🎙️ Cintas veteran Tommy Cocanougher partnered with SonicAire to solve one of the laundry industry’s biggest problems: dangerous lint cleanings.
In Episode 9 of the OnAire Podcast, Tommy shares how quarterly “blowdowns” were a dreaded, unsafe job — and how his team worked with SonicAire engineers to co-develop the Mobile/MobileFlex portable fan. This innovation eliminated the need for risky overhead cleanings, kept plants OSHA- and NFPA-compliant, and set a new safety standard for the entire industry.
Today, SonicAire dust control fans protect facilities by:
- Preventing overhead lint and dust accumulation
- Eliminating costly manual cleanings
- Improving employee safety and compliance
👉 Watch Tommy’s full story and see how SonicAire and Cintas together reshaped dust control in industrial laundry.
Episode Transcript:
Hey everybody, and welcome back to the OnAire Podcast. I’m Taylor.
And I’m Jordan.
So, today, you get the privilege – just like I did – of meeting the one and the only Tommy Cocanougher. He is, I think the best way to say it, is one of SonicAire’s longest non-employee employees.
Yeah, nailed it.
Because I’ve only been here seven, eight-ish years. Tommy’s been here a lot longer than I have. He was one of the first names I heard coming in the door and still hear to this day. So we’re excited that you get the chance to meet him. We get to learn a little bit more about what he was doing before he had his illustrious career in the laundry industry. We might even have some props to throw in there, something he may or may not have a patent on, but you’ll have to stick around and find out.
Hey, I hope you enjoy the incredible human being that Tommy Cocanougher is. Thanks for watching.
And we’re back with the OnAire Podcast. Thanks for watching and checking us out. So today we’re talking to probably one of the first customers I really collaborated and worked with when I got here to Sonic Air over 15 years ago. And by far still one of my favorite customers I’ve ever worked with and collaborated with. And proud to have continued that relationship all these years. Mr. Tommy Cocanougher. Welcome to the podcast, sir.
Good day to you, good day.
So, Tommy, you’ve been around the block for a while. We met when you were with Cintas working in the engineering department there and directing a whole lot of things, but take us back, introduce us to Tommy and tell us the Tommy story. We want to know the Tommy story. We want to know about Tommy Cocanougher, because I’ve gotten to know you over the years and I think the whole world needs to get to know you as well.
Oh my goodness. Well, I’ll try to not make a long story longer. I was born and raised in a very small historical town in Kentucky. And what I mean by that is there was a big Civil War battle there. It was 800 people there when I was growing up. It’s 800 people today. So, it’s just one of those small rural communities, farming community largely. A lot of history.
And I really didn’t appreciate the history until I got older. Because when you grow up with it and you’re in the middle of it all, you just can’t fathom what went on and what all happened there. Anyway, it was neat. And then looking back on it, it was a neat place to grow up. I went on to college, Western Kentucky University, started with Brunswick Corporation, which owns Zebco, the fishing tackle people. And I went to work for them for 14 years.
Tommy, I have to stop you right there. Because I knew we were going to talk about that today. And I had to bring it in. I wish you were here to see this.
Oh my goodness. Look at that.
This is one of the original Zebco 33s.
It’s probably got my fingerprints on it somewhere.
It probably does. I’m pretty sure this is American made. This was my dad’s fishing rod, probably late seventies, early eighties when he bought this one. Now my girls are still using it to catch fish today.
Well, good. I’m glad it still works for you.
Absolutely. It works great.
You did a good job, Tommy.
Good, good. But yeah, I there 14 years and did a little bit of everything in the manufacturing side of the business. was operations manager for the assembly plant, R &D development engineer, manager, manufacturing engineering manager, a little bit of everything over 14 years. Then word got out that they were going to be moving, and they wanted me to move to China. And they said, you want to go to China? I said, let me think about that. No.
So anyway, I knew I had some time to find something else to do. And I wanted really to stay in product manufacturing because that was my skill and what I enjoyed. But I had a job offer from Cintas, which I didn’t even know the industrial laundry business existed. I thought it was odd that people rented work clothes and things like that. But, thought, well, I’ll go there for two, three years til something else comes along. I was watching the economy, watching the job market. And 30 years later – well, 10 weeks short of 30 years – I retired with about 10 weeks to go to hit my 30 years because of some family situations I needed to take care of with my parents and such.
Anyway, it just wound up being a really remarkable business to be in. The industry is amazing. As big of an industry as it is across all the companies that are in that industry, it’s a small community. We all know each other, and we all talk to each other, see each other at shows, make friendships. And like you mentioned, we go back a lot of years. And we’re not just vendors and suppliers and customers, we become friends over the years. And so, I did that. I was in production management, plant management for about half of that time. And then in engineering for the other half of the time, responsible for the western half of North America, working with vendors and suppliers in Europe, a considerable amount. And then finally I said, hey, it’s time to go take care of me.
