Tina Baughman, Magic Seal president, says the company does sealcoating, cracksealing, milling, paving, pavement repair, striping and concrete work.
Steve Baughman started the company in the summer of 1983 when he was 16 years old. He knocked on doors and sealed driveways. By 1989 he had added commercial sealcoating, and that summer Tina answered the phone for him while sitting on her mom’s patio. He soon learned that Rochester was a better market with more work and more lucrative work, so he began driving back and forth each day from Niagara County, and in 1994 he and Tina moved to Rochester with their two-truck operation. By 1996 he’d added two more trucks and in 1997 the two married and the operation had five sealcoating trucks. “We had six trucks in 2000 but we were still just doing sealcoating and crackfilling,” Tina says. “We only were working on residential driveways and commercial parking lots, but we were doing okay because we were able to send six trucks out every day.” In 2007 they added patching and paving, installing small driveways. And now Magic Seal runs two tear-out crews, a milling crew, and two paving crews (one commercial and on residential). All three crackfilling crews are dedicated to county work, which also was part of the plan.
Plans for WBE and County Work Magic Seal was on pace to sealcoat 15,000 driveways in 2016 but pulled its eighth sealer truck off the road to meet the demands of one of its other growth avenues – cracksealing county roads. Baughman says Magic Seal planned this expansion, researching bidding and deciding to obtain Women Business Enterprise status for the company. “We’ve always wanted to do county, town and state work,” Baughman says. “County work involves larger jobs, we can plan out our schedule for five days a week and we know that, in some cases, the job will last for 45 days. Those are all great reasons to work for the county and it was another step in our growth.” So the Baughmans researched public bidding and talked with other contractors about how best to pursue county work. Then deciding they wanted to specialize in cracksealing. “Cracksealing for counties extends our season as much as two months, which obviously helps the company but it enables us to keep guys on the payroll longer,” she says. “And employees especially like it because county work is prevailing wage work. It’s another step in our growth and cracksealing on roads has become a specialty we’re recognized for.” Helping Magic Seal break into the county market is the fact that Tina Baughman received her WBE certification in 2015. “We planned on
becoming a WBE company for a long time because we learned it is beneficial for bidding on county jobs.” She says she worked for six years before receiving her WBE status. Working primarily in the office, Tina Baughman handles sales, payroll, tax preparation, OSHA certification and compliance. Plus she is responsible for “anything with sealcoating,” she handles all county bids and where Steve does all commercial estimates – 30 a day – Tina follows up and schedules all commercial work and is the primary customer contact. Larger companies that are trying to fulfill the WBE requirements for their contracts can now turn to Magic Seal to fulfill those requirements for their paving needs.
Planned Productivity Bidding, scheduling and completing residential sealcoating is a fine-tuned operation at Magic Seal. “Our productivity is not just a factor of having eight trucks on the road,” Baughman says. The in-office call center takes the customer call, enters the address into a computer system. Magic Seal has invested money in a program that allows them to price out the driveway and schedule it all in the matter of minutes. She says the call center process and scheduling are the basis for their productivity but she says Magic Seal couldn’t be productive without its experienced, high-quality team. She says most people have been with the company a long time, the shortest term (other than a handful of seasonal laborers) being five years with 20 employees being with the company for 10 years or more. “Most of our employees have been with us 12-15 years.
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