Summer may seem like a strange time to hit the slopes. But for Brian Scheid, owner of High Peaks Chairlift Painting in Sun Prairie, Wis., it's as natural as a blizzard in January.
As the company name implies, Scheid paints ski resort chairlifts for a living. As such, from mid-April through September, he's on the road with a small crew of college students, sprucing up ski lifts from the East Coast to Montana.
For an avid skier like Scheid, the job is one of those happy accidents where a personal passion leads to a career. Better yet, the industry fields few competitors (not more than a half dozen companies, Scheid estimates), the equipment requirements are minimal, and the views from a 35-foot-high chairlift tower in, say, Montana, provide the kind of benefits you won't find listed in an employee human resources manual.
On the down side, the painting season at high altitudes is short, so the workload is often intense. In addition, the demand for painting in summer hinges largely on how the resorts fared financially during the prior winter. In other words, Scheid cheers for heavy snowfalls.
"In 2007, business was a little slower than the previous two years," Scheid says. "It was a bad snow year, so the resorts decided to spend their money elsewhere, more snowmaking power, for example. You find that most resorts consider painting just an aesthetic thing, so it's often a low priority.
"This summer, on the other hand, resorts did some big spending because of the huge snow season last winter."
Painting chairlifts is also a weather dependent task, which makes each job a challenge.
"When you're working in the mountains, chances are it'll rain every day around 3 p.m.," Scheid says. "I've even been delayed by summer snowstorms."
FAIRLY STRAIGHT CAREER PATH
Many career paths twist and turn like a giant slalom run. But Scheid's work history resembles more of a straight-ahead downhill sprint - always centered on skiing.
After high school, he worked for two years at a Colorado ski resort and lived the life of a ski bum. When he couldn't afford to live in Colorado any longer, he attended Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Mich. - one of a handful of colleges nationwide that offer an associate's degree in ski area management.
An internship at Cascade Mountain in Portage, Wis., during the last six months of his final year in school led to a job there, managing outside maintenance and general operations.
"I liked it a lot," Scheid says. "The days were never the same. Getting ready for the next ski season always requires new things to get done."
After working at Cascade for four years, he took a summer job painting chair lifts for an East Coast company. He quickly became a crew supervisor - and the rest was history.
"I already knew how to operate a ski lift and climb ski lift towers, so I had a better head start than the average person off the street," he says. "In 2002, after one year with the company, I broke off and started doing it on my own. That summer I painted a few lifts in Wisconsin, equipped with just a sprayer, a pump, a ladder and some tools."
By 2004, things were going well enough that Scheid became a limited liability corporation, and he started working farther afield.
"I thought I could make it work with just the Midwest, which has more ski resorts than any other U.S. region, but that wasn't the case," he says. "The Midwest is very conservative, and resorts often used summer staff employees to do the painting."
GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
To break into the more lucrative western ski resort market, Scheid took the e-commerce route. Using a list of e-mail addresses compiled by the National Ski Areas Association, he contacted hundreds of ski resort maintenance and lift maintenance managers, as well as general managers.
"I sent e-mails to four or five key people at each resort," Scheid explains. "I received about 10 or 15 responses for every 100 or so e-mails sent. That led to a big contract with the Big Sky Resort and the Yellowstone Club, both in Montana."
Bigger jobs meant more manpower needs, so Scheid turned to his former college instructor and mentor Jim VanderSpoel, the director of ski area management at Gogebic. VanderSpoel provided the names of four quality students in the ski management program, and Scheid was ready to roll.
"Jim's help and advice has been invaluable," Scheid says, noting the importance of mentorship to a young entrepreneur. "He's been involved in the ski industry for more than 30 years ... I go to him with business problems, and he helps me find good employees, too.
"He even helped me build the ladder racks on my trailer and modify a Polaris Ranger that was too tall to fit in my trailer," Scheid adds. "We modified it so you can remove the roll cage to fit it in the trailer."
VanderSpoel also offered guidance on a vexing matter: pricing jobs.
"The first year, I found I wasn't charging enough," Scheid says. "You have to consider not only the labor, but the insurance and workmen's compensation costs, plus taxes, lodging, food, supplies and maintenance.
"I pay more for workmen's comp insurance than roofers, which are usually considered the most expensive. I top them by 10 to 15 percent in insurance premiums; once you start working higher than two stories off the ground, you really get socked."
Scheid has learned he must be firm about the price of jobs.