My wife and I love to travel. Our kids are both grown and gone out of the house. We’re very proud of them and my daughter-in-law and all that they do in their careers. My wife and I have 38 years. I’m going to mess up and get that wrong if I’m not careful.
She won’t listen to this. Yeah, she’s not listening to a dust podcast.
38 and half. Let’s call it 38 and a half. But anyway, we travel with some friends that are very, very close to us. There’s a crew of us, five, that take off and go and just go do things. And we just got back from a remarkable trip. So, it’s lot of fun. You gotta go while you can.
Yeah, that’s so cool. You know, I haven’t been here as long and, you know, seven, eight years now, but I will tell you, I’ve heard Tommy Cocanougher’s name several times.
Oh my goodness.
And I was telling people this morning, actually, because I was telling them who we were interviewing today. And I was just trying to explain it to them. I’m like, Tommy’s been working for SonicAire longer than I’ve been working for SonicAire, basically, like helping do product development and stuff. And so, it’s a cool time to meet up and get to know you a little bit and some of the pre-stuff that we’ve done. But yeah, I’m very thankful for the history that you’ve had with us and the connections that you guys have made over the years. So, super excited.
Well, like I said, it’s a big industry, but it’s a small community. And we all know each other and build these relationships and that’s what makes it enjoyable. You know, it’s not just business.
So, Cintas was able to hang on to you for quite a few years and to get a really great employee and get them to stick around, you have to be doing something different. So, what do you think it is that kept you there? What keeps other people there and what makes Cintas great?
I think it goes back to the culture, the culture of the company. How you treat people, how you take care of people, you treat them fairly, give them opportunities, work with them on a proper work-life-family balance with their personal schedules and just give people opportunity to be successful and teach them and develop them, and build that culture around that type of atmosphere. You know, your people are everything. I mean, the things that I accomplished, I didn’t accomplish. My team accomplished it. My guys accomplished it. I was just a leader. I did a lot of things, had a lot of ideas.
And just one example, I had a gentleman who was my stockroom manager when I was a plant manager. And he was young and had not a lot of experience in that field. And so, I was constantly feeding him ideas of things to do. I said, you don’t have to do these things. Here’s some ideas of things that you can do that’ll make you better, make you stronger. You know, go try it. If it works for you, great. If it doesn’t work for you, great. At least you gave it a shot. And he would go try these different things and have these different activities that he did within the stock room there at the plant. And he would come back and report to me that I did this, and this was wonderful. Or I did this, and it just didn’t work. Or I did this, and I had to tweak it a little bit to make it work. I said, well, that’s great. You know, that’s what it’s all about. I gave you the base foundational concept and idea. You take it and run with it, and you make it successful and make it yours.
And people just love that. When you build that type of culture in a business or in an industry, you’re more likely to hang on to your good people. But you’ve got to provide some promotional opportunities too. You know, you can’t put somebody in a job and say, you’re going to be in that job for 30 years. Sorry. You know, they’ve got to have other opportunities.
Yeah, they have to see some hope on the horizon, some new opportunities.
Right, right.
So, the sign of a really good leader is they never take credit for themselves. They’re always giving credit to the rest of the team. But I happen to know that you have two US patents yourself. So, tell us about those.
All right. Well, that goes back to my days at Zebco. And everybody was a design engineer, right? No matter what department you were in, you could design product. You could have an idea. You could give it to the true design engineers who put it in CAD and did all that hard work. But as you had ideas and as you had things, you got credit for that. And so, my name wound up on a couple of US patents that I’m very proud of. They’re hanging on the wall back here behind me. So, you get a little plaque, and you get your name on there, and you get a $75 check, which is not going to do anything. But it’s just the honor of having done that, whether it’s a design or whether it’s a new mechanism or functionality or a use for something or whatever. So, I was pleased to get in on that while I was there.
Was that on the Zebco fishing rods?
Yeah, I was at Zebco.
Wow. The man.
A little piece of Tommy right there.
All right. I love it. Gosh, that’s so cool.
Well, it’s really good to hear, because you think about Cintas. We’re a small business here, but we talk about culture. I would say it’s not a day goes by. I would almost say it’s not a two, three hour period that goes by where we don’t have to say something about culture here. And so it’s such an encouragement to hear people doing it well and doing it on a large scale. We talked about it on here. We talked about it in meetings and with peer groups all the time where it can never just be something that’s on a wall. You can put those core values or the mission statement or the vision statement, whatever you want to call it. You can write that on the wall. But if the people aren’t buying into it, and that’s not who they are when they check in in the morning, it’s not worth anything.
