The battery boys………
I was raised in a junkyard. Not the automotive graveyard that might leap into your mind, it was more of a washing machine junkyard. We lived right across the freeway on the corner of Ball and Harbor in Anaheim California. We lived so close to Disneyland that the ashes from the nightly fireworks adorned our vehicles each morning. Most of the time you couldn’t tell anyway because of the on-going dirt experiment being conducted on the old Ford, or was it a Chevy? Actually one of our famous family cars was Bu-ford. It was a Buick with a Ford engine, or was it the other way around. My dad fixed used washers, dryers, stoves and refrigerators and sold them to a very appreciative community who saved more than half of the cost of a new one. The way he got started was by buying old apartment complexes and old run-down houses around Anaheim probably starting in the 1950’s. He would fix them up and rent them out. Back then, there were quite a few places for rent, and it wasn’t real easy to find renters. Dad happened upon an auction sale in Santa Ana at the Goodwill central warehouse. He bought an old washing machine, fixed it up a bit and placed it in one of his vacant rentals. After denoting this sparkling upgrade in the next “for-rent” ad, low and behold the place rented right away! Armed with this discovery and the need for parts to keep the first machine running, dad returned to the auction sale the next week.
Before long, the first bodies were beginning to appear in the Anaheim National junkyard. Not long after, the whole back section of our half acre was covered in not only old appliances but also anything and everything that “could” be used in a rental home, and “might” be used in a rental home! Three legged chairs, engine-less motorcycles, warped ping pong tables, you name it. My first recollection of being indoctrinated into the used appliance business was coming face to face with the biggest black widow spider known to man. I still have a horrible phobia of them today. I remember rebuilding my first Kenmore washing machine at about eleven years old. Dropping the transmission using a speed wrench and then knocking the top bearing out with a huge steel ramrod that weighed approximately twice what I did. We often supplemented our income by selling fixed up junk out front of our house. With the huge traffic flow on Ball Road, we usually had no problem selling a tricycle, red wagon, mini-bike etc. I had my first semester in Marketing when my dad scolded my brother for advising a potential client that “this is the lawnmower that SMOKES real bad when it gets hot!!” Many times I remember picking up old appliances at the Goodwill or Value Village for .99 cents! Sometimes after a little fixing and elbow grease we would sell them for ninety nine DOLLARS! Dad told me tongue in cheek that we had made 10%. That was lesson TWO in marketing! Anyway, dad made a pretty good living for our family in selling junk. Of course it certainly didn’t hurt that every penny he made he invested in real estate. Those were the days when you could buy property in Orange County for little or nothing down just as long as you took over the mortgage payment. Dad sold most of his property when it was at its height in the eighty’s. Lesson number THREE in marketing!
I often would do dad’s “outside service calls” when I was in high school. I would come home from school, load up my trusty Toyota Landcruiser with parts and tools and head out to two or three homes to service their non-washing machines. I think I had more money than most kids in the eleventh grade! Well to make a long story longer, my brother Mark was getting fed up with working for dad, probably because he was such a budding entrepreneur himself! He was getting antsy to do something else and dad knew it so when Dave McFadden purchased a clothes dryer from dad, he represented a solution to the problem. Dave was a sales manager for Taylor-Dunn Mfg about five miles west on Ball road. My dad mentioned in passing that his then eighteen year old son was looking for a job, and could Dave maybe pull some strings? Well, Dave pulled the right strings and my brother Mark was soon working in the service department at TD where they manufactured some real sturdy golf and industrial carts. Next time you see someone riding on a long cart in the airport terminal while the guy standing on the back driving is beeping that annoying horn at you, remember that it was probably built by Taylor Dunn. It didn’t take very long for Mark to work his way up the proverbial ladder at TD. What with his twelve years experience welding, sanding, and fixing everything from gadgets to gizmos, golf carts were a breeze! Soon the entrepreneurial juices were flowing though and Mark was off and running on his own. With ten thousand dollars that he had religiously saved while still living at home, he purchased a really ugly 1971 Ford E350 van and christened it as the first service vehicle in the fleet of the newly minted “Mark Kettler Electric Vehicle Service Company.” Other than the fact that his company name was WAY too long, he soon was on his way. He would call on golf courses, large manufacturing warehouses, nurseries, dairies and anyone else owning an electric cart!
