Chuck Tyler Part 2: We Are Here if You Need a Modular Option

Intro:
Today we are talking about Phoenix Modular Elevator with with Chuck Tyler, Director of Operations and Business Development.
Phoenix Modular has been in business for 15 years and primarily serves North America. They are growing rapidly in an innovative side of the industry.
Phoenix Modular is able to pre-manufacture and ship their product, cutting down site impact and installation by 75 percent.” They have an innovative product and approach that is driving healthy growth and industry change.

Summary:
Chuck Tyler, Director of Operations and Business Development at Phoenix Modular Elevator, discusses the benefits of modular elevators, which reduce site impact and installation time by 75%. Phoenix Modular pre-manufactures and ships elevators, cutting down on-site work. They specialize in 2-4 stop hydraulic elevators, with a maximum height of around 50 feet. Modular elevators offer safety, quality control, and efficiency, particularly in tight or time-constrained projects. They also provide flexibility for independent elevator contractors, offering just the hoistway or the complete system. Phoenix Modular aims to grow its customer base by educating the industry about the advantages of modular elevators.

Transcript:
Chuck Tyler 0:00
My pitch to the industry is, you know, again, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And you know, I’m not asking, I’m not asking for everybody to look at modular as the only way to go. I’m just looking for opportunities to introduce the product and to share the benefits, to talk about the product. And you know, we’re here if we can support you and your business.

Matthew Allred 0:25
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred group. I am your host, Matt Allred in this podcast, we talk to the people whose lives and careers are dedicated to the vertical transportation industry to inform and share lessons learned, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before, to inspire the next generation of elevator careers. This is part two. Today, we are talking about Phoenix modular elevator with Chuck Tyler, Director of Operations and Business Development. Phoenix modular has been in business for 15 years and primarily serves North America. They are growing rapidly in an innovative side of the industry. Phoenix modular is able to pre manufacture and ship their product, cutting down site impact and installation by 75% they have an innovative product and approach that is driving healthy growth and industry change. Chuck, welcome to the show.

Chuck Tyler 1:20
Good to see you again. Matt.

Matthew Allred 1:22
Likewise. Thank you. And you know, we said at the end of the last episode that we’re going to talk a little bit more about Phoenix modular and your experience there now, and it looks like you’re standing right there in the shop, but I guess before we jump into the shop, how did you how did you get, I guess, affiliated with Phoenix?

Chuck Tyler 1:39
Well, I’ll just tell a quick story. So I mentioned before I, you know, worked my way through helper hood and through corporate America, and kind of got up to the top of, you know, construction, running the construction department for Thyssen, and it took a toll on the life traveling and so on and so forth. And I went through a divorce and took an opportunity to leave and do something different. I went to work for an independent Elevator Company, and just had a great time. It was, it was an amazing experience, you know, the entrepreneurial really, getting back down in the weeds again, getting back to my passion. And I was having such a great time, then COVID hit, and when COVID hit, the owner of that company decided it was a good time to sell. And so that happened, and I was looking for an opportunity, and I didn’t want to go back to working for a major again, the same old thing. So I had a great opportunity to go to work for Vantage working on freight doors, mostly in New York City. I think you and I met around that time, and I really liked working on the vendor side. I got to get involved in the NAAC. And I talked about earlier, my networking exploded. Now, I didn’t just know the people at Thyssen, I knew people all throughout the industry, which really is a nice thing, and when you need to go look for an opportunity out there. So Vantage was trucking along. Everything was going just fine, but it just again wasn’t exactly what I wanted. And I have a friend of mine that introduced me to the owner of of Phoenix modular, Allison, and her and I got the opportunity to sit down and talk, and, you know, they this, she’s an amazing lady who bought Phoenix modular 15 years ago out of bankruptcy. It was originally infinite access started back in the 90s. So Allison comes from a background, not not an elevator background. She’s a MBA, and she comes from Alcoa. Has done a heck of a job building the company. But when I when her and I got talking, she felt like it was a really good time to bring somebody in with some elevator experience. And so here I am, and now I’m now I’m in the world of modular elevators building and laying on their side, and, you know, looking at the business from a different perspective, a different perspective, a different point of view.

Matthew Allred 4:03
Yeah, tell us a little bit about modular elevators. I don’t know if all of our listeners even know what that is or or how that you know how those work, but I’ve found several people that are in my conversations that are like, What? What is that? You know, you answer that question.

