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Sell the system

A paver industry pioneer explains how people purchase pavers based on the system, not the product.

By Tom Hatlen

Bill Schneider worked for his father’s carpentry company in California then moved to Hawaii where he built high-rises for 2 years. From there, he went on to Chicago and was running day-to-day field operations for a concrete contractor building a large church when he got his calling.

It was 1974 when Wausau Tile invited him to a paver demonstration. Wausau Tile is widely believed to be the first company to manufacture concrete pavers in the U.S. Bill thought people would be immediately attracted to pavers just as he was. Once he saw the demo installation withstand the weight of a moving pickup truck, he was sold.

But he found that selling architects, engineers and cities on pavers was much harder. Back then, even those educated construction professionals didn’t believe that pavers set on sand and gravel would hold up.

“I was the only person selling pavers in Chicago at that time,” explained Bill, “so I had to spend a lot of time educating people for each sale. The first couple years we almost starved to death, but as we completed more projects and built a reputation it grew well.”

Bill launched LPS Pavement Co. in 1976 as a commercial installation firm because the jobs would be larger. Commercial work led to requests from homeowners, so he started a second company for residential work, Decorative Paving, in about 1979.

Profile

LPS Pavement Company
Oswego, IL
William C. Schneider, Owner
Brian Simmons, President
Brent Cole, Vice President

Markets served
Commercial, industrial and municipal

Customer base
100% commercial

Average job size
$50,000

Largest job size
$2.3 million

2009 sales
$5 million

2010 projected sales
$6 million

Services
100% paver installation and system sales

Number of employees
30

Until the mid-1980s Bill had to order pavers produced hundreds of miles away. Then 3 Chicago-area paver producers opened for business. Within a few years the market was flooded with residential installers deeply undercutting Decorative Paving’s prices. So, Bill moved Decorative Paving to Cincinnati, Ohio where competition was less intense.

Charles Taylor, Decorative Paving’s President agreed to move to Ohio while Bill remained in Chicago (most of the time) to run LPS Pavement Co. Within a few years Decorative Paving became a commercial company as well. Bill sold Decorative Paving about 3 years ago.

Pioneer spirit

Bill’s early days in the paver industry set the tone for his life-long approach to business. With no support available, he was largely alone in figuring out how to market pavers, and how to solve installation issues. For installation, he collected all the information he could, then experimented to find what worked, what didn’t and why.

Gaining this knowledge was also very important for sales because Bill had to create a market for pavers. He had to be able to explain how the paver system worked, and provide evidence that installations would hold up. And since he chose the commercial route, he had to do this at a level that would convince architects, engineers, cities and developers.

“You can’t just sell the product. I’m always thinking, ‘What’s going to happen? How well is this going to work?’ The more you call on architects and engineers, the more you learn how to sell the system.”

In the mid 1980s Bill helped found CPI, the forerunner of the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute (ICPI), in an effort to move the contracting part of the industry forward. In 1994, he was among the founders of ICPI. Bill was an instructor for the first ICPI Concrete Paver Installer Certification class. And he was the Contractor Education Committee Chairman for the first 2 Hardscape North America trade shows. For years he has spearheaded efforts to bring in Vander Kooi & Associates to run contractor educational programs.

“I first saw Charles Vander Kooi in 1989. When I walked out of there, I thought: How does he know all the problems I’m having in my company? I was so impressed that I went to CPI [now ICPI] and said, ‘You need to have him come in and do presentations. Even the manufacturers need to understand how a construction business is run.’”

Permeable pavers are the future

After years of installing pavers, Bill believes he’s found something that will be even more marketable: permeable pavers. In 2002 LPS Pavement Co. did the first mechanical permeable paver installation in the U.S. Bill says that Chicago now has probably 8 million sq. ft. of permeable pavers installed. For LPS Pavement Co., 150,000 sq. ft. permeable paver parking lots are common. They’re also installing several permeable street projects around the country.

