Lessons Learned: Overcoming Disasters in Laundry (Conclusion)

AUBURN, Maine — The year was 1976.
The United States of America celebrated its bicentennial. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the presidential election.

And Barry Morrill’s future in-laws were growing Childs Linen Service in Auburn, Maine.

“At the time, they didn’t have the building or anything,” he shares. “They would drive around during the day to local customers they had in Lewiston-Auburn-Hicks.

“They would sort at night in the driveway and then go into a laundromat overnight that they had an agreement with.”

Eventually, the couple saved enough money for a building and commercial laundry equipment.

But by the time Morrill married their daughter in the 1990s, his father-in-law had retired, and the operation wasn’t working to gain new clients or even retain customers.

“I think we might have had around $196,000 in revenue when I bought it,” he says. “We turned it into running two shifts seven days a week within the first six months and just kept going from there because I went out did sales and grabbed everything I could.

“We went in the direction of healthcare because healthcare doesn’t move up and down like restaurants do. They were only doing restaurants, and we expanded it.”

Since then, Morrill has worked to grow the business, overcoming every laundry business obstacle.

But he couldn’t foresee the run of disasters headed his way starting in 2019.

Over about four years, Childs Linen Service endured, and overcame, fire, pandemic and flooding.

FLOOD

For around two years, Childs Linen Service rode the wave of relief and determination to keep growing after COVID, but there was another, unexpected wave coming.

The Androscoggin River runs through Auburn, Maine, and Childs is near the riverbank.

The river rises higher from rain or snow melting in the mountains in the spring, rising enough to go over the road. However, the water had never reached the laundry operation … until December 2023.

“No one expected it; they didn’t call for it up here,” Morrill points out. “They didn’t think anything of it. We got a lot of rain in December, which is not normal. The river gets high, but we are not deemed a flood zone.”

But the rain kept falling, and he decided to check on the delivery trucks. He moved them to the back of the property where normally water couldn’t reach.

“That was at 8 in the morning, and the water did come across and was up just approaching my building, which we’ve never seen,” Morrill shares. “We couldn’t run for the day.

“There was no water in the building. Not a drop. We did some errands and came back around 2 in the afternoon, and there were 8 to 10 inches of water through the entire building at that point.

“That’s how quickly that happened, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You have nowhere to go, and everything’s bolted down and heavy. We picked up a few things to get them up higher that hadn’t gotten wet.”

The water continued to rise and flood the operation. He says the facility ended up with about three feet of water through the entire building just three hours later.

“I didn’t know what we were going to do because now all my washers, all the motors, were underwater. Everything was underwater,” Morrill says.

“There was probably $2 million worth of equipment only a couple of years old at this point, and it’s underwater. The important parts are underwater.”

Once again, Morrill and his staff went into scramble mode.

The competitor that had helped Childs get through fire was bought in the following years, and Morrill couldn’t find another operation to provide backup.

“We pulled everything out,” he says. “Everything was soaked. Everything was floating. Carts were flipped over. Product that was all done and wrapped ready to be shipped out was all tipped over and all in dirty water.

“We had to redo everything. We just didn’t have an ironer. We contacted all of our big hotels and anybody that we would normally have to iron sheets or something like that for and said we’re going to do the best we can, but if they look too poor when they come out of the dryer, we’ll let you know.”

Once again, Childs Linen Service kept its doors open by using laundromats.

“We were just having trucks go to one or two laundromats and just running contantly,” Morrill says.

“We were down two weeks without ironers, washers or anything, basically working out of laundromats, paying high prices again, but it kept everyone paid.

“No one skipped a paycheck, and we kept running. We didn’t skip a beat, and no one really noticed anything other than the two hotels that use 100% cotton sheets. They don’t look right unless they hit an ironer. They’re the only ones (who had to use another service) and they stuck with us. They came right back. They like the way we do business.”

He says that the flood happening in winter helped because Childs wasn’t processing its seasonal restaurants and hotels.

How did the laundry get its building cleaned and equipment back up and running?

“I didn’t wait. There’s no flood insurance,” Morrill points out. “It’s not like there’s an insurance company coming and going, we’re going to have Servpro here and so on.

“I grabbed a couple of pumps. I called my brother. Same as with the fire, family bailed me out of that one, too. My brother, he’s a state detective. He took time away from work. He has contact with the state and went to the state fire marshal’s office and got a big pump that they use to pump out floods or after they douse a fire.

“We pumped it out overnight, and we were cleaning and had that place spotless in 24 hours.”

After pumping out all the water, Morrill had to deal with his laundry equipment. They opened all the washers, dryers and ironers to expose the motors and cleaned everything by hand in two or three days.

“This was going into Christmas, so we could not get Daniels Equipment up here fast enough because everyone was leaving for Christmas break, he says. “After Christmas, Daniels came right up.

“They took everything apart to assess the situation. I killed power to the main as soon as I saw we had water coming into the building, so nothing had power. Nothing ran until Daniels, and I had Ecolab in there, looked at all the equipment.

“We had everything opened up. All the motors pulled from all equipment that was underwater, and we literally were pouring water out of them, and letting them dry with fans for four or five days and then Daniels came back.”

They reassembled the equipment, had an electrician come in for a double check and then turned everything back on.

“We just had a few loud bearings in the washing motors when they extracted because water got in the greased bearing, so they just said we can replace the bearings and re-grease them. And I think for all the machines I have it was only going to be like $3,500. When you don’t have insurance, that’s a blessing,” Morrill says.

“The ironers and everything else came right on and worked and never skipped a beat. In two weeks, we were able to fire up and run everything, clean, sanitized, all back together.”

Morrill says the company did lose three of its five trucks because water got into the starters … and the temperature only reached 16 F the day after the water receded.

“Everything froze and the starters froze, so the insurance company said, you know what, we’re just totaling them,” he shares. “I rented two trucks for a month until my insurance came through. Nothing new, so I went and bought used trucks from Penske, all white, just like what I had.

“I just had to get them lettered up. They were good to go, and we’re still using them.”

LESSONS LEARNED

Two of the key lessons learned by Morrill from all three disaster situations is that industrial laundries need to “have a plan of attack,” and it’s important “to know somebody you can go to.”

“We all are competitors, but you still have to have good relations with your competitors because they’re going to be the ones that are going to make or break you when something like this happens,” he says.

Another key is good employee communication.

“You have to be in contact with employees and let them know what’s going on because they’re going to need to help,” Morrill says. “Keep them fully informed. Don’t lie because they could go grab a job anywhere right now in this market.

“With good communication, they saw we all had to go through this, and they kept it going for us. Same thing with families. I had a good family backup. They were here at a drop of a dime and took time off from their jobs to help.”

Finally, he says industrial laundries must be sure about what their insurance policies cover.

“I worked tightly with my insurance agent after the fire,” Morrill shares. “I found out what I didn’t have, and since then, we’ve raised limits and did ‘this and that’ because it was a lot more expensive to replace equipment.

“I’ve also, again, going through a flood, dealt with the insurance agent, knowing what you have and don’t have. We’ve had to make some changes there and make sure we’re covered from anything.

“You have to think of everything and have that relationship with your insurance agent. Everyone hates to pay those premiums until he’s got to use it.

Click HERE to read Part 1 about how Childs Linen Service overcame a devastating fire, and HERE for Part 2 on how the laundry got through the pandemic.