Chuck Tyler 4:19
Yeah, so at Phoenix modular elevator, we we build a shaft. You can see them behind me. Here. We build a shaft out of four by four tube steel, and in that shaft is it’s built for the size of the elevator. Once it gets built, the shaft gets built, we move it down and the shaft gets that. We install the rails in the shaft, and then the hoist way gets dry wall, both inside and outside. So it’s a completed hoist way with Rails. And then we move it down to the next section, where we go through elect mech, which is our electrical and mechanical section. And there we put all of the. Uh, electrical piping, wiring, switches, pit lights, lights up the hoist way, all the wiring and fixtures. And then from there, it moves into the finishing station. We have a separate area where the cabs are built. Cabs are built upright, standard, you know, built on the car sling, completely finished, doors hung, operators set up, and then that cab is laid down and stabbed into the hoist way. If it’s a single section hoist way, it ships as one unit. If it’s a multi section, which we do up to three, three separate sets.

Matthew Allred 5:42
You’re saying, stack them. So, so I’m that’s what I’m hearing, correct. You stack them on top of each other. So how high can you go, then total?

Chuck Tyler 5:49
So with a typical, typically with a single unit, you’re kind of what limits you is trucking, right? How, how long of a truck you can get? So standard is around 54 feet. You can get a truck that’ll take a 54 footer without doing anything special, flagging or anything like that. So our breaking point is around that 50 foot overall hoist way. So that’s including the pit and the overhead. So

Matthew Allred 6:13
Does that anything three four stop? What is that? I mean

Chuck Tyler 6:16
Yeah you can get up to it. You can get a short three stop in a single section. You figure, Figure your overhead is going to be 13 feet, your pits going to be a four feet. And then, you know, your travel between there, so, you know, gives you you can get, you get 20 some feet. So you can get a couple stops in there without any problem, and get a three stop.

Matthew Allred 6:37
And then you can stack three of those, so, so nine stories.

Chuck Tyler 6:41
So we’ve done. The biggest job that we’ve done is UCSD, which is four non stop traction cars, about 125 foot of travel. So those, those were three, three separate, three separate towers stacked together. There was four of them. It became a two across from two and a parking garage. And the project was basically, when we were setting the units, they were they were pouring concrete on the top parking garage floor. They were able to open it with traditional elevators. You know, when they were able to give the hoist ways, it just wouldn’t have been possible for them to be able to complete it. So the modular solution really helped them in that, in that regard, these actually went inside the core of the building. They’re not on the exterior.

Matthew Allred 7:29
Gotcha, what’s, what’s the advantage to modular I mean, obviously, you’re, you’re building them beforehand, you’re in a controlled environment. You’re, you’re kind of queuing everything up, dropping in with a crane. What are, what are, what are some of the biggest advantages to this type of construction?

Chuck Tyler 7:44
So first off, I’ll say that modular elevators is not a one size fits all. It’s not going to replace any elevator in any situation. It’s but, but it but when it fits the application, it’s a really great option. And and I look at it from a lot of different perspectives. So when we look at the installation piece of it, we talked about that fear that the lack of fear of heights. And you know, unfortunately in this industry, there’s a lot of falls. And in our system, the rails are never carried over their head. There’s no hoisting. Our hoist ways. Our elevators are built laying on their sides. We have a rotator so the the hoist way is actually rotated so that you carry the rails and you never have to carry them, lift them over. You carry them in and set them onto the bracket.

Matthew Allred 8:32
You don’t have to hook them to the ceiling. Essentially

Chuck Tyler 8:34
No, no, So we again, we we can spin the shaft so that the drywall can be done. Nobody ever has to stand on top of the shaft, under the shaft. You can do it at a regular working height. Same thing with the door frames. There’s, you know, when you’re installing the door frames, there’s no, no fear of dropping something down the shaft. So, the safety mechanism of of just being able to not have that those same challenges, we also have a very controlled space, so we don’t have to worry about somebody working above us or working below us. We control our you know, we’re in a factory environment. So we have a controlled workspace. We also have quality controls that that I really think are fantastic, because we don’t have to go out there once a week to look at the job, to check how the how the installation is going, or or even once every couple of days, we come out and walk the floor for quality daily. All day long, we have a quality person on the floor checking as we go, double checking, triple checking, making sure that the tolerances that we have are held. So quality is a huge piece of it. So we have safety, we have quality, and then we have the job site aspect. And in a lot of situations, if the job site’s tight or if there’s a time constraint or a. Weather constraint, we can eliminate those issues by prefabbing the elevator in our factory, wrapping it, securing it, shipping it to the job site, and hoisting it into into the into place, you know, within a matter of an hour or so. Now, once it’s hoisted in place, obviously you still have to go in and do your final adjusting, and so on and so forth, right? But that that installation time is reduced down from, you know, a couple of weeks to a couple of days, because we’re able to accomplish a majority of the installation, you know, in our controlled environment.

