Started my employment career at the age of (13) working for a neighbor of ours, Hilda Hansen that had a catering business. Cakes by Hilt. She was very well known in the city and was doing parties and wedding receptions at the various country clubs around town and was not only an excellent cook, but a real artist with her cake decorating skills. I maintained the working relationship with her through high school and into my college years.
When I was (15) my dad opened a construction equipment rental company and in the summers I worked for him primarily cleaning equipment and driving a delivery truck.
My senior year in high school I was looking for more part time work and Mrs. Hansen helped me get a job at the Florida Yacht Club. I was primarily doing bus boy work and helping set up and take down tables and chairs for dinner meetings, etc.
While in college I worked part time for a land surveyor who was also one of my teachers at St. Johns River Jr. College in Palatka, Florida. This was weekend work helping locate right of way markers around the Interlachen area.
After studying civil engineering, drafting and surveying for two years, I was able to get a job at Reynolds, Smith and Hills a well known architectural firm in Jacksonville. I was excited to start in the Site Planning Department working with surveyor notes and drawing the existing topography. This was step one before the real engineers could do their design work. I had a great boss, Ken Sanders who was a good teacher and very patient with me. College didn’t exactly prepare me for working in this type of professional environment. I had never drawn with pen and ink on mylar before and that was just about all they did. So…the first couple of weeks I was like a first grader learning how to write my name and draw straight lines. It was very humbling. After working at RS& H for just over a year, I began to get disillusioned with the large corporate office. I remember they asked me for my employee number when passing out checks, not what my name was.
After talking with many engineers, architects and land planners, I began to realize that this type of work was not necessarily what I expected. It was steady, very low risk, but also looked like very low reward. I decided to call my dad and see if he would let me work in the family business so I could better understand what small business and entrepreneurship was all about. He was suspect but agreed to hire me.
My career in the equipment rental industry started the fall of 1978. Our family business was called Duval Equipment Company. I began as a delivery driver within a few years began working at the rental counter. Out of necessity I was moved into an outside sales role, but was not really ready for that move and didn’t do too well. I subsequently moved back into the rental counter, became the dispatcher and eventually became the rental manager. The company added a second location in 1984 and I became the Vice President and Operations Manager. My father and I grew the business to be recognized as one of the top 50 rental companies in the US, according to Rental Equipment Register a national trade publication. We had an opportunity to see the business the following year and it was a great opportunity for my parents to enjoy the fruits of their labor and retire with good health and money in the bank.
The Vintage Armoire – during a non-compete period after selling the family business, I got the wild idea of opening a vintage furniture store because many of the houses that were being built at the time (including ours) had high ceilings and you needed furniture with large scale and character. New furniture did not offer these characteristics. The store was open for about 10 months when I realized this was not going to go well. Advertising was much more expensive than I could have imagined. Bad planning. Great learning expereince. Many lessons learned in this failed enterprise.
Watson Realty – after selling the family business in 1989, and working a transition year for the new owners, it was time for me to move on and start a new career. Real estate seemed like the right thing to do. Challenging time in the industry as a slight recession had occurred during 1991 and interest rates were in the 10-12% range. Found a new respect for the tireless work that Realtors do and then deals fall through and they don’t get paid. Lots of things can make a deal not happen, that are completely out of your control as a RE agent. I decided this was not for me within the first year.
Jax Construction Equipment – after waiting out a non-compete period of one year, I could enter back into the construction equipment rental business. I really did not intend to start a business but my former company was making some poor decisions (my opinion) with regards to getting rid of certain brands of equipment, alienating long time customers and frustrating employees. As the economy was beginning to rebound from the 1991 recession, I decided that it looked like a good time to start over in the rental business. Especially in light of the fact that the real estate career did not take off and I had lost considerable money trying to make the antique furniture business work. I was clearly motivated. Not only did the economy begin to rebound, but during the first year of operation, Florida was struck by Hurricane Andrew. This had tremendous impact to my new business as some of my best customers from Jacksonville, went south to work the recovery effort. They took my equipment with them!
Script International, Inc. – During the late spring of 1995, a long time industry friend that was working with Caterpillar, called me to see if I would entertain working on a special project for Caterpillar Corporation with their dealers in Latin America. Honestly it sounded far fetched and why would they be interested in me? They were looking for a couple of rental industry experts to teach their dealers how to operate rental stores. I was intrigued by the idea of getting paid for my knowledge rather than how much debt (financial risk) I was willing to take with my start-up rental company. I decided to go on a fact finding trip to see if this would be somethign I was interested in. I went to Peru, Ecuador and Chile and felt like I was in a time warp about 30 years back. I was intrigued and agreed to work with them. Over the next (5) years, I helped organize a group of industry professionals to help train dealers in Latin America and we were involved directly with helping them open over (70) locations during that five years. The impressive results were recognized by Caterpillar both in Europe and North America as each of these groups subsequently hired our group of consultants to assist their dealers. Script International became the name of our consultancy group.
duvalpilot Equipment Outfitters – With the events of September 11th 2001, making such an impact on the world, it became increasingly difficult to get manufacturers to have much of a long term vision. Most were thinking short term. It was getting difficult to find consulting work that was consistent. After spending 7-8 years traveling all over world, my family was being neglected and as the kids were reaching teen age years, I needed to be home. This was the genesis for finding a local opportunity that I could get involved with, stay in the industry, use my experience and be home every night.
SmartEquip – In June of 2010, after having to leave a business in distress (DPEO) I was in search of something to do, so I contacted my friends Alex Schuesller and John Caskey (former Script International partners) to see how their new venture in the software business was going. They began to descirbe how they were actively trying to attract Caterpillar as a customer and they invited me to work with them since I knew the CAT organization quite well. I spent the next 3 years working with CAT rental organizations and other national rental companies trying to help sell and implement the SmartEquip service and support technology in their operations. The economy beginning in late 2008 started to become a big deterrent to new sales. Caterpillar dealers were feeling the economic crunch as everyone else and new ideas and technology were not front burner issues.
Script International, LLC - as the economy continues to suffer, I decided it was time to move on and jump start the former consulting practice. I began to look outside the US for business opportunities and immediately had a chance to travel to Cameroon, Africa and within six months Russia. This is where we are today.