Posts Tagged ‘aircraft’
Oil Change Guys History; Part I
How do franchise companies come to be? How do they start. What type of a person or entrepreneur becomes a franchisor? Below is the story of how one small company became a franchisor in the mobile oil change business. The story is written from our point of view and opinion. We claim freedom of speech, of the press in its entirety since a good part of it is opinion based.
Serial Entrepreneur Lance Winslow started out in the Aircraft and Car Detailing Business about 28 years ago. Mobile Oil Changes did not exist for the consumer at that time. There were only preventative maintenance services for over the road trucks and off-road heavy equipment. During this time Jiffy Lube was growing in size and convenience started to take hold. Jiffy Lube in less than 15 years cornered the market. Mr. Winslow watched this trend take hold and thousands of quick lube shops started to spring up across America, similar to the original Midas Muffler Model, but this time for oil changes. This was occurring as gas stations turned from service station garages to C-Stores for higher per square foot profits. At time the young entrepreneur never thought much about running a mobile oil change franchise.
Eventually several companies sprung up to fill this niche, few lasted as consumers were not ready to except this new trend of mobile oil changes and cities and property managers frowned upon it. In some markets they did well and in others they failed miserably. Eventually many companies learned through trial and error what the consumers needed and wanted. The operators also learned how to market these services. Now we see National Oil and Lube News; www.noln.net , has a whole month dedicated to the mobile oil change sector. The winners in this mobile on-site oil change market today are Location Lube, Lube and Go, and Oil Butler.
In 1998 Mr. Winslow was marketing a new franchise in San Jose, CA for his Mobile Car Wash Business when he ran into Dave who was the co-founder of Oil Maxx. Oil Maxx was founded back in 1995 after a study of the market revealed that there was a great potential for a mobile oil and lube service. Many people had never even heard of a mobile lube service in Silicon Valley. Dave and his partner then borrowed money from family and friends and started Oil Max, a name they chose to franchise with. Although this confused their current customers they thought it was a smart move. Soon after they discovered Oil Max was taken as a name and changed to Oil Maxx with two ‘X’s. Prior to that there were only Biz-Ops and all were East Coast based and only one was a legitimate franchise; The Oil Butler in NJ. Dave and His partner and newly formed marketing staff spent many days and nights perfecting their system and building an even stronger customer base.
Oil Maxx provided service to many major companies and individuals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and surrounding communities. They were members of the National Association of Fleet Administrators and a preferred vendor with many fleet service/leasing companies including GE Capital, PHH Vehicle Services, Wheels/Map, US Fleet Leasing, and Enterprise Fleet Services. Oil Maxx decided to team up with our franchisees of The Car Wash Guys and The Truck Wash Guys in the California Bay Area. By co-marketing and bundling services each of the two companies doubled business by sharing customer lists. We immediately sent Oil Maxx to our customers at Adaptec, Fujitsu, and HP. They sent us to Budweiser Distribution, a courier service, a uniform service and the cable company. We also worked together to leverage other competitors out of the market, such as our once rival Texas “T”, by bundling services with the many Concierge Services, which started popping up to cater to corporate employees at the height of the DotCom and Tech Bubble. The synergies gained were so intense, they were scary, so both companies grew closer and even shared data bases of customers, billing information, scheduling routes lists and sales teams. Without any non-competes, lawyers or guarantees, all on a hand shake between company founders. (January of 1999).
Seeing the potential of this incredible synergy, Mr. Winslow, introduced Oil Maxx founders to his then sole mentor in franchising, Lou Gurnick of franchisebusiness.com. Lou Gurnick was the Chief Operating Officer for Midas Muffler from it’s inception with only $100,000 in capital to over 400 Million in sales which was still over 30 years ago. Lou Gurnick was also a consultant to Ray Kroc who franchised McDonalds and to Tom Monahan Founder of Dominos Pizza. Mr. Winslow was looking to duplicate this synergy he found with the Oil Maxx Company across the nation. He was anticipating Oil Maxx’s rapid expansion through franchising on a promise from the Oil Maxx founders to catch up to the then only Car Wash Guys then already franchised in 14 states at the time. Knowing that it would bring fleet business and corporate onsite car washing to his team and also provide Oil Maxx Franchisees with instant business. Mr. Winslow had a long-range plan to either buy all or part of Oil Maxx after the fast and explosive growth and then take the company public or trade for Car Wash Guys stock. That never came to be, as Oil Maxx failed to capture enough inertia to attack the franchising market. Most of this was due to under capitalization. Mr. Winslow had not even considered setting up the Oil Change Guys www.OilChangeGuys.com Franchise System at that time. He was completely busy setting up Car Wash Guys Franchises. To be continued. . .
“Lance Winslow” – If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
A Lifestyle Approach to Remedy Snoring
If you want to remedy snoring, you have to find the underlying cause. Snoring is not an affliction like the common cold, where you wake up one morning and you’ve just got it. It is something that normally arrives slowly over time. Most people can’t remember the day and date that their snoring started. It was sometime in my mid 30’s or some such vague description is the normal response to a question on its arrival.