Obviously, somebody sticking around with a business for 30 years means that it’s important to them, but then also important to you. And you know, this is the dust zone, the dust podcast or whatever. So, safety is a big part of that. And so, can you tell us a little bit about how you were pulled into that side of the industry being in design and operations? Can you give us some of your background with that?
Yeah, I’ll take you back a little bit to my Zebco days. Safety wasn’t a huge topic. We had safe operations. We talked about safety some, but it wasn’t huge like it is today. I mean, that was 40 some years ago now. And so, the safety topic or the safety culture and requirements have evolved a lot over the years. Even when I came to Cintas in 1994, safety was talked about and we had some very basic safety type things that we did that we had to do. But we didn’t inspect our facilities the way that we do now. We didn’t inspect the paperwork and the training and have the training and the teaching and development of safety systems and safety knowledge. And it evolved over time. And one of the things always at top of my list, even back then when safety wasn’t a big official thing that we did, it was lockout and lockout tagout. That’s the one thing that will get you if you don’t do that. And there’s falls and trips and slips and all kinds of other things, but lockout tagout was my number one.
So, I brought that into my plant as the first time they’d ever experienced luck out tag out. And I brought that in, and we had it. And then as safety became a bigger topic at Cintas, there were teams developed that went in with basic checklists. And every quarter, these checklists kept growing and growing and growing as we learned more and more and more.
And a lot of that was driven by OSHA. You know, OSHA then starts to take notice of certain companies. They took notice of us. They took notice not just of us, but our industry. Because they start comparing the incident rates of injuries from one industry to another to another. So, the industrial laundry industry kind of came to the top a little bit. And of course, we being the bigger company within the industry, we got a lot more notice.
So, we had to up our game. And I had the opportunity in 2008 to join the engineering team, which then was combined with safety, safety and engineering were together. And because the region I was in was a quite small operational region at that time, I covered both safety and engineering. So, I went to some safety classes, I learned more about the OSHA regulations and the manuals and all the programs. And then we had our own internal programs that we had, that we learned from. And then I did the engineering side, which was natural to me because that’s where I had come out of. And it just evolved. Every month, every quarter, we were adding more and more and more requirements.
So, it was important to me at that point in time that we didn’t just flood this stuff on top of our people. They needed to be led, they needed to be taught and not just taught, hey, here’s the requirements, do these requirements. They needed to be taught, why do we have these requirements? And it became natural and easy for me to see why certain things were important that OSHA may put into a regulation. Some people maybe can read a regulation and go, why is that important? Why do you need to do that? But because of my background and my experience, I can read the regulation and go, yeah, that makes sense. Here’s why it makes sense. Now let me teach that to the people as I go around to the eight, 10, 12 plants, however many plants I had at the time, and go around to those plants, let me teach that to them. And I just say, look, here’s the requirement. Go do it. I’ll be back in six weeks and we’ll grade you on it. Here’s why you need to do that. And here’s what can happen if you don’t do that. And yes, I’ll be back in six weeks to check up on you. But at the same time, you know, I wanted to understand the “why” behind the “what.”
The “why” is so big to getting buy-in and getting people to be engaged. Most people want to do the right thing if they understand why. If they feel like it’s just a nuisance and just something they have got to do because Tommy said so, there’s probably not a lot of buy-in behind that. But if they understand why, especially if there’s a safety element to it, it’s going to help them go home safer and in one piece at the end of the day. A lot of people are happy to do the right thing.
Was there one that you found was more difficult to implement or you had more pushback or people struggled to see the “why?”
There are more than one.
[Laughter]
Housekeeping was always extremely important to us. From the floor to the ceiling. Housekeeping was tremendously important. But it was one of those things that people just didn’t like to do. They didn’t want to pick up the broom. They want to maybe clean their little work area, but they want to take an air hose and blow it over into the next person’s work area. So, we had to go through things like that. From, say, the housekeeping standpoint of here’s what we want our facility to look like and here’s why. And so, that was an uphill battle constantly. Because, as you know, in our industry, we produce lint, a lot of lint. And you guys know that more than anybody. And so, that was always an uphill battle. It was in the housekeeping area, why we needed to do that, why we couldn’t have a puddle over here on the floor. Yes, we use a lot of water in our business. You’re going to have some puddles that form, but you can’t just walk around them or walk through them. And so, we had to teach people when you see a puddle, here’s what you do. Now, be sure you do that. If it’s in your work area, do that. And we had our share of OSHA fines, you know, and citations over puddles of water on the floor. But I know there were other companies and other industries that had the same thing, and they had their fair share. I mean, that’s an easy thing for an OSHA inspector to see when they walk in. And it’s an indicator of, if you’re taking care of those basics and fundamentals and your place looks sharp, they’re going to have to dig deeper to find something else. And so, we always had reasons we wanted our place to look the best and look the nicest that it could.
