From the Truck, Episode 1. Every Wednesday I tell one chapter of how this company got here, and what’s happening on the jobs right now. This is where it starts.
In October 2019 I had a Toyota Corolla, a ladder that didn’t quite fit in it, and twenty dollars I was willing to lose.
I put the twenty into a Facebook ad. Gutter cleaning, St. Augustine area, call this number. I figured if nobody called, I’d learned something for the price of a pizza.
Five people called that week.
The question that built the business
The third job was an older woman’s house. I cleaned her gutters, rinsed out the downspouts, and was packing the ladder back into the Corolla when she came out and asked me a question I still hear in my head:
“What else can you do?”
I didn’t have a brochure. I didn’t have a price list. What I had was a roofer’s upbringing, a dairy farm and a chicken farm’s worth of early mornings, and five years in the Marine Corps where “not my job” wasn’t a sentence you got to say. So I gave her the only honest answer I had.
“What do you need done?”
She had a list. Most people do. A door that stuck, a fence board, a fixture nobody had gotten around to. That list became the first honey-do list, and the honey-do list became PD Handyman Services, which is what this company was called before it was PD Home Pros.
Why I cared about the list
I grew up in a house that needed work and didn’t get it. Not because nobody cared, but because that’s how it goes when money and time are both short. I know exactly what it feels like to live around the things that don’t get fixed. Nobody should have to.
That’s still the reason I pick up the phone. The company is bigger now, and the work has changed, but the reason hasn’t.
From the Corolla to the truck
The Corolla got replaced by a truck. The $20 ad got replaced by Realtors and home inspectors who needed someone they could trust in a client’s house, a tent at the weekly farmers market, and, more than anything, people telling their neighbors.
Somewhere in there the work started tilting. More driveways. More pool decks. More garages where somebody wanted a floor they weren’t embarrassed by. That shift, from fixing whatever’s on the list to restoring the surfaces a house sits on, is the story of this series. I’ll get to it.
For now, here’s what the “PD” means. It used to be my initials. It isn’t anymore. It stands for Precision and Detail: precision from the Corps, detail from a perfectionist streak I’ve had my whole life. The company outgrew my name, which is the best thing that can happen to a company.
If you’re reading this with a list of your own
Some things haven’t changed since the Corolla. We still answer “what do you need done?” with a straight answer. We’re still insured, still local, still a veteran-owned company that shows up when it says it will. And if what you need done is a driveway, a pool deck, or a garage floor, that’s most of what we do now, and the next few episodes will show you exactly how.
Request a free estimate · Read about the company · What we still do on the honey-do side
Next Wednesday, Episode 2: the one habit from the Marine Corps I still use on every job.
Preston,
I admire your drive. Keep it up.
Thank you. We are always moving forward.