

Here is another good one for you guys to use.

"We do the same as the big name companies. Same equipment, same chemicals etc. The difference is you don't pay for our TV and radio ads".

I have and am very with the Rotobrush system... I think the complete package was about 14k. It does a better job than the negative air system we use and it fits on the truck with all our other equipment.