That’s what our safety guy says. He says, take care of the easy things, make it look nice, and then bore them with documentation so that we can keep ourselves risk free.
And that’s what I tell people as well when we’re talking to people in various dust industries that, yes, there’s the NFPA documents, the 660 on combustible dust requirements. But OSHA isn’t going to necessarily come in and say, do you meet 660? But if they come in and you can say, hey, we meet 660 and here’s how we do it, then they’re going to go, oh, you actually are paying attention. You actually care about a safe workplace. You care about the safety of your employees. And you probably know what you’re doing. I’m going to give you a pass on that. Let’s go on to something else.
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, because they’ve got limited amount of time that they’re there and you know, their job is to find something, right? I mean, let’s face it, they’re like a traffic cop with a radar gun. His job is to write a ticket before the day’s over. So, I get that. And our job is to make our place as perfectly safe as we can, as perfectly clean as we can, and keep our paperwork in order. And like you said, you know, here’s all the paperwork. Take it and take a look at it. You know, we’ll give you a plant tour, we’ll show you what you want to see. But, we got better at that as time went on. We understood how that absolutely had to be done. And we were taking those shortcuts. And that brings us up to the lint thing. And that’s where we met Jordan. Would you say 15 years ago?
Yeah, 15, 16 years ago.
So anyway, prior to that, and this was one of the jobs that everybody just hated. We knew we had to blow down the plant probably once a quarter. And depending on the weather, you could probably stretch it into once every six months, but really once a quarter was when it needed to be cleaned up really good. And by blow down, I mean, you’re up on a man lift with an air gun with a long hose, and somebody’s up there blowing all this stuff down off the rafters. And other people are down below cleaning up the mess that’s coming down. And because that lint just goes up and it gets everywhere and it gets in the rafters and it gets on top of machines and it gets on top of ductwork, it’s got to come down because it’s a fire hazard, right? And it may not be that the lint burns, something else may burn and then the lint smolders and drops down into a basket of pants or shirts or something else that’s on the floor and it’s smoldering. Well then, you’ve got another fire down there. So, the cleaning up process was just awful. Especially if your time to do it is in the summertime. It was just awful on a Saturday morning when you’d rather be at home. You’d rather be on the lake fishing or whatever it is that you do. And you got to have your crew in there doing this horrible, horrible job of cleaning this lint from up on high and then down low. And so, we came upon this fan concept from SonicAire. And we looked at it. We went and visited and met there at y’all’s smaller factory that you had at the time.
Yes, very small place. Very small place.
And discovered that this has application. Now let’s build a program around it and try it and test it. And we did, and it just went off from there, and it was tremendous.
So, is that…let me back up a little bit before I get too far ahead of myself. I have so many things. So the housekeeping piece, you were saying that was one of the struggles, and that’s one of the interesting things because it seems like in the laundry industry, cleanliness is going to be one of your top priorities just from even the eye test of thinking about like when laundry goes away from a hotel or from a rental service or whatever, just being airtight on cleanliness so that you don’t infect anything. So, housekeeping was the junction that got you guys connected with SonicAire?
Yes. That was the lint control, the housekeeping part of that was how we got connected. And we needed some better method in the plant to be able to get this stuff blown down on a regular basis. Because it was just a horrible job. You go around trying to find volunteers, you know, say, Hey, on Saturday, three weeks from now, I need a team to help me do this. And you look at everybody scattered. They’re like mice, they just scatter.
More of a voluntold situation it seems like.
Yeah. And so, we’d have to be a voluntold situation and we’re going to do this. And hey, I pitched in too as a plant manager. I was right in there. I take my turn up on the man lift. And then you get hot, and you come down and rotate people. Somebody else goes up and you’re down there, you got a mask on, and you got a broom, you got a vacuum. We even at one point in time, and Jordan you may know this company or not, but prior to the fans, we used these vacuum systems from Upkeeper was the name of the company.
I’m not familiar with that.
And it was a big vacuum unit that sat on top of a 55 gallon drum that was on wheels. And it was pretty good, but you had to stand on the ground, or if you’re up in the air, the hose, you know, would probably be long enough if you made it long enough. But you would stand there with this big long pipe, plastic pipe, trying to reach 20, 25 feet up in the air to get to all the places where you couldn’t get to all the places with it. It was a good strong vacuum, but you just couldn’t get the reach and into the tight areas that you needed to get to like a fan would do. A fan that goes up there and is going to blow it down at high velocity and get it. We just couldn’t get it with the Upkeeper vacs. And so, we tried that in a few plants and said, no, that’s not going to work. It’s a good concept for some things, but it wasn’t a good concept for that. And so, we were on the search for something and came across SonicAire.
