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• Aged Equipment that can have failure at any time - (note: this is a common
occurrence in the industry, Western Precooling also has this happen all the time)
• Mild Steel vacuum tubes and other equipment.
• Aged Staff.
• Glass ceiling for many of the crews - no room for advancement.
• Understaffed - GM does all marketing, customer service, lease agreements, hiring
and interviews, fixed cost negotiations (insurance, CBAs, etc.), long-term company
planning and outlook, equipment lease planning, budgeting, operational
management and planning, acquisition of new customers.
• Highly leveraged with not enough equity to really fund the future growth.
• Costly upgrades to property.
• Built in wage and benefit increases for union staff and ever increasing costs of
maintenance with no revenue increase.
• Continual breakdowns of mechanical and infrastructure equipment on property.
• Often times spread thin on staffing and incurring lots of overtime.
• Inconsistent performance.
• The seasonal nature of our ice sales means we have kind of a rotating staff at the ice
dock. This means we're often understaffed when an unexpected spike in sales
happens, and since this crew ALSO handles our on-site tenants’ ice needs; this can
cause a chain reaction that slows us down for days at a time sometimes.
• Lack of communication between departments can be a problem. People who need to
know when info changes don't get it until it's too late. For example, a new contractor
is brought on site by maintenance, but the office is not notified, so no copies of their
license or workman's comp are acquired.
• Maintenance requests are often poorly documented. Normally a request is made, a
work order is written up and given to maintenance, but we rarely get confirmation a
problem has been fixed, nor do we have a system in place for checking up on
previous work orders. Maintenance DOES get done; it's just the paperwork that
seems to fall by the wayside.
• The night crew for the ice dock and the night manager especially seems to be having
a lot of problems getting things done. Our operations tend to break down a lot more
at night and there's often a period of non-productivity in the morning where the day
crew has to clean up the mess. I don't have first-hand experience with this, though.
• Equipment.
• Ageing fleet trucks. Our field guys are suffering and that's not good. Not enough
money spent on the maintenance/replacement of the equipment we use.
• Communication.
• Never enough communication.
• Union politics.
• Get the unions out and your clients will make heaps crushing us down to Wall mart
wages. Don't worry; the "fiercely loyal" will stay for the benefits.

Prepared for Growers Ice Company, Inc.
11
Jim White, PhD --- JL White International