What we do, from ice out to November

Why the map stops at ten lakes

There are dock companies in this state running five branches and servicing water 4 hours apart. This one covers ten lakes inside about half an hour of the shop on Forest Boulevard, and that’s a decision rather than a limit.

Blake Dalbec puts it plainly: We are not trying to go up to Brainerd. We are not trying to go up to Duluth. We are specialized in our area. The reason is that response time is the service. Somebody who calls on a Saturday in July because the lift will not go up does not care how wide the map is. He cares whether anyone is standing on his dock that day, and the only way to answer yes is to be 20 minutes away with the part already on the shelf.

The second reason is the bottom. Ten lakes worked every week for years is ten lake bottoms known by section: where the sand gives out on Forest Lake, where the rock starts on White Bear, which stretch of Bald Eagle needs the longer run. That isn’t knowledge that transfers from a catalog, and it isn’t knowledge a crew picks up on water it visits twice a season.

The same standard on a 12 foot dock and a 10,000 pound lift

Asked what he is proudest of, Blake doesn’t talk about volume, which for the largest FLOE dealer in Minnesota and the second in the nation would be the easy answer.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a 12 foot dock or a 100 foot dock, or a personal watercraft lift or a 10,000 pound MAXIS™ lift. We treat every customer exactly the same.

Any business would say that. What makes it checkable here’s the shape of the work. The crew that sets a 200 foot run on Forest Lake in April is the crew that comes back in July for one pulley, and the spring route is 85 hour weeks worked by five to seven seasonal people added to a year round team that has been together the better part of two decades. Nothing is subcontracted, so the small job can’t be handed to somebody cheaper. There’s nobody cheaper to hand it to.

The line we stopped selling

In 2018 this dealership started carrying an entry level dock and lift line. The reasoning was ordinary: sales were being lost at the bottom of the market to cheaper equipment, and a second line answered that.

It worked on revenue and it failed on customers. About half of the people who bought the entry level product came back to say the dock felt wobbly or the lift wasn’t working right. In 2020 the line was dropped and the business went exclusively FLOE, and it has stayed that way.

That’s the argument for every product on this site, and it’s worth more than a specification sheet because it cost something to learn. A dealer who has only ever sold one brand is telling you what he was given. A dealer who sold the cheaper thing for 2 seasons, listened to what came back off the shoreline and gave up the revenue is telling you what he found out.

Why nobody will give you a date in April

Every spring somebody asks for a date certain. The 28th, say, for Clear Lake. The honest answer is no, and the reason is worth setting out, because it’s the same reason the work gets done at all.

Installation runs lake by lake rather than customer by customer. A small lake is finished in a single day, every dock on it, which means everyone on that lake has to be ready on the same day. Move one customer and the whole lake moves. Wind decides which shoreline is worked first, because sections can’t be set into a chop running at the bank the crew is standing on. And ice out sets the start, which isn’t the same date two years running.

What we can tell you is the order. Ice out starts it, the fishing opener is roughly when the last dock goes in, repairs run right through the season because a cable gives out in July rather than in April, and everything is out of the water by November 1. What we can’t tell you in March is which Tuesday is yours.