So, one of the questions I get asked, particularly in the laundry industry when I’m talking to people at trade shows and things like that, they want to know with the fans running, I think you all used them nightly, if my memory serves me correctly. They want to know where does the lint go? And is it going to be all over my garments, and where is it going? With your experience, how would you answer that?
Well, what we had to do when we first installed the fans, before we turned them on the first time, we did what we call a deep clean. It would be what you could consider the last big major blow down with a team of people up on a man lift doing that. We had to do a deep clean to get that down. Well, then if you did turn the fans on every day, there was such a minute amount of lint. You got your buildup over three months, four months, five months. A one-day buildup wasn’t much, but you let it go a week, you let it go a month, you’ve got more. And so yeah, the lint does disperse, and the lint comes into the atmosphere and down. But if you do it every day, it’s not an issue. But you have got to start out cleaning. You have got to start with a clean slate before you flip that switch on the first time.
That’s right. I try to explain it to people, in my mind, it’s like, if you go look at the top of your refrigerator, it’s probably got all kinds of lint and nasty up on top of it. But if you wipe it and clean it off today, when you come back and clean it again tomorrow, you’re going to go, well, I don’t really need to clean it because I just cleaned it yesterday. But that’s it. If you’re cleaning it every single day, it never gets dirty. Even the cloth you use to clean it looks clean.
Right. And we knew where our major problem areas were. They were above the pressing area because the steam and the hot air from the presses takes the lint up with it and deposits it. It was above the steam tunnel. If you had any hot air or steam coming out of that, it goes up. And then in the wash alley, you know, around the dryers. So the tops of those machines needed to be kept clean. We really didn’t want people up on ladders and stuff trying to get up there and keep that clean. So, it made sense to have the fans in those key places. And then the portable fan, that served the rest of the facility. And that worked out very well for us.
Yeah, and so that’s where I was incredibly appreciative of Tommy’s background in manufacturing because Tommy came out and helped us redesign that thing. So just to be clear, anybody that’s listening to this that’s not from the laundry industry. The portable fan is not for you.
Yeah, it’s off limits, not for sale unless… You’re in the laundry industry.
Yes, but if you’re in the laundry, because it is a blow down tool. And so, for the laundry industry, when we’re talking about lint, that works okay, but in any other industry that’s just dust, we do not want to blow down and create a combustible dust cloud. But for the laundry industry, when we’re talking about lint, it is good to go. And so, when we brought that product to market, and I’m talking about Brad, I actually was not an employee of SonicAire yet when I went to the first trade show with Brad where we met Cintas.
You guys looked at the fan that we had there at the booth and said, we want one kind of like this where we can do this with it, but it can’t look like this because this is not going to meet our standards. And this is, it’s got to be different. It’s got to be better.
I love, we have a little bit of a museum upstairs on one of our mezzanines. We’ve got all these different fan blades and little parts and like, SonicAire through the years. And one of the pieces up there is the original little crank arm, like, chain and sprocket that was used to lift the original Mobile/MobileFlex.
Yeah. And Brad even had a design where – you guys never saw this one thankfully – but he could hinge the fan and tip the fan over and make it real short. But the weight and the cantilever…anyway, it was a disaster. We had to move on from that one very quickly. As Brad says, fail fast, fail cheap. That ain’t working. We gotta try something else.
Well, I don’t think you actually even intended for us to see that portable fan.
That is correct.
It wasn’t for us. We spotted it over in the corner.
It was under a tarp or a sheet.
Yeah. I said, hey, we’ve got an idea for that. We can use that. But it needed to be fixed to be used on a regular daily basis in the plant. And had to have some strengthening gussets put in and some different things. So yeah, you didn’t even intend for that to be there, but it worked out.
It was like the Wizard of Oz, pay no attention to what’s behind the curtain kind of thing. And they were like, no, no, no. Yeah, we actually kind of like that.
I feel like that’s how a lot of sales calls go where we end up in engineering saying, you did what? You sold what? But no, that’s really cool. And so, you guys met at the trade show, and that’s when you started talking about the portable. And then, was this at Blue Rock Court?
Yeah.
And they came out and visited and started working on it.
