Now that really cold weather is approaching, it has occurred to me that a lot of people aren’t prepared for it. It’s not necessarily because they don’t know or they haven’t had time. It’s more likely a “ya I know it could happen but I’m doing other things” situation.

I can honestly tell you, from my upbringing in the mountains of Colorado to my military years in Nebraska and Wyoming, not being prepared to inclement weather is a risk to your life. We can sit at home, turn the thermostat up, and make ourselves believe we’re OK, but things can change without warning, and they often do. Let’s talk about common situations a lot of people aren’t prepared for:

It’s 10 below with 30 below wind chill. There’s 18 inches of snow on the ground and your road probably won’t be plowed for 24 hours or more. You’re nice an warm in your house, watching Netflix while the kids play video games. You have a little food in the refrigerator and the electric bill has been paid, so you’re in good shape, right?

Suddenly a Chevy slides off the road and hits a power pole a mile away and knocks out power to the whole neighborhood. Without power, your TV doesn’t work. Worse yet, your furnace doesn’t work! What are you going to do?

Preparation in advance can prevent serious problems later. With a cheap little generator and a little freely accessible knowledge, you can make enough power to run your generator, refrigerator, and a couple of lights…..enough to survive if you have to. It doesn’t cost a lot, but it could save your life.

Next scenario: You own a diesel vehicle. You filled up the tank before the cold snap, and it’s the middle of the night. Nobody is out on the roads, but you have to go check on Grandma. You left without a coat because the heater in your vehicle works really well. You’re out in the middle of nowhere when the engine dies as if it’s out of fuel. Now you have no motion, no way to stay warm. There’s no cell phone service where you are. The clock is ticking.

Again, preparation in advance could save your life. Packing a winter survival kit is cheap and easy and doesn’t take up a lot of space in your vehicle. One thing few people who own diesels think of, is Diesel 911 (or similar). When diesel gets cold it turns to gelatin and becomes so thick a fuel pump can’t pump it. It can happen going down the road, even with a newer vehicle. Worse yet, some gas stations will wait until absolutely necessary to buy “winter blend” fuel, which has anti-gel additives. If you had Diesel 911 in your vehicle, you could pour some in your fuel tank, wait 5-10 minutes, start your vehicle, and keep driving. I’ve done it and it works great….potentially life-saving!

However continuously using Diesel 911 or similar additives could do damage to your engine. Use in case of emergency ONLY.

3rd scenario: You’re driving to check on Grandma. You round a curve and slide off the road, landing in the trees where nobody can see you from the road. The vehicle won’t start, but at least you have enough supplies to survive a few hours. However your cell phone battery is almost dead. Before you call for help, it might be a good idea to change your voicemail message to give your location. That way if the call for help gets dropped anyone trying to call your phone will know your location whether your phone works or not!

I hope these tips are useful to you, and I hope you never need them! None of us will know if you’ll need them until it’s too late, so please be prepared for the worst and hope it never happens!

For our parting shot, check out Adrienne dressed for the weather as we repair a hangar door:

Dynamic Custom Services performs shop fabrication and can ship anywhere in the country! This steel for a commercial door opening in a block wall is on its way to Georgia!

www.dynamicservice.biz

810-522-9002

When you’re in the service business, meaning you serve people when their needs arise, a lot of times their needs don’t arise when it’s convenient. Sometimes you can initiate a “temporary fix,” and other times you’re stuck with doing it right when the moment is very inconvenient.

Very early in my military career I learned to always be ready for those inconvenient times, and there have been very few instances where I didn’t at least have a contingency plan in place. I’ve learned to know my customers’ needs, and make sure I could engage a worst case scenario fully prepared.

A typical case began about 5 weeks ago. A truck hit a VERY expensive high performance door at an ambulance facility we’re responsible for. We immediately gathered tools and equipment, and went to assess the problem. After a couple of hours of bending this, straightening that, and programming the door’s computer to be more tolerant of questionable conditions, we managed to make it so the door could be opened in an emergency, and verified the other identical door was going to be fully operational until the manufacturer could send us a new curtain, hardware, and seals. We provided the building owners with instructions as to how to open the broken door in an emergency, and got replacement parts on order.