His sales pitch was simple, maybe he learned it in marketing class at dad’s! “Whatever you pay for service from them, I can do it for half!” Good pitch…it worked excellent! Soon his business was off and running. Well about that same time, around 1977, dad had purchased a piece of property in Riverside. Dad had a buddy who I think had learned some of his marketing skills, and in turn twisted them around and USED them back on dad! Old Tom says to my dad, “ED, I know where there’s a swell piece of property that someone is selling for a song, if you give me five grand, I’ll show you where it is!” Now remember, this was one of his FRIENDS! Come to find out this super deal was in Riverside and actually it did turn out to be a super deal. Across the street though was a run down, half burned excuse for a building and wouldn’t you know it, my dad just had to find out who owned it! After learning that the owner would be thrilled to sell it for about $16,000.00, my dad suggested that my brother buy it. His EV service business was beginning to really take off, and with him single and living at home, he certainly could use the tax help!
I was just halfway through my senior year in high school when my brother asked me if I would like to come and work for him full time. Nothing against my father, but I really wanted to do something else besides appliances and also, I really liked how organized my brother was. My pop was great businessman but when it came to organization…let’s just say “that wasn’t one of his strength’s!” Mark was trying to figure out whether he would rent his new Riverside building out, or put some kind of business there. He had known of a guy in Orange County who made a lot of money selling rebuilt batteries, so he thought about that. He was already buying a lot of batteries for his golf car service business, so he decided to talk to the owners of the battery companies he was trading with and get their opinion. Convinced that it might be a good business to get into, he came to me with the plan. Now we had already fixed up his little building on Cypress street. We blacked the driveway and removed the weeds. We re-roofed it and rebuilt the inside part that was burned. After a few coats of paint, it actually looked presentable.
That is where “Mark Kettler Battery Company” started in 1979. He was still running his EV business, so I started with two long sheets of paper where on was printed in his handwriting the formula for success for our new venture! I wish I still had those sheets, somewhere they got laid aside. I do remember one distinct admonition…treat everyone with such great service that they actually talk about it next time they are getting a haircut! I remember his theory was, “just about everyone gives good service, other wise they would go out of business. However, to really succeed, you have to give super exceptional service!” I can say that we always tried to do that. I remember very well, not even knowing how to install a battery in a car when I started, but it’s amazing how people will go out of their way to help a young, energetic kid who has a good attitude! I remember the day I learned that a can of WD-40 will not stay on the air cleaner of a Ford Pinto when you start it. It will jump directly into the fan and slice the radiator from top to bottom right in front of your customer’s horrified eyes! I think it was me who instigated the change from “Mark Kettler Battery Service” to “MK Battery.” After writing that on a few checks, I was one of the early victims of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome even though we had never heard of it back then. It was about this time that Mark’s wife Cheri joined us by going out and doing some outside sales calls. She made a huge hit with the local business people and I have always been grateful to her for being able to walk into some of those dirty shops and hold her own with the tough mechanics! Cheri became somewhat of a legend in the Inland Empire area although they never could get her name right. The phone calls always came in for “Cherry!”
Brenda and I continued running the little battery shop for about a year or two while my brother Mark continued to run his EV business. As our battery shop started to do better and better, Mark decided to sell his EV business and start another battery shop near his home in Buena Park. He had run into an old friend named Mark Wels who he worked with at Taylor Dunn. Mark was just moving back into the area from up North and took Mark up on his offer to start another battery shop together. They opened near Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park on Stanton Ave. I remember being so proud because my battery shop now located on Van Buren Blvd in Riverside would out-sell theirs by an embarrassing margin in those days. I remember my brother saying once, “someday we’ll say, yeah…we have a little operation out in Riverside that moves a few batteries!” It turned out to be somewhat prophetic. What the Buena Park location lacked in retail sales to the public, Mark and Mark made up in wholesaling to large fleets. Soon after, probably around 1985 they discovered the huge misapplication of wet acid batteries in wheelchairs of all places! As if a disabled person doesn’t have enough to deal with, they had to find a way to service the batteries in their wheelchairs! Mark and Mark began searching for a quality sealed “GEL” type battery and they found one. They also found someone who could provide them with a battery charger that wouldn’t burn up the gel batteries and soon the market began to unfold. Rather than allow it to unfold, Mark and Mark UNFOLDED it with vigor! They soon were studying the medical organizations, hiring insiders who knew the business like Dennis Sharpe, and going to the medical trade shows to display their new idea to wheelchair dealers. Soon, the orders began pouring in from all over the country.
