Patience, Co-operation, Hard-Work

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

First of all I would like to thank all of you for your patience. This week has been exceptionally busy. We have had tremendous progress. We have 3 new temporary trailers moved onto our property to aid us in managing the business while we wait for new building to be in place. Our Sales Team (Don Karas, Mike Barton, Darrell Karas and Chris McKee) as well as our Receptionists (Ashley McKee & Kaleigh Leithbridge) and finally me, Tom Stoate, will be located in the Sales Office. The Sales Office is positioned near our Hwy 11 entrance to the right of our bridge. The Parts' Office is located near our Service Centre to the right of the main building. Our Parts' Office will house our Parts' Manager, Bruce Baier and the members of the Parts' Team: Mike Drane and Andrew Mountain. Now the third trailer is critically important to our day to day operations - Real Bathrooms! Unfortunately our bathrooms were lost in the fire and the "Johnny on the Spots" that we currently have are falling out of favour.

On the administration and technology side our progress has been great. Almost all of the new computers have been set up. We do have a network server now and the majority of our electronic files were recovered. In the Sales Office, all the sales staff and our receptionists have computers and phones. Next week, they too will have access to the server. Our Parts Department will be moving into their office trailer over the next few days. On Tuesday, December 11 we will be receiving desks and filing cabinets to accomodate our sales, parts & administration staff. Currently we find that folding tables are multipurpose equipment that are worth their weight in gold.

Wallwin Electric has been instrumental in restoring electrical service to our property and the temporary offices. Thanks to GIT Security for their prompt response, creative solutions and hard work to ensure that our entire property and facilities have state-of-the-art protection. MTN Communications' service has been phenomenal. In fact, MTN was waiting with the staff of The Hitch House at McDonald's on Hwy 11 the day following the fire. As soon as the Fire Marshall allowed us to re-enter the property on Wednesday, November 28th MTN Communications and Bell worked furiously to restore our phone system. Since then MTN has been setting up communication solutions to accomodate all the temporary offices required to house our staff and services. Jakub of JKB Networks has been working extremely closely with Bruce Baier to re-establish our computers, networks and software programs. Jakub and Bruce have been putting in long hours and many, many consecutive days to ensure that our Information Technology infrastructure is in place and secure. For those of who know Bruce, I bet you didn't know that his technology expertise ran so deep.

The staff of The Hitch House have been absolutely wonderful through this entire rebuild. We have alot of work ahead of us; the cooperation of the staff and their willingness to do whatever it takes to move forward has been motivating, inspirational and makes me proud to be part of this team. Please keep in touch with us and follow our progress.