They brought, it was Tommy, Eric, and another gentleman came out and we dissected it and they went, like this, don’t like that, brace this, safety that, safety that, and safety that. And then it might work for us. And then even after the initial rollout and kind of starting to get a couple into the plants, we found ways to, ways that we didn’t think people would tip it over or break it or whatever. And we learned from that and had to make it safer and safer and add some other features, add some other safety labels and all that stuff.
That’s so cool.
It really was a true partnership. It absolutely was. It was doing it together.
Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s really cool when we have those opportunities. We have a couple other customers where we’ve had this kind of iterative process. They’re like, hey, this is a problem that I’ve got. And so we’ll go check it out and hang out with them and see if we can solve it and work through it. And so, it’s really cool because, I mean, we’re still today making modifications to the Mobile/MobileFlex so that it can better serve the people that we’re trying to do. We’re working through some kinks even with supply chain disruptions and whatnot, trying to figure out how to sustain this product. And Cintas has so many of them. And so, making sure that they’re always up and running and that we’re ready to go and get them fixed.
What’s remarkable to me, though, is that Tommy and Cintas partnered with us to make this product. But the rest of the industry gets to benefit from their efforts and their emphasis on safety and recognizing that, hey, there’s a better way forward for doing this terrible process that we have to go through in this industry. And so, you guys made it better not only for your company, but also for the rest of the whole industry.
Definitely changed the industry, because we hear that. They’re saying like, hey, we just did a plant tour at Cintas and we’ve got to have one of those things.
Yeah. Happens all the time.
Well, that’s one thing we’ve always said even from our CEO and chairman of the board and all these folks on down through the whole organization is we’re going to compete on a lot of things. But when it comes down to safety, we’re going to partner no matter what the company is or who you are or what kind of competitor you are, you know, safety is for everybody.
Love it.
Now, there’s engineering things we’re not going to share within our plants. You know, projects and things that we’ve done and certain, I’m not even going to go into those because I shouldn’t, you know, I’m not there anymore after retiring. But we’re not going to share those. But when it comes to safety, we will share. And we should.
Competitive advantage.
Yeah. And that’s so cool because it really does just, it moves industry. You get to see kind of a transformation take place. So, what was the rollout like? I know you guys helped get this thing off the ground and then all of a sudden you show up with this contraption and say guess what? This is what we’re working with, and this is why we’re doing it. But I’m sure that was a bit of a hurdle.
Well, first we had to develop the program. So, we got a team together between safety and engineering and some other folks in production and said, look, this is what we want to do. We need the safety program built around it. How often do you use it? How do you use it? How to set it up, how to keep the work area safe while you’re doing it, especially the portable fan. But the stationary fans that were in the wash alley and around, that’s easy. You get those installed and you have a schedule, and you just require the plant to maintain that schedule.
So, the rollout, we got all the training materials put together. We got all the schedules put together. We had the initial training. I’m going to think it was probably online back then. I’m not certain because the online thing has really evolved as well too, right? But anyway, we had a rollout and said, look, the advantage is you don’t have to do this horrible blowdown process but one more time once you get your fans. When you get your fans, you do that, you do the deep clean, and then the fans take care of it from there on out. That was the buy-in that people had.
And so that made them want to jump on board and do that. And we scheduled a number of plants. I don’t remember how many plants it was to start with, but we rolled out a few at a time, 10, 15 at a time. One, because that’s what we can handle. Two, that’s what Jordan could handle.
That’s right.
You know, three or four fans per location. They had to get built, and we had to get them installed. Then we could speed it up. This rollout, at that point time, took about three years, maybe four. And there’s a lot more plants now than I had back then, so as it went through the years, obviously we added more. But the training was just really important. We had to have the rollout, we had to have the explanation of what we’re doing. The training had to be there.
We had to complete that training. They had to check off that they did the deep cleans, ready for installation of the fans, and then follow up to make sure they understood the schedule and the process and had everything that they needed. We put a kit together for use of the portable fan that included some sandbags to put on the legs for tip over. We had cones and chains that went around the area. We had to have mats to put over.
I think we needed a power cord and an airline, I believe is what we needed. So, wherever they had to run to, we had to have that area made safe so that there wouldn’t be a trip hazard. So we put these kits together and said, this is what you have to have. And here’s the schedule and here’s the pattern of your plant on how you will cover all of your necessary areas.
You all put dots on the floor, didn’t you? So they would know…
We did initially put dots on the floor and then on a drawing to match up to it. I said, hey, set the fan right here, let it run 15, 20, 30 minutes, and then move it to the next spot. And it worked well.
Tommy doesn’t know it, but he’s hitting on that culture thing again where he’s talking about the training. Tommy’s a teacher, if you can’t tell already by picking up on what he’s putting down. But Tommy’s a teacher, and so there was a lot of teaching in that. There was a lot of the why, but a lot of the benefit too. And then there’s some accountability in there, which great leaders always have as well.
Right, right. Yeah, and that was important to be sure that everybody understood. Because then, as we learned through the years, OSHA had a regulation on how much lint accumulation you can have on top of any flat surface. You just didn’t want to have that. You didn’t want to get caught with that because it was a sure thing you’re not running your fans if we walk in and see that. So that was a good rollout for us.
It took several years and then as we grew, as we added plants, the fans became a standard part of the new plant equipment. And then we had an acquisition with the G&K company a few years later. We had that roll out with them in much the same manner.
Yeah, you’re talking about the acceptable levels of lint. And we keep talking about OSHA, but they had their national emphasis program on combustible dust, and they reissued that again in 2023. And they added a paragraph, and in that paragraph it says “for targeting workplaces that generate dust and lint.” And I get a little nervous any time a government agency uses the word targeting. But, I mean, that’s what they’re doing. That’s what they’re looking for. they know who makes dust and lint and they come in the door looking for it.
Yeah. And you know, one thing too, and I don’t know where we got the videos from, whether it was from you guys or from just YouTube and the internet, but we’ve seen videos of the fires and the explosions and the grain business and then the sugar business, the sugar plants where that’s processed and everything. And the documentaries that have been produced about that. We used a lot of that for training our folks. Say, look, we don’t have that level of danger, but we do have danger. If you get a big old slug of lint up here that catches on fire somehow and drops down, you don’t know where it’s going to go and what it’s going to catch on fire.
Yeah, I’ve heard several stories about laundries that have caught on fire because a primary fire starts in one area of the plant, but then it catches the lint on fire in the ceiling and it just runs. And the next thing you know, the whole plant’s fully engulfed and it’s too late to do anything about it.
Yeah, it’s interesting that you all are able to take advantage of some of what the other industries have fallen into, even though you don’t have the same risk. I think that’s a great way to approach it because, you know, we work in the grain market now. And so we understand that. And that’s typically our sales pitch. A lot of times it’s like, this is the worst case. And so, it’s interesting that that jumps industry to industry even when classifications or like even what your AHJ would say about your area may not push that.
Right, right.
One of the interesting things: you were talking about rolling this out, and just my one little connection piece of this is, right when I started, still trying to learn the fans and what these things even do and whatnot, and doing some of the layouts and whatnot, I would occasionally see Cintas and whatnot, but then they made that acquisition. And then all of a sudden, like half the production line was just making Mobiles and MobileFlexes for like a month. And so, we had somebody where that was like the only thing that they were doing. And I was like, why, what happened? And they were like, Cintas bought a company, so we have got to roll these out.
That’s right. That was great. So, Tommy, I know you’re kind of one foot out of the industry now, but what were some of the…
Yeah, two feet. [Laughter]
Make no mistakes. I’m out.
Both feet are on vacation.
That’s what I’m talking about.
I see you on LinkedIn. You’re still engaged. You’re still engaged. But as you’re on your way out the door, let’s say that, what were some of the safety innovations, or what were some of the new things that you saw that just kind of sparked your interest or you said that’s going to be something that really helps this industry? Anything new coming along or something over the horizon that maybe you see coming as well?
No, not so much. I think internally, and there are some things obviously I can’t talk about that Cintas was developing, being developed as I was there my last several months. There were some processes and stuff being improved and things like that. I just think the continued focus on the vendor customer relationship is still key. It always has been key, will continue to be key.
And I’m not smart enough to talk about AI. I can’t spell AI. So, I don’t know anything about that and how that’s going to impact the business or the industry. But from all indications of what I hear is that there are all kinds of things that will happen across all of manufacturing and processing companies. Not just our business, but other businesses as well. They’re going to be impacted by what machines can do and how things are measured and the weights and measures and the water levels. And think about the laundry, all the things that go into that, your water temperatures, your water levels, your chemistry going into the machines, your drying times, drying cycles, whether they’re on time or temperature or humidity or whatever. All of those things that go into that can now possibly be measured in a different way. And eventually somebody’s going to come up with how that works.
Robotics is another big field. And I think there is a lot of application for robotics. A lot of the manufacturers of the equipment are already putting in robotic concepts into the equipment. I’m seeing that. Actually the last few years that I was there, and even more in the last couple of years since I’ve been gone, I’ve seen a lot more robotic concepts start to come about. And that’s pretty exciting.
We saw some of that in the Clean Show a few weeks ago. It was pretty neat. Our booth was right across from a booth that had a robotic arm, and it was taking the clothes on the hangers and putting it on a different rack and that sort of thing. I was just hoping it would short out and just start throwing clothes. I was pulling for it. It dropped a few over the few days we were there, but it did really well. It pretty fascinating.