They struggled with the added shipping costs to the East Coast so Mark and Mark came up with a solution. Put a truckload of their product…in a sub-leased warehouse, and pay the owner of the warehouse a commission to package the shipments each day! Great plan, now for a very reasonable price, they were able to ship batteries to their East Coast customers in a matter of days. Their company continued to expand and add warehouses all over the country. Meanwhile back at the ranch in Riverside, I was running a nice little business selling batteries to the public, and to fleets of construction vehicles etc. I purchased a couple of my competitors along the way and expanded to three locations. Brenda and I ran the company for twenty years until I decided to sell it to one of the larger battery chains in the West Coast. I then went to work for my brothers company as the Western Region Sales Rep. The organization who purchased my company continues to prosper in the Inland Empire area and often two of my old locations lead all of their stores in profit. My brother and his partner Mark Wels decided to sell their company to a large, very respected battery manufacturer East Penn. Their company continues to grow and today has twenty two locations with a number of locations in Europe as well. Soon, I will be embarking on yet another business venture.
I am always amazed by the endless opportunity in our Country and the constant flow of the entrepreneurial spirit. Neither myself, my brother Mark or my dad Ed ever attended college. The one thing we all had in common was the chance. The chance for a couple of kids from the junkyard to make an impact on many people’s lives everyday. Almost everyday I see people in wheelchairs and I think to myself, “I bet those are MK batteries in there!” When I see them scooting about town, utilizing the mobility that our batteries afford them, I feel in some small way that what we have done makes a difference. Some people feel that corporations are evil. I always laugh when I think about who they turn to for donations…those same corporations aren’t so evil then! My brothers company has employed hundreds of people over the years. Many of them earn enough to afford beautiful homes for their families and are able to see their kids go to college. Is that so evil? What about the thousands of dollars that our company raises for different charities, medical associations which help disabled people, and local causes within our community, are those evil? Just one charity, Wheels for humanity, donates used wheelchairs to disabled people in third world countries. ( Check out www.ucpwfh.org ) MK Battery has donated hundreds of batteries to David RIchard and his fine organization. Every aspect of our business touches many lives, promotes commerce and adds to the ever spinning flywheel of capitalism in our great country. If socialism is so wonderful, why is everyone trying to come here? Are they riding in rickety boats to try to get from Florida to Cuba? Are they squeezing through the fence to get into Mexico? Those people desperately trying to come to our great country all want the same thing…not a handout, they just want a chance. The chance to have something they can call their own, something they can see grow and prosper without the fear of having it taken away by force.
Someone once said that the reason there is such good plumbing in America is because of all the people sitting there thinking about how they could build it better. Why? Because they might just get rich! If there is no incentive to make things better guess what, things will slowly get worse. What makes the United States the greatest country in the world is the chance, the chance to look at something and make it just a little bit better…or faster…or cooler or hotter. And then get rewarded for the effort. My brother made disabled people’s lives a little bit easier all over the world. Because of him and his partner’s company, there are more solar operated battery systems in world than there have ever been. Because of their company, literally millions of old junk hazardous batteries have been safely recycled using every part of them over and over again. This has helped the world’s ground water be just a little bit cleaner, and the landfills a little bit less toxic. All because a kid from the junkyard had an idea, saved up his hard earned money and took a chance when he was eighteen years old. In turn, the money he has made and loaned has spawned other businesses. Some of that money has purchased old run-down houses and fixed them up so people just starting out can have a nice home where the roof doesn’t leak and where some of that nice new plumbing is put to work. The people living in that house might never aspire to start a business. They might very well be happy with working at an hourly job. They might belong to some type of workers union. The thing that they don’t want to lose is the chance. The chance that if they ever did want to give it a try, they could and no one would hold them back. The government wouldn’t take so much from them that it wouldn’t even be worthwhile to try. This is what we need to fear. We need to fear losing our freedom, losing the opportunity, losing the chance. Thanks for letting me tell our story.