Matthew Allred 10:37
Yeah. And you said that, obviously it’s not going to, you know, replace every kind of elevator. You know there’s, there’s still going to be traditional elevators being built. What would you say are some of the areas, some of the applications that would be most likely to say, hey, that would work for us. That’s, that’s a good solution.

Chuck Tyler 10:58
So two and three and four stop Hydros are really where we we excel. I think it’s, you know, in addition situation where you’re adding an elevator on again, a fantastic situation where space is a where space can be an issue we have. You know, we can help with that solution by adding the elevator so, so it really, truly is a site by site. Look at it. But our elevator will fit in any building, again, with limitations, with travel and so on. We’re not going to go and put one of these in and a high rise building in downtown Manhattan. It’s doesn’t make sense, right? But in most applications and lower rise buildings 10 floors and under, we can provide a solution that, in many cases, can aid the job and the schedule of the project.

Matthew Allred 11:55
Yeah. Well, and you talked about the difference between having an elevator up and running in, say, a day versus a few weeks, and feels like you have a lot more flexibility, maybe, with, with schedules, with, you know, if you’re dealing with GCS and other contractors, you kind of got a an opportunity to build it, dropping in, get out of the way. I could see some advantages, some big advantages in there, right?

Chuck Tyler 12:21
And then that’s, that’s the whole key to it is, is when, you know, when you take an elevator and you deliver it to the job site, and it takes up a lot of real estate on the project, right? Even a two stop, three stop elevator will take up, you know, a 40 by 40 space on the job site. And in many cases, there’s not 40 by 40 space to store all this equipment, whereas when my elevator comes, we set it in all the elevator equipment is already in the hoist way, right? So you’re not taking up that valuable space that’s needed for all the other trades to be able to complete their work. And in many cases, you know, the elevator is one of the one of the things that holds up, the turnover of the of the project, because things got to get finished, so that the all the other finishes, you know, can kind of follow along. So I think that’s where, you know, we can provide a benefit is, you know, we set the elevator and, and essentially, once the fire alarm wires are there and and all the powers hooked up, it’s just a matter of coming in and hooking that stuff up making a few adjustments, and we’re ready to rock and roll.

Matthew Allred 13:24
It almost sounds like plug and play, right? To borrow that.

Chuck Tyler 13:28
Well, again, we’re not quite there, but we’re working towards it every day. Yes, sir, yeah.

Matthew Allred 13:32
I mean, compared to, I guess, a longer, you know, time to build it, it’s certainly a difference. What would you say about the potential? I mean, it feels like this is not new, but maybe hasn’t really hit mainstream, like it, like it could. I mean, do you see much potential, or do you feel like, Hey, we’ve kind of, you know, maxed out with what we’re doing?

Chuck Tyler 13:57
No, I believe that there’s a, I believe there’s a huge opportunity for us to grow, to grow our customer base, to let it be known more what we do. And you know, that’s part of the part of my challenge here at Phoenix is, you know, growing who we are as an organization. And, you know, getting us out there. I think people that understand what we do and and can see the benefit overall. The problem is, if you get a price for a traditional elevator quote, and we’ve been the same job, it’s not apples to apples, right? Because your traditional elevator quote is an elevator that somebody’s going to install in that shaft. I’m providing an elevator that’s already installed in a shaft, and the shaft it comes with. So that’s the challenge that I see, is educating that you have to factor in the entire cost of the elevator shaft, included, not just the elevator

Matthew Allred 14:58
I mean. A lot of concrete to build a shaft, right? And if you don’t have to worry about building a shaft, I mean, and granted, I guess, depending on how the engineers, you know, maybe you need the concrete from the shaft to hold up the building, so you got to take that into account as well, right?

