James River Blog

Friday, April 19, 2024

Charlotte Spring Cleaning 2024

The Power of Cleaning and Team Building

Most everyone has done some spring cleaning in their life. Maybe you clean the windows or base boards in your house, or clean under your bed and vacuum those hard to reach areas. Now imagine how much more daunting the work would be if your house was a 28,000 square foot industrial shop!

Thankfully, after back-to-back-to-back years of spring cleaning, our Charlotte team has it down to a science. They begin the spring cleaning week by clearing projects and repairs that require machines to remain in bays for extended periods of time. If possible, they work to have a clean shop by Friday afternoon. Then the big move begins to happen - every machine is taken out and the shop begins to stage tools and workstations for removal. Technicians tidy their toolboxes and get larger items ready to roll.

“We bring in basically all departments. We have parts, inventory, sales and service - some employees even bring in their kids and spouses and clean up everything,” said Mike Young, service manager. This year over 50 people took part in the spring cleaning. The spring cleaning got an early start at around 6 a.m. by beginning to roll all the large tools, cabinets and toolboxes out of the shop. Kyle Cohoon, Charlotte general manager, started the task of preparing breakfast for his dedicated employees. Everyone enjoyed the smell of bacon and eggs with hashbrowns and sausage cooking while getting the cleaning underway and removing all the items from the shop.

This year the Charlotte team went a little further than usual and even replaced all the old light bulbs with LED bulbs to increase lighting efficiency and save energy.  These brighter bulbs, coupled with cleaning the fixtures themselves, made a huge difference to the shop workspaces.

“This really brings the departments together. It gives you time to spend with sales, parts and service folks that we normally don’t have the opportunity to see a lot; this puts us together for some bonding and really builds some relationships,” said Mike Young.

While cleaning is important, it certainly isn’t the only thing that comes out of this day of work. The camaraderie among team members was on full display at our 2024 spring cleaning. Everywhere you looked people were working together, accomplishing tasks, laughing, talking and eating – all while building relationships.

Fellowship and team building is at the center of everything we do. We like to have fun and we enjoy helping people. At James River Equipment, it’s all about the people.

 

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