David Kettler
I was raised in a junkyard. Not the automotive graveyard that might leap into your mind, it was more of a washing machine junkyard. We lived right across the freeway on the corner of Ball and Harbor in Anaheim California. We lived so close to Disneyland that the ashes from the nightly fireworks adorned our vehicles each morning. Most of the time you couldn’t tell anyway because of the on-going dirt experiment being conducted on the old Ford, or was it a Chevy? Actually one of our famous family cars was Bu-ford. It was a Buick with a Ford engine, or was it the other way around. My dad fixed used washers, dryers, stoves and refrigerators and sold them to a very appreciative community who saved more than half of the cost of a new one. The way he got started was by buying old apartment complexes and old run-down houses around Anaheim probably starting in the 1950’s. He would fix them up and rent them out. Back then, there were quite a few places for rent, and it wasn’t real easy to find renters. Dad happened upon an auction sale in Santa Ana at the Goodwill central warehouse. He bought an old washing machine, fixed it up a bit and placed it in one of his vacant rentals. After denoting this sparkling upgrade in the next “for-rent” ad, low and behold the place rented right away! Armed with this discovery and the need for parts to keep the first machine running, dad returned to the auction sale the next week.
Before long, the first bodies were beginning to appear in the Anaheim National junkyard. Not long after, the whole back section of our half acre was covered in not only old appliances but also anything and everything that “could” be used in a rental home, and “might” be used in a rental home! Three legged chairs, engine-less motorcycles, warped ping pong tables, you name it. My first recollection of being indoctrinated into the used appliance business was coming face to face with the biggest black widow spider known to man. I still have a horrible phobia of them today. I remember rebuilding my first Kenmore washing machine at about eleven years old. Dropping the transmission using a speed wrench and then knocking the top bearing out with a huge steel ramrod that weighed approximately twice what I did. We often supplemented our income by selling fixed up junk out front of our house. With the huge traffic flow on Ball Road, we usually had no problem selling a tricycle, red wagon, mini-bike etc. I had my first semester in Marketing when my dad scolded my brother for advising a potential client that “this is the lawnmower that SMOKES real bad when it gets hot!!” Many times I remember picking up old appliances at the Goodwill or Value Village for .99 cents! Sometimes after a little fixing and elbow grease we would sell them for ninety nine DOLLARS! Dad told me tongue in cheek that we had made 10%. That was lesson TWO in marketing! Anyway, dad made a pretty good living for our family in selling junk. Of course it certainly didn’t hurt that every penny he made he invested in real estate. Those were the days when you could buy property in Orange County for little or nothing down just as long as you took over the mortgage payment. Dad sold most of his property when it was at its height in the eighty’s. Lesson number THREE in marketing!
I often would do dad’s “outside service calls” when I was in high school. I would come home from school, load up my trusty Toyota Landcruiser with parts and tools and head out to two or three homes to service their non-washing machines. I think I had more money than most kids in the eleventh grade! Well to make a long story longer, my brother Mark was getting fed up with working for dad, probably because he was such a budding entrepreneur himself! He was getting antsy to do something else and dad knew it so when Dave McFadden purchased a clothes dryer from dad, he represented a solution to the problem. Dave was a sales manager for Taylor-Dunn Mfg about five miles west on Ball road. My dad mentioned in passing that his then eighteen year old son was looking for a job, and could Dave maybe pull some strings? Well, Dave pulled the right strings and my brother Mark was soon working in the service department at TD where they manufactured some real sturdy golf and industrial carts. Next time you see someone riding on a long cart in the airport terminal while the guy standing on the back driving is beeping that annoying horn at you, remember that it was probably built by Taylor Dunn. It didn’t take very long for Mark to work his way up the proverbial ladder at TD. What with his twelve years experience welding, sanding, and fixing everything from gadgets to gizmos, golf carts were a breeze! Soon the entrepreneurial juices were flowing though and Mark was off and running on his own. With ten thousand dollars that he had religiously saved while still living at home, he purchased a really ugly 1971 Ford E350 van and christened it as the first service vehicle in the fleet of the newly minted “Mark Kettler Electric Vehicle Service Company.” Other than the fact that his company name was WAY too long, he soon was on his way. He would call on golf courses, large manufacturing warehouses, nurseries, dairies and anyone else owning an electric cart!