Chuck Tyler 15:17
Well we have our system. We are we can tie into sheer walls and stuff like that. So our elevator can be provided for support, so on, modular buildings and so on and so forth. So there’s, there’s options in that regard. For sure, we do twin posts and ground jacks. We do MRL. So, you know, we have a, we have a full line of products. And in most cases, again, we’re not going to go into a, you know, 100 story building in Manhattan, but in most cases, you know, 10 floors and under, we can find an application. And you know, ifschedule, if job, compactness and things like that are an issue, then you know, in a lot of cases, we can, we can help with that.

Matthew Allred 15:55
Yeah, who are you say are some of the early adopters, and who are some of the customers that maybe it’s, you know, general contractors or developers or that are looking at this, going, hey, I can, you know, I want more of those.

Chuck Tyler 16:09
So, a lot of a lot of our units shipped to California. It’s a it’s the modular industry out there for schools and such has been going on for some time. You know, they’ve accepted it. And it’s pretty standard in that, in that market, we’ve, you know, we’ve developed some, some great relationships with, directly with, with general contractors. We do self perform. We have licensed mechanics in, in 15-16, states now. So in those states, we self perform in the areas that we aren’t licensed. We have partners that do our our installations. So I’m, I might have got off track there. I’m lost my track. You’re good.

Matthew Allred 16:55
I’m just curious, yeah, Who? Who? Who you see is kind of your primary customers. Or as far as demand, yeah, go ahead.

Chuck Tyler 17:06
I think that, from my perspective, I think that this product is is a great thing to have in your sales bag, if you’re, if you’re a traditional elevator company, right? Because if, if somebody wants to add an elevator to the side of a building, I’m a perfect resource, and we will, by the way, happily build a hoist way and ship it without the elevator and pre installed. So we do shell the modular hoist way without the elevator in it, if, if it’s a if the application requires that.

Matthew Allred 17:35
So I think I’m hearing you say that if I’m an independent elevator contractor, and maybe I don’t do a lot of new installation, but I have an opportunity. I could buy it from you. I could buy just the hoist way. I could buy the, I could buy the, you know, the whole package, and do some installation. You know, that kind of work. Is that correct?

Chuck Tyler 17:58
Yeah, thank you. That’s exactly right. So we do, we do have marketing literature on just providing the hoist way, drywalled and, and, and then the elevator can be installed in the hoist way, you know, by the traditional Elevator Company

Matthew Allred 18:13
Absolutely. I mean, that sounds like huge opportunity there, because as long, I mean, I’ve been, you know, recruiting in the elevator industry for 12-13, whatever, 14 years, maybe. And it seems like the, you know, new elevators are kind of always the domain of the of the majors, the OEMs, at least that they, you know, they manufacture them. They can, we could say, give it away, right? But they can sell it at a low cost. And if I’m going to try to buy it and then install it, it’s prohibitive. And yet you’ve got a product there that I’m just curious, how competitive would that be if I, if you know Matt’s Elevator Company here in Georgia, wants to install one of those, is it competitive compared to the major OEMs?

Chuck Tyler 18:58
So again, I think that any independent Elevator Company, material wise, is going to always have a hard time competing with the OEMs. You know, as you mentioned that they basically, they’re not looking to make a lot of money on the front end of that job. They you’re looking to get it on service for the long term. And that’s their that’s their business model. We are not a our primary business for the modular side is doesn’t involve the service aspect. So we’re not in this business to service the elevator. So I think we’re where I see a big benefit to the elevator companies is, if you’re a small, independent, mid sized, independent company that does service and modernizations, but really you Don’t dabble in ni because you don’t have the resources, but you have a customer that needs a two stop or a three stop. You know, we can provide that to you. Ship it out to the ship it out, set it for you, get it all, get it all taken care of. You can do the final adjustments, turn it over to your customer, and then convert it to a maintenance contract for the next 20 years. So I think there’s the benefit to the to the elevator companies, you know, and again, you know, maybe the, maybe not every company is going to, going to go that route. But for for those companies that aren’t looking to keep a construction department busy, but have customers that require the the product, you know that we’re certainly here for them. We work a lot. We work a lot with general contractors directly. I’ll be 100% honest with you, some of the big guys don’t have the greatest reputations on how they work with, you know, the change orders and some of the things that that happen in the in the process of the job. So we’ve, we’ve had some really good luck in developing those relationships and working directly with the general contractors, you know, and providing the product. So I think there’s multiple different opportunities to sell the product

Matthew Allred 20:54
Yeah, absolutely so tell me you mentioned that you don’t do the service. Do you partner with somebody? Or how do you I mean, is it just up to the customer who they have service their equipment, or you just kind of, you don’t, you don’t even get involved there?

