Benjamin Curran got his start in shed hauling after doing a drive along with a friend.
He had no experience and spent half a day hauling sheds in the rain.
Curran liked the experience, and over a year ago started American Haulers in Lavonia, Georgia.
He ended up taking half of his friend’s locations, and then Premier doubled his routes, and he’s “been plugging away” ever since.
Shed Business Journal spent five minutes with Curran to get a look under the hood.
What do you like most about shed hauling?
Besides the money and having really cool equipment that everybody likes to look at, I really like hearing customer stories and having the opportunity to give that extra, higher level of service that might be lacking in my area competitors. Going above and beyond and connecting with people.
Then what would you say your philosophy is for customer service when you’re delivering sheds?
If there’s one thing that could be done better, it gets done better. Then in turn, talking with industry partners about how it worked for your company. Maybe you should give it a shot and see how well how it can help your company grow.
What’s the most challenging part of the job for you?
I would say one of the most challenging parts of this occupation for me would be communication with customers. For example, to getting to a project and the customers were like, Oh, I thought you were supposed to provide the blocks for underneath the building. And I raise my hands, I’m like, no, not me, it’s in the contract.
Outside of that, it would just be working with super-technical deliveries to where you don’t damage the building or tip the building over. Technical deliveries are the hardest part.
Second to that would be logistics for me personally getting everybody scheduled because I’m a one-man show. I’ve got nine lots across South Carolina and at any given point I got over 60 buildings that need to get delivered yesterday, so keeping customers happy is a good challenge.
Tell us one of the more interesting or funny deliveries that you’ve made.
I took a 12-foot-wide by 40-foot-long lofted barn cabin into a subdivision to the end of a cul-de-sac, and there were cars on both sides by the mailboxes.
I got into the cul-de-sac, I turned around, and the building needed to go directly back to the center of the cul-de-sac. There were two houses at the very end. The property lines were set at a V, so I had to take this 12 by 40 through, I think it was like a 13-foot gap between the two houses.
They were like, we want it sideways in the backyard. Well, their yard on one side by their house had a 3-foot-wide flower bed, and then it was a 4-foot drop and then it was level for about 35 feet, and then it jumped back up 5 or 6 feet to a hill.
So, I had to turn the building sideways in between both the properties with these big hills here. It started to bow in the middle a little bit, so I had to put my jack up in there and go to the customer and say, We’re going to need quite a few blocks. He says, okay, let me go get them and they walk out of their garage with five blocks. Is this going to be enough? And I said, no, you’ll probably need around 150 to 200 blocks, because I had to go three or four blocks high, and then after three blocks high, double stack them like two and two and two and two.
The delivery ended up taking about 10 hours.