His sales pitch was simple, maybe he learned it in marketing class at dad’s! “Whatever you pay for service from them, I can do it for half!” Good pitch…it worked excellent! Soon his business was off and running. Well about that same time, around 1977, dad had purchased a piece of property in Riverside. Dad had a buddy who I think had learned some of his marketing skills, and in turn twisted them around and USED them back on dad! Old Tom says to my dad, “ED, I know where there’s a swell piece of property that someone is selling for a song, if you give me five grand, I’ll show you where it is!” Now remember, this was one of his FRIENDS! Come to find out this super deal was in Riverside and actually it did turn out to be a super deal. Across the street though was a run down, half burned excuse for a building and wouldn’t you know it, my dad just had to find out who owned it! After learning that the owner would be thrilled to sell it for about $16,000.00, my dad suggested that my brother buy it. His EV service business was beginning to really take off, and with him single and living at home, he certainly could use the tax help!
I was just halfway through my senior year in high school when my brother asked me if I would like to come and work for him full time. Nothing against my father, but I really wanted to do something else besides appliances and also, I really liked how organized my brother was. My pop was great businessman but when it came to organization…let’s just say “that wasn’t one of his strength’s!” Mark was trying to figure out whether he would rent his new Riverside building out, or put some kind of business there. He had known of a guy in Orange County who made a lot of money selling rebuilt batteries, so he thought about that. He was already buying a lot of batteries for his golf car service business, so he decided to talk to the owners of the battery companies he was trading with and get their opinion. Convinced that it might be a good business to get into, he came to me with the plan. Now we had already fixed up his little building on Cypress street. We blacked the driveway and removed the weeds. We re-roofed it and rebuilt the inside part that was burned. After a few coats of paint, it actually looked presentable.
That is where “Mark Kettler Battery Company” started in 1979. He was still running his EV business, so I started with two long sheets of paper where on was printed in his handwriting the formula for success for our new venture! I wish I still had those sheets, somewhere they got laid aside. I do remember one distinct admonition…treat everyone with such great service that they actually talk about it next time they are getting a haircut! I remember his theory was, “just about everyone gives good service, other wise they would go out of business. However, to really succeed, you have to give super exceptional service!” I can say that we always tried to do that. I remember very well, not even knowing how to install a battery in a car when I started, but it’s amazing how people will go out of their way to help a young, energetic kid who has a good attitude! I remember the day I learned that a can of WD-40 will not stay on the air cleaner of a Ford Pinto when you start it. It will jump directly into the fan and slice the radiator from top to bottom right in front of your customer’s horrified eyes! I think it was me who instigated the change from “Mark Kettler Battery Service” to “MK Battery.” After writing that on a few checks, I was one of the early victims of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome even though we had never heard of it back then. It was about this time that Mark’s wife Cheri joined us by going out and doing some outside sales calls. She made a huge hit with the local business people and I have always been grateful to her for being able to walk into some of those dirty shops and hold her own with the tough mechanics! Cheri became somewhat of a legend in the Inland Empire area although they never could get her name right. The phone calls always came in for “Cherry!”
Brenda and I continued running the little battery shop for about a year or two while my brother Mark continued to run his EV business. As our battery shop started to do better and better, Mark decided to sell his EV business and start another battery shop near his home in Buena Park. He had run into an old friend named Mark Wels who he worked with at Taylor Dunn. Mark was just moving back into the area from up North and took Mark up on his offer to start another battery shop together. They opened near Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park on Stanton Ave. I remember being so proud because my battery shop now located on Van Buren Blvd in Riverside would out-sell theirs by an embarrassing margin in those days. I remember my brother saying once, “someday we’ll say, yeah…we have a little operation out in Riverside that moves a few batteries!” It turned out to be somewhat prophetic. What the Buena Park location lacked in retail sales to the public, Mark and Mark made up in wholesaling to large fleets. Soon after, probably around 1985 they discovered the huge misapplication of wet acid batteries in wheelchairs of all places! As if a disabled person doesn’t have enough to deal with, they had to find a way to service the batteries in their wheelchairs! Mark and Mark began searching for a quality sealed “GEL” type battery and they found one. They also found someone who could provide them with a battery charger that wouldn’t burn up the gel batteries and soon the market began to unfold. Rather than allow it to unfold, Mark and Mark UNFOLDED it with vigor! They soon were studying the medical organizations, hiring insiders who knew the business like Dennis Sharpe, and going to the medical trade shows to display their new idea to wheelchair dealers. Soon, the orders began pouring in from all over the country.