Chuck Tyler 21:06
No, no. So we have a network of service providers that we’ve developed over the years. So when we, when we sell the job, we include the Nim, just like a traditional elevator company would, and that’s we just, we work with our, our partners and all of those markets to take the service. So that’s, you know, that’s, that’s a good benefit for them as well, right? Is, again, you’re taking the service without the risk of the of the construction losses and such

Matthew Allred 21:37
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. You talked a little bit about change orders, and one, one thing I’ve found intriguing is people to get bonuses for change orders. And, you know, I’m not worked in the in the field, right, but, but my brain starts immediately saying, is that not an incentive to withhold information or not be fully honest about what’s going in? I’m just, I’m just asking the question, you know, if I’m getting enticed to have somebody have a change order, then I’m also enticed not to maybe give them all the information so they need more change orders. I don’t know, am I making it up?

Chuck Tyler 22:24
So, I think we can all I think that’s one of those, those slippery slopes, Matt, you know, the change order incentive program I was around when it was developed. It wasn’t developed for that purpose. It was developed because the guys were just going out there and doing it and not worrying about it because it wasn’t benefiting them personally. So we they figured, if they gave them a little incentive to to go look for those change orders, right, that they would, you know, they would keep their eyes open for it. So I think that was a good idea, because you shouldn’t do things for free. However, I do think that, you know, there are certain individuals that are going to take advantage of whatever opportunities they may have and and when that happens, you you know it can be taken advantage of. I will tell you that my owner, Allison, one of her main business core values is we are not a change order company. The price that we give you and we sell the elevator, we’re going to do everything within our power. We see it as a failure to pull the change order. So we decentify ourselves for change orders. We take away incentives for change orders. So if we can’t get it right on the front end, then we’re not going to reward our people for having to charge our customers extra at the backside. Now that doesn’t include, obviously, if they want to change, you know, finishes or or, you know, sizes, or make it a glass elevator or something like that, those are, those are all reasonable, perfectly good change orders, but change orders for re inspections, change orders for mobilizations, change orders for, you know, thing storage and things like that. We really try not to, we try to manage those to a place where we eliminate them.

Matthew Allred 24:08
Yeah, yeah. Well, it does feel to me like it would be more, you know, just, just being thorough, right? Let’s ask all of the pertinent questions. I mean, again, if somebody wants to change out the, you know, the wood paneling or something? Well, that’s their prerogative, but, but let’s do our very best to make sure we’ve answered every single question. Get everything figured out, drop it in, walk away, be done. Everybody’s happy. Seems like an efficient

Chuck Tyler 24:34
That should be our that should be our goal on every job. And if you can do that and not have to charge change orders, and you can provide a quality product on time. I believe that you can grow your business, and that’s what I’m trying to do at Phoenix modular elevator, just exactly that.

Matthew Allred 24:48
Yeah. So what would you say, is it? I don’t know what would what would you say about this? You know, we talked about an opportunity. It sounds like it’s a huge paradigm. Shift in, maybe how things are done, and certainly within a certain, you know, height of of elevators. But what’s, what’s your pitch to the industry?

Chuck Tyler 25:10
My pitch to the industry is, you know, again, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And, you know, I’m not asking, I’m not asking for for everybody to look at modular as the only way to go. I’m just looking for opportunities to introduce the product and to share the benefits, to talk about the product. And you know, we’re here if we can support you and your business.

Matthew Allred 25:36
Perfect, perfect Chuck. Thank you so much for being with me today. It’s it’s always a pleasure, and I appreciate your time.

Chuck Tyler 25:42
Hey, Matt, I always love talking to you, and thank you for the opportunity to chat a little bit and introduce myself and my company. I appreciate it.

Matthew Allred 25:50
You bet. Good luck to you keep building your business. All right. Thank you, sir. Yep. Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting. Please visit our YouTube channel at Elevator Careers, or check us out online at elevatorcareers.net. Please like and subscribe and until next time, stay safe.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai