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INDEX
CLEAN SWEEP LOT SERVICE LLC, INDIANAPOLIS Here’s an extraordinary and circuitous story that looks back through the past eight years of developing an Indiana industrial power sweeping business from zero. It’s about a young man with a truly spectacular work ethic and wealth of courage and ingenuity who recognized an opportunity and embarked on his entrepreneurial journey with only a broom and a wheelbarrow!
H
ere, Tim Toler, founder and president of the
doing maintenance work and groundskeeping. I saw
thriving mid-western service company Clean
that an Aldi grocery store had moved onto an out
Sweep Lot Service, LLC shares with NAS readers
lot of a commercial center. I needed extra money
the story of his experience and thought process
because I had a wife, kids, and a mortgage. About two
throughout the past eight years of building his
weeks went by and no one had picked up the mess on
industrial power sweeping enterprise into the great
the Aldi lot.
success that it is today:
People had thrown out tires and even furniture. I
A HUMBLE BEGINNING
walked over on my lunch break one day and talked to
Around the early 1990s, while I was working at
the store manager about working to clean up the lot.
my regular job, I saw a guy at a nearby bank every
He said he needed to talk to the district manager. A
Sunday cleaning the parking lot with just a broom
couple of days later, the district manager called me. I
and a dustpan. I asked the guy, “Do you work for a
gave him a price. I said I’d like to do the lot cleaning
company?” He said he works for himself doing 10
four days per week.
parking lots every Sunday, for extra money. A few years later, in 1993, I was working for a property development and management company
2 8 NORTH AMERIC AN S WE E P E R JU NE 2020
I started the lot cleaning, and he paid me from petty cash about $120 each week. He had me just sign the back of a cash register receipt as documentation of
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