They struggled with the added shipping costs to the East Coast so Mark and Mark came up with a solution. Put a truckload of their product…in a sub-leased warehouse, and pay the owner of the warehouse a commission to package the shipments each day! Great plan, now for a very reasonable price, they were able to ship batteries to their East Coast customers in a matter of days. Their company continued to expand and add warehouses all over the country. Meanwhile back at the ranch in Riverside, I was running a nice little business selling batteries to the public, and to fleets of construction vehicles etc. I purchased a couple of my competitors along the way and expanded to three locations. Brenda and I ran the company for twenty years until I decided to sell it to one of the larger battery chains in the West Coast. I then went to work for my brothers company as the Western Region Sales Rep. The organization who purchased my company continues to prosper in the Inland Empire area and often two of my old locations lead all of their stores in profit. My brother and his partner Mark Wels decided to sell their company to a large, very respected battery manufacturer East Penn. Their company continues to grow and today has twenty two locations with a number of locations in Europe as well. Soon, I will be embarking on yet another business venture.
I am always amazed by the endless opportunity in our Country and the constant flow of the entrepreneurial spirit. Neither myself, my brother Mark or my dad Ed ever attended college. The one thing we all had in common was the chance. The chance for a couple of kids from the junkyard to make an impact on many people’s lives everyday. Almost everyday I see people in wheelchairs and I think to myself, “I bet those are MK batteries in there!” When I see them scooting about town, utilizing the mobility that our batteries afford them, I feel in some small way that what we have done makes a difference. Some people feel that corporations are evil. I always laugh when I think about who they turn to for donations…those same corporations aren’t so evil then! My brothers company has employed hundreds of people over the years. Many of them earn enough to afford beautiful homes for their families and are able to see their kids go to college. Is that so evil? What about the thousands of dollars that our company raises for different charities, medical associations which help disabled people, and local causes within our community, are those evil? Just one charity, Wheels for humanity, donates used wheelchairs to disabled people in third world countries. ( Check out www.ucpwfh.org ) MK Battery has donated hundreds of batteries to David RIchard and his fine organization. Every aspect of our business touches many lives, promotes commerce and adds to the ever spinning flywheel of capitalism in our great country. If socialism is so wonderful, why is everyone trying to come here? Are they riding in rickety boats to try to get from Florida to Cuba? Are they squeezing through the fence to get into Mexico? Those people desperately trying to come to our great country all want the same thing…not a handout, they just want a chance. The chance to have something they can call their own, something they can see grow and prosper without the fear of having it taken away by force.
Someone once said that the reason there is such good plumbing in America is because of all the people sitting there thinking about how they could build it better. Why? Because they might just get rich! If there is no incentive to make things better guess what, things will slowly get worse. What makes the United States the greatest country in the world is the chance, the chance to look at something and make it just a little bit better…or faster…or cooler or hotter. And then get rewarded for the effort. My brother made disabled people’s lives a little bit easier all over the world. Because of him and his partner’s company, there are more solar operated battery systems in world than there have ever been. Because of their company, literally millions of old junk hazardous batteries have been safely recycled using every part of them over and over again. This has helped the world’s ground water be just a little bit cleaner, and the landfills a little bit less toxic. All because a kid from the junkyard had an idea, saved up his hard earned money and took a chance when he was eighteen years old. In turn, the money he has made and loaned has spawned other businesses. Some of that money has purchased old run-down houses and fixed them up so people just starting out can have a nice home where the roof doesn’t leak and where some of that nice new plumbing is put to work. The people living in that house might never aspire to start a business. They might very well be happy with working at an hourly job. They might belong to some type of workers union. The thing that they don’t want to lose is the chance. The chance that if they ever did want to give it a try, they could and no one would hold them back. The government wouldn’t take so much from them that it wouldn’t even be worthwhile to try. This is what we need to fear. We need to fear losing our freedom, losing the opportunity, losing the chance. Thanks for letting me tell our story.
David Kettler