"People try to negotiate on price, but it's hard to give in with fuel costs going up," he says. "When the price of oil goes up, so does the price of paint, because I use oil-based paint. I've learned to stand pretty firm on price, but it took me two or three years to get the hang of it."
CHALLENGES ABOUND
Insurance is one of Scheid's biggest challenges. He's required to carry business liability and auto insurance, as well as workmen's compensation insurance for each state in which he works.
"That means filling out a four- or five-page workmen's comp application for each state," he says. "But you can't get jobs without workmen's comp insurance."
Another hurdle is convincing resorts that they're better off using Scheid's service instead of handing paintbrushes to their summer help.
"Quite truthfully, the biggest competition I have is the ski resorts because they prefer to have their own employees do the painting," he says. "I've learned to not be afraid of asking them outright to consider what it costs for them to do it themselves. I point out that those employees could be doing a lot of other things to get the resort ready for the next winter season.
"Plus, I'm going to do a much better job because it's my only job," he adds.
Then there's the issue of finding lodging for a crew of four or more workers. If the job lasts longer than a week to 10 days, Scheid prefers a condominium to a motel. The resorts usually are able to help him find accommodations, which must include a kitchen because it's too expensive to eat out for every meal.
When it comes to equipment, Scheid travels fairly light. He owns a 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 crew cab pickup truck and a 2006 Dodge Ram 2500 crew cab pickup truck, both purchased from Don Miller Dodge in Madison, Wis.; a 7- by 16-foot V-neck trailer made by Northern Hauler and bought from Big O's Trailers Inc. in Portage; a 2008 Polaris Ranger UTV, purchased from Vetesnik Power Sports in Richland Center, Wis.; and a 2005 Bil-Jax 3632T towable man lift, made by Bil-Jax Inc. and purchased at A to Z RentAll in Madison.
The real workhorse is the man lift, which features a 42-foot telescoping boom and a 37-foot outreach. Scheid says he decided to buy one after it cost him $8,500 to rent one for just one summer.
"It's my $20,000 ladder," he says of the lift. "It's also good for trimming trees around the house!" Scheid said the handy equipment paid for itself in the first few jobs.
PREP WORK IS KEY
Like any painting project, surface preparation is the most important and time-consuming part of chairlift painting. Scheid estimates prep work constitutes about 90 percent of the work, primarily because there's usually a lot of rust. Workers use 4 1/2-inch grinders to remove the rust before applying a rust-preventive primer coat.
For the top coat, High Peaks uses industrial urethane alkyd enamel made by Sherwin-Williams.
Workers wear spray-suit coveralls, a respirator and a "spray sock," which covers their heads.
"When it's 95 degrees out, the suits are really hot," Scheid says.
The chairlift towers are usually 30 to 35 feet tall. They're lined with ladder rungs that workers scale in order to paint, anchored by a safety harness and a lanyard to keep them anchored to the tower.
"If you're afraid of heights, you shouldn't apply for this job," Scheid says with a chuckle. "Most guys I hire say they can climb 35 or 40 feet high, but a lot of times you don't really know until you actually do it.
"But they're trained to always keep a minimum of a three-point stance while climbing a tower - two feet and one hand always in contact with the tower. After they're 'roped off,' they can start using two hands to work."
The man lift is used to paint the ski lift terminals and some towers, mainly those set in flatter terrain. As for the lift chairs, they're prepped and painted assembly-line style in the terminals while still attached to the haul rope. On average, it takes about 20 minutes to prep and prime a chair and only 1 1/2 minutes to paint it, Scheid says
GOOD JOB FOR A SKI BUM
Overall, Scheid says he enjoys his work. If nothing else, it keeps him at a ski resort all year long (he often works at ski resorts during the winter).
"I get to be my own boss, make my own days and hire my own employees," he says. "One thing I don't like, though, is how inconsistently jobs come along, and how my year is so dependent on how the ski resorts do financially during winter."
Scheid often wrestles with the prospect of his company growing bigger. To do so, he needs more crews that can travel to more states. But in doing so, he fears he'll lose control of quality and service.
"You can always do more jobs, but not necessarily maintain the same quality," he says. "I like to be on the jobsite. I feel like I should be there because I want to be sure every customer is happy with how things are going. I don't want to ruin a good thing ... but to develop more business, I almost have to add another crew or two."
But until then, this ski bum is right where he wants to be - on the slopes virtually all year long.