LPS Pavement Co. operates equipment with articulated steering on installations still in progress. Bill explains, “You can’t take a regular skid steer out on mechanically installed pavers until after you’ve filled the gaps and compacted, or you’re going to move the pavers when you turn. In the residential market you need skid steers because you’ve got to excavate. In the commercial market someone else excavates.”

Bill expects to see the demand for permeables continue to rise as EPA standards to reduce storm water runoff and pollution continue to tighten and to apply to new localities. The runoff problem is most severe in large metropolitan areas where sealed pavements and building roofs cover huge expanses of real estate. Rain can’t filtrate thru to the soil where it would be cleansed and would replenish local aquifers. Instead, it washes pollutants from the atmosphere, asphalt roofs and oily pavements into retention ponds or into waterways.

Bill says permeable pavers are the answer because no other pavement option can deal with drainage issues as effectively. He says the competing products – porous concrete and porous asphalt – don’t hold up well structurally, lose all drainage ability when frozen, and become clogged in just a few years with no good way to clean out the pores. Asphalt even adds to pollution as petroleum products leach out during rains.

In areas where soils drain well, water flows thru a permeable paver installation and completes the naturally cleansing filtration to the aquifer. In areas with poor draining soils such as clay, a good permeable paver system will clean and cool polluted rain water before funneling it to drains. When this water is channeled to waterways as usually happens, it makes a positive contribution. But it can also be diverted to storage tanks for reuse.

Still a pioneer

Bill was so convinced of the future demand for permeable pavers that a year after his first installation he started Advanced Pavement Technology (APT) to develop his own permeable paver system which he markets across the country. Charles and Pat Taylor now manage APT.

Bill approached the new permeable paver market just as he had approached pavers in the early days. He talked to engineers and architects and gained an understanding for what they wanted, and he packaged that in a permeable paver system.

Bill tells how he once proved to a skeptical engineer that permeable pavers can support
heavy traffic. “We needed to deliver 3” rock to complete the 2nd phase of a 90,000 sq. ft.
parking lot for Elmhurst College. And we drove 800 semi loads right over the 1st phase
of the project. We had no rutting, no movement whatsoever. And I showed him the lane
where we drove everything across.” The photo shows that project in progress.

He says, “You have to sell the system, not just the product. When our company goes out and does a presentation, we focus on the system and storm water management and dealing with water pollutants. And, when you’re talking to engineers and architects you have to backup your system with tested engineering proof. These are the things that everyone buys. They don’t buy the product."

Bill recognized issues with early permeable pavers. The drainage voids between pavers were configured so that they were uncomfortable to walk on or even drive on. So through APT he created a design that was smooth enough to become the first ADA compliant permeable paver.

He didn’t agree with early specifications that included sand, which is perfect for standard pavers, but not good for permeables. “If you put sand in the voids you’re going to have silt blockage in a year or 2. The open-graded aggregate we use allows water to travel freely."

Bill says the complete APT permeable system drains water quickly, holds up under extreme loads and removes 90% or more of pollutants from rain water. Run-off pollutants naturally adhere to the drainage aggregate where they are broken down by bacteria.

And, while it takes a lot to clog a quality permeable paver installation, APT worked out a way to clean them. They gave their first demonstration just last year.

“We don’t see serious blockage except in cases like Morton Arboretum. There was a part of the parking lot that they didn’t use in the winter, and they dumped snow there all winter long. When all that melted, there was all this dirt, sand and silt that created a blockage.”

They used a special street sweeper with a 12” wide attachment to vacuum the chips out. The suction level was adjustable so it didn’t vacuum deep enough to remove setting bed stone. Bill says that works because they’ve found that blockages don’t exceed 2” in depth. The vast majority of that 8-year-old project has never been vacuumed out, but still drains nicely.

“Then we rechipped the pavers, and they drain as well as when they were first installed.”

Advanced Pavement Technology’s Bio-Aquifer Storm System requires a minimum 1’ depth of 3” open-graded rock, a 4” depth of 3/4" open-graded rock and a 1” to 2” depth of 3/8” chips to serve as the setting bed.