The lifestyle approach to remedy your snoring, doesn’t treat it as a condition or a disease. But rather treats snoring as a symptom, or a warning, that the body is out of balance.
I like to think of snoring like the ground proximity alarm in a modern jet aircraft. (The one that goes “WOOP! WOOP! PULL UP! PULL UP!”, if the aircraft gets too close to the ground when it’s not supposed to). If you are a pilot, you’d prefer not to hear it. But if you did, you would be grateful for the warning before dire consequences arrived. I’m sure the warning siren must be very annoying when it is activated but a lot less painful than the alternative. Likewise snoring is annoying, but not responding to the warning may have more serious consequences.
The above example may seem extreme but the reality is there has been an enormous amount of research in recent years linking snoring to a range of serious conditions such as hypertension and coronary disease.
The human body is a truly amazing machine. It has the ability to self regulate a complex array of interacting chemical and electrical processes within fine tolerances. This ability of homeostasis means the body can keep the internal systems (e.g. blood pressure, body temperature, acid-base balance) in equilibrium despite changes in the external environment.
However if the body is subjected to persistent extreme conditions outside the normal bounds of function then it may not be able to rectify the situation without help. For instance if your body gets cold, it starts to shiver to maintain its core body temperature. But if your body is subjected to sub zero temperatures without any external heating then shivering alone will not be able to stop the inevitable deadly conclusion. But the act of shivering is, in itself, a warning for you to take some action; put some warmer clothes on for example.
Snoring can be set off by a number of different balance upsets such as your diet, your breathing, your stress levels, and your physical environment. If you systematically work through these factors two important things are going to happen. You’re eventually going to stop snoring and you’ll end up with a healthier body.
Once you start you may be pleasantly surprised, as often, a snoring solution doesn’t always require a big change in your lifestyle.
About The Author
Copyright © 2004 Kevin Meates
Kevin Meates writes for http://www.snoring-solutions-that-work.com where you can find a set of strategies for overcoming all types of snoring problems.
Please feel free to use this article in your Newsletter or on your website. If you use this article, please include the resource box and send a brief message to let me know where it appeared: mailto:kmeates@snoring-solutions-that-work.com
China is Starting to Build Military Fighter Trainers
China is entering the jet fighter trainer business and set to start building a completely new generation of trainers called the JL-19 Mountain Eagle. The jet is also know as the FTC-2000, which is interesting, as the FTC is the agency which is crippling our US Corporations competitiveness over seas now. The JL-19 or FTC 2000 aircraft is a tandem two-seat, single engine jet fighter aircraft developed by Guizhou Aviation Industry. This is the same manufacturer of the JJ-7 fighter trainer now being used in the Chinese Air Force.
There are already plans to have no less than 10 aircraft to be delivered by the end of the year, Chinese Year. The first flight of this new aircraft was made in December of 2003 and mass production is expected to start by the end of 2005. China needs this aircraft to train it’s pilots to fly the Su-27s and Su-30 Russian Fighters that they have ordered. The little trainer has excellent performance and can go over 1.5 Mach or one and a half times the speed of sound. These same aircraft are expected to flood the developing nations with fighter planes. In fact there is already talk of Mexico and other middle-eastern nations buying them too. The Guihou Group stated in an interview with sinodaily.com:
“Since it is both a fighter and trainer, some small countries, lacking a large fleet of fighter planes, could use the Mountain Eagle to train their fighter pilots in peace time, arming it for use as a fighter in war time.”
The JL-19 Mountain Eagle or the FTC-2000 it’s NATO number will use the Chinese built WP-13 jet engine. This would be one terrific little fighter plane to own for personal use and fly around as a sport plane too. And if you have the money, they would sell you one too. Think about it.
“Lance Winslow” – If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
Diamond Twinstar
Probably one of the coolest experimental aircraft twin-engine aircraft is the Diamond DA 42 Twinstar. The Twinstar is propelled by twin diesel engines which burn Jet A or even conventional diesel fuel. Sounds cool; doesn’t it? Think of the money you can save? The Diamond Twinstar was a huge hit at Oshkosh 2005 and for good reason; it is sleek and sexy and the performance is unmatched. The new four-seater twin has retractable landing gear and will cruise at 18,000 feet on 11.8 gallons per hour at 201 Kts, YES! Even down at 10,000 feet ASL it will cruise at 180 kts TAS on only 10.7 gallons per hour at 75 percent power.
With long-range fuel tanks at seventy-five percent power it has a 1251 nautical mile range. With standard fuel tanks it can go 880 miles. At fifty percent power it can fly for 19 hours and 2200 nautical miles? This would even make an excellent UAV for military patrols. It is a sexy bird on the exterior and on the inside with the new Garmin Glass Panel makes a perfect package ascetically speaking. Although it looks like a twin trainer, yet a little racier it is not intended for training, however the price is quite attractive if you are comparing it to any new modern day high-performance single engine aircraft and you get the safety of two-engines.
Since the aircraft is all-composite, it is light and fast. The slow airspeed characteristics are great and low stall speed range is certainly a plus. It is fun to fly as the visibility is great and at full power on take-off; boy oh boy will she climb.
“Lance Winslow” – If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