There’s a lot of application for robotics in the business because it’s a very repeatable process. But then you’re dealing with something that’s not easily picked up and handled. And that’s the challenge. And I think eventually somebody will get there.
So if you were talking to somebody, not a Cintas facility manager, who is maybe new to the industry or they’ve been in it for just a little while and they’re kind of getting going, what kind of words of wisdom, what kind of advice would you give them to say, if you do these things, you’re going to have a great career in this industry?
Oh goodness. The list is this long.
We’ve got our notepads. We’re ready to listen.
Well, first, care about your people. You know, I could tell you some horror stories of how come that’s number one, but care about your people. Take care of them, you know, teach them, train them, develop them. Again, going back to what we talked about earlier. Give them the support, give them concepts and ideas and some things to do to help them be successful. Because when they feel successful and they are successful, they’re going to go the next level. They’re going to step up and they’re going to want more and do more. Give them opportunities. Talk about the “what” behind the “why” like we talked about, and just help them be a part of what’s going on. But the way that you treat people, and the culture that you have, with how you treat people in the workplace, will be the one thing that’ll make or break you.
Yeah, that’s great to hear. And that doesn’t just apply to laundry, Tommy. That’s universal. That’s a universal thing right there. It’s something that we work hard on.
Exactly. The other thing is take good notes. You know, I’ve taught my guys for years and years and years, always carry something to write on and something to write with. Because as you’re walking through the plant with whoever, somebody’s going to need something. They’re going to want something. They’re going to have a question. They’re going to need to know something about their insurance, or they’re going to need this or going to need that. You’re not going to have all the answers off the top of your head, but how you manage that information flow and getting back to that person, or how you manage taking care of something, is going to depend on how well you remember things. Most of us need to write things down.
My favorite Matthew McConaughey quote.
I knew it was coming.
I say this all the time. Matthew McConaughey said, “I don’t write it down so I can remember it. I write it down so I can forget about it.” And I thought that was just so profound. I went, yeah, that makes sense.
Out of sight, but not out of control.
That’s good. Having some way to track your commitments and everything. It’s like the Rainer thing that we’ve been reading into here recently. Yeah, just great tools. Because that’s even an extension of taking care of your people, like you were saying. Like when they know that you can follow through, and that your yes is yes, that goes a really long way with developing trust and accountability if you’re able to hang on to those things.
Hold yourself accountable.
Well, I think too, with the new generation coming on, the new generation of tools that we have. You know, this thing right here is handy. But if you’ve got it with you and say, Susie Jane stops you and says, Hey, I need to see if I can get off next Friday. Can you check and let me know? Well, then you’re punching it in, and she doesn’t know if you hear what she says or not. But if you take a notepad out of your pocket and you write it down, she probably knows that you’re hearing what she’s saying.
And I think there’s…How am I going to say this? There’s the danger of alienating people with the use of technology sometimes. And we need to revert back maybe to some of the old-fashioned ways. I’m kind of old-fashioned, probably because I am old, I guess. But I think we’ve got to be careful with technology to make sure we don’t lose connection with the people on the production floor and the people who work with us, our engineers, sales reps, whoever it is. We don’t want to lose that connection and rely on technology for everything.
Keeping that human element.
Yeah, I mean, it’s like anything else. And I think one of the good ways that I’ve heard of is like, we talk about people being good at what they’re good at, and manufacturing, and we’re good at taking that dust hazard away. But we have to continue to be good at the things that we’re good at, like relationship building and emotional intelligence and use the other tools for the things that they’re good at. My phone is not meant to be made to have a relationship with somebody else. Like, I need to do that. It’s just a tool to help with that. But yeah, when we just decide that that’s going to take it over and that’s going to be the relationship and that’s where it starts to fall apart.
Right.
All right, Tommy, I can’t thank you enough. I have thoroughly enjoyed our time together today and catching up again. I hope the rest of the world gets to watch this and see this and get to know a little bit more about the infamous Tommy Cocanougher.
Well, I appreciate the opportunity. It’s good to see you guys again. I don’t get to the trade shows. I don’t see you around, but anytime you’re in Oklahoma, you’re welcome to stop by and we’ll have a Pepsi or Coke or whatever you like.
Would love that. All right. We have made it to the end of another OnAire Podcast. So, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this, send it to someone you like or someone you don’t like. I don’t care. Just have somebody else watch it so they can come up to speed on the stuff that we’re talking about here. If you did enjoy it, give us a thumbs up down below, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for watching. I’m Jordan.
I’m Taylor.
And this is another episode of the OnAire Podcast. Thanks.
See ya!