When replacement parts came in, we reminded ourselves that getting that door operational is a high priority, because if an ambulance can’t get out of that building then someone’s life will be at stake. We got materials and equipment on site that day, which was a Friday, and proceeded to do major surgery on the door the next morning.

Given the complexity of changing a high performance door curtain, especially when it weighs 2200 lbs., there was serious concern about safety, keeping the paint pristine, etc. It was very stressful, but by the end of the day there was a beautiful new door curtain in place, and the door was fully operational, on a Saturday afternoon! The EMT’s literally applauded us and cheered “Many thanks!”

What’s the lesson here? Even if problems can’t be solved overnight, they’re still a priority. Dynamic Custom Services takes pride in our ability to solve problems, and we take EVERY problem seriously!

Call us at 810-522-9002 or reach out using our contact page!

#commercial overhead doors #rollup doors #garage door repair #emergency service

During my adult life I’ve operated quite a few different businesses. When I was in the Air Force I always had a “side business,” repairing vehicles, welding, repairing computers, building web sites, building internet kiosks (remember that 5 minutes when they were popular?), you name it. After retiring from military life, I only made it a couple of years before I felt the need to be back in business, in charge of my own destiny.

I grew up in a business environment. My parents always had (and still have) various businesses going. It’s really hard to me to think of life in a different way. Yes, I loved my military career, but it was the freedom and challenge of making money other ways that kept me going.

Business hasn’t always been easy and it hasn’t always been fun. Yes, I’ve gotten my butt kicked a few hundred times. On the flip side it’s very gratifying to develop a good relationship with a customer, do a good job for them, and of course make money doing it.

Since we started Dynamic Custom Services, I’ve had quite a few people ask me “Why?”, and “What’s different?” The big WHY is, COVID brought a lot of changes to the business environment, and the construction world in general. Those changes forced us to rethink what’s important, and how to serve the best customers using our best talents. Dynamic Custom Services is our way of doing that.

So what’s different from the past businesses? Everything and nothing all at once. Dynamic Custom Services is more focused than past businesses, and it’s back to being reliant on “mostly me” for the labor/technical side. With Charlene working marketing and management, Adrienne and I can focus directly on serving customers. As the business grows, we’ll be very cautious about who we hire and make absolutely sure they will fit into our team, both talent-wise, and customer service-wise.

While Dynamic Custom Services is primarily focused on exterior access, like overhead doors, architectural fences, gates, access controls, industrial fabrication, metal building repairs, etc., our primary focus is on serving old customers in new ways. We have a lot to offer, and of course we need to have a million conversations with people we’ve known a long time.

Long story short, if you know us and you need help with something, let’s talk about whether your need fits our new business. Odds are good we can help you, and if we can’t we can help you figure out who can.

We’re very optimistic about the future of Dynamic Custom Services! Give us a call at 810-522-9002 or fill out our contact form so we can help you with your future!

Last Friday I was woken up at 3:30 AM. An ambulance door had broken a cable and wasn’t operable. Of course, that’s not a situation that can typically wait a week to address, so I drug myself out of bed and went to take care of it. That’s NOT where I’m going with this story:

We do a lot of work in support of first responders. We perform maintenance on overhead doors, exterior access doors, aircraft hangar doors, and almost anything else first responders need. We even work on jail cell doors and security gates from time to time! When you think about the importance of a simple door or gate, the conversation becomes critical when it comes to first response. Here’s why:

If the door in question had broken with the ambulance inside the building, and you’re Facebooking your way to work while eating a donut….happen to cut off a semi truck and get smacked….Is that door going to mean the difference between life and death for you or the semi truck driver?

