A lot of professional cleaners come into the cleaning business and for all kinds of reasons.
Setting up MTA Carpet Cleaning helped owner Terry Aldridge through personal grief.
“My wife Mandy passed in 2016,” he tells us. “I was driving HGVs at the time but before that had worked as a cleaner for seven years. When her dad suggested I help manage my loss by doing something different for work, I decided to go back to an occupation I loved.”
And Terry’s doing it for someone he loved. “MTA stands for Mandy Terry Aldridge, our branding is yellow, Mandy’s favourite colour, and the logo is an owl, her favourite animal,” he explains.
He set the business up in 2017 and ‘went Prochem’ from the off and today runs a Steempro Powermax and most recently an additional Steempro Powerplus.
Terry’s tech
“I love them,” says Terry. “They do a fantastic job and I have had terrific support from Prochem’s distributor Cleaning Solutions in Taunton.”
Taunton is hardly local to Berkshire but Terry pushes the logistics one side.
“I’m used to long-distance driving,” he says, “and anyway, if you get good service, it’s worth putting in a few more hours yourself.”
Didcot-based Terry works domestic and commercial contracts within an hour’s drive from home.
“It basically takes me into Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire as well as my home county”, he says.
Most of his work is domestic and comes from recommendations via social media posts of videos and before and after photos. “I also do end-of-tenancy cleans and a bingo hall in town,” he says.
“My wife and I used to go there weekly and when they heard I had taken up cleaning again, they asked me to do their premises, which was very kind. So, I carry out a deep clean of the entire building’s carpets every six months.
A Prochem fan, Terry also uses the company’s chemicals. Favourites include S775 Extraction Plus, S760 Liquid Defoamer, S710 Trafficlean, B224 Cherry Carpet Deodoriser and B117 Lemon Refresh (“I need bigger containers of that one,” he exclaims. “I get through a litre a week!”)
Terry cleans up at the Bingo
Looking to the next decade, Terry has his sights set on getting more commercial business and upgrading to a Prochem truckmount machine.
He’ll be back at Cleaning Solutions, of course, where the company’s Will Smyth plans further diversity for this distribution business next year including launching a new lease purchase plan.
“Terry could be interested in this,” he says. “Leasing seems more beneficial than outright purchase for some of our customers not least as it removes the need for capital outlay, enabling the machine to pay for itself as you go along.
“Right now, we’re doing a deal where you pay nothing for the first six months!”