ABC owner works to keep water flowing

Public Record, The, Oct 26, 2004 by Kleinschmidt, Janice

You can count on three certainties in life: death, taxes, and that the infinitesimal drip, drip, drip left unchecked can turn into a problem of Niagara Falls proportions. Bob Jackson can't do a lot about the first two, but he can definitely do something about the third.

Jackson owns ABC Plumbing in Cathedral City; and despite his promotional "Plumbing is as easy as ABC," he admits it poses challenges not only for homeowners, but also for the experts.

"It's not an easy business at all," he says. First of all, it is by nature - nagging drips notwithstanding - a business that revolves around urgency. Spinning water meters, burst pipes, and backed up sewer lines are cause for concern. When panicked homeowners turn to the Yellow Pages for help, Bob Jackson is at or near the top of the plumber list. which is why he chose the name.

Jackson, who spent the first 10 years of his life in Denver, Colo., before moving to Westlake Village, became a plumber in 1952. Right out of high school, at the age of 19, he married a plumber's daughter. While working for her father, he attended trade school at night for five years and became a journeyman plumber. At the age of 24, he got his contractor's license and opened his own plumbing business with a partner.

Jackson returned to Colorado in 1976 after he sold his interest in the plumbing business and moved to Vail to partner with a friend who was a developer. Over the next nine years, he concentrated on building condominiums. But he spent most winters in Palm Desert, where he owned a home he purchased while living in Westlake Village.

"The building development business is not as urgent a thing as the plumbing business," he says. "I didn't always have to be around." To the contrary, he adds, "Everything in this business is urgent."

In 1985, Jackson moved to the desert and opened ABC Plumbing in a small storefront in the Canyon Plaza shopping center across from Target in Cathedral City. His wife, Janet, ran the office so he could go out on service calls. "It just grew from there," Jackson says.

Today he has 14 employees, 10 of which are plumbers and helpers, and 10 service vans. Janet still helps with the books on a part-time basis in their office/storefront behind Stone Mountain Carpet Mill Outlet a short distance east of their previous location. After working as a plumber in the business his father started in Westlake Village, son David joined ABC a few years after it opened and is a partner with his father.

ABC's business includes plumbing service (including sewer and drain cleaning and video inspections of sewer lines), repair, remodels, and commercial and industrial work. The company does a lot of work for condominium associations, as well as restaurants and office buildings. Until June, it also installed plumbing in new homes, but the insurance became too expensive because of the proliferation of construction defect lawsuits filed against tract developments. But, Jackson says, ABC wasn't doing a lot of that work anyway.

One thing they do "all the time" is repiping. "Back in the '50s, it was common practice to put galvanized pipes in the ground," Jackson says. "Around the 1960s, we started using copper, and then most of the time it was installed overhead because they didn't have soft copper and the technique of wrapping it in plastic and manifolding it." In part because of the high salt content in the desert soil, underground pipes rot to the point of becoming paper thin, he says. When ABC performs a repiping job, it generally installs insulated copper pipes overhead.

While ABC doesn't advertise 24/7 service, it maintains an 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule on Saturdays and doesn't charge extra for a weekend call. "Most plumbers charge more on Saturday," Jackson says. "I'm just trying to promote business. I feel with Saturdays the day that so many [plumbing companies] are closed that I've got a chance to pick up new customers. ... So many people are really pleased to get hold of me on Saturday and also happy to get a plumber to take care of their problem at no extra charge."

ABC also sells plumbing parts, though the inventory primarily serves to stock the service vans. Jackson points out, however, that he has hard-to-find parts that home improvement stores don't often stock. "If we don't have them, we have access to them from after-market [vendors]." If you have a fixture no longer made, he says, "chances are very good I would have your part."

Jackson says one of his challenges is keeping both employees and customers happy because of the urgent nature of the business and the difficulty in controlling time. "You make a commitment to a customer to be there between [certain times] and the plumber gets stuck on a job," he says. He also strives to keep the plumbers' service calls near their city of residence or in routes that avoid bouncing between Coachella Valley cities.