There are things in this world that are easy to ignore. One of them is an ambulance sitting there waiting for you to have a bad day is supported by a whole team of people you’ll probably never meet. At the same time, their focus is on making sure that if you get into a situation they will be able to get you out of it!

Those people procure and maintain the ambulances, make sure medical equipment and supplies are in them. They build and maintain entire buildings and make sure there’s power and heat to keep everything perfect when you’re at your least perfect moment.

They maintain and fly helicopters and airplanes in case you need to be airlifted to a hospital or need an organ transplant. They spend countless hours making sure that fire truck is ready and they are fully trained for you to have a bad day.

They make sure that police car has had it’s oil changed on time, tires rotated and balanced, and it’s equipped to perform a million different tasks.

Yes, we maintain doors and gates and repair the buildings. We’re a very small part of a HUGE team of people who are diligently working to make your day less crappy, and hopefully help you live to see a better day.

Next time you’re rolling down the freeway and have to pull over to let a fire truck and 2 ambulances pass, please put your phone down and be thankful and in awe of the huge effort it has taken for your day to be slightly inconvenienced. THEN, when you get to the scene, make sure you slow down and give first responders room to safely do their jobs!

….And of course it’s important to call Dynamic Custom Services so we can be part of your team too!

A lot of people have asked me what ButterflyMX is, and how we ended up choosing them as our main access control supplier. Of course there are hundreds of other ways to control access, and I know how to make most of them work. The hardware and solid infrastructure is easy and semi-standard across most platforms. It’s mostly stuff I learned in 1983 and have improved upon ever since.

First, let’s talk about “why.” Quite honestly, one thing that didn’t exist in 1983 (at least in today’s form) is RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). We have a really good customer who begged me for years to find a way to use RFID to allow their vehicles seamless access into and out of multiple buildings. I contacted several access control companies, including one owned by a close contact. Quite honestly, none of them had time to entertain a new contract, so I had to figure it out myself. Never challenge Gary like that….he’ll put himself into business in nothing flat!

Long story short, I did a lot of research, found a lot of options, and made contact with them all. In the end, we have great contacts with a lot of companies, but ButterflyMX has allowed and encouraged us to become a certified dealer and certified installer. They offer the most reliable and classiest interfaces around, and they support me (as installer) and you (as customer) as if we’re both made of gold! So of course, I’m very excited about dealing with the best.

Now the “what.” ButterflyMX can be interfaced with any access control anywhere, anytime, anyplace that you can get power and internet. With technology like Starlink out there, there almost isn’t a limit! (Isn’t this world a great place?) Of course, wired connections are more reliable and so forth, but there are plenty of ways to make things happen!

ButterflyMX has access controls that range along keypads, temporary/permanent QR codes, video interfaces, NFC (touch a phone, card, badge, etc), and many other ways to allow access. Controls are scalable across a single door or gate all the way up to entire manufacturing plants, communities, or worldwide corporations. They work in both commercial and residential environments.

• A resident in a condo complex can be on the beach in Florida, and let the plumber in “for an hour” in Michigan.
• A plant maintenance manager can be signing a customer in the front door while they’re on a forklift in a different building.
• A security team can manage access to multiple gated properties from multiple locations while they’re patrolling the properties personally! No more sitting at a security gate all night!
• A homeowner can control access to their property from the comfort of their living room, visually seeing the person wanting access, verifying the need, and opening the gate via video interface. Alternatively they can send Aunt Martha a QR code via text, email, etc., and that QR code can be a onetime use, time limited use, or permanent key, and of course they can revoke access after they taste her apple pie recipe 😉

With ButterflyMX, the range of options is limitless, and Dynamic Custom Services provides the hardware, expertise, and ongoing support you need to put it all together.

When you need to discuss access control, remember ButterflyMX isn’t our only option, but it’s our favorite! Contact Dynamic Custom Services at 810-522-9002 so we can discuss what’s right for you!

Dynamic Custom Services had a great time in the sun retrofitting a hangar door’s latch system! What an incredible project!

Call us for your aircraft hangar door needs! 810-522-9002