Glenn Trusty, owner

Dr. Roof

1616 S. Roosevelt Drive

Seaside

503-717-1911 or www.drroofinc.com

Glenn Trusty, a former commercial fisherman, started Dr. Roof 16 years ago with two employees, including himself. He now employs 32 skilled tradespeople, with additional laborers hired in the summer. That includes the Seaside location on Roosevelt Drive, where Dr. Roof recently moved from Gearhart. The company, with locations in Seaside and Long Beach, Wash., specializes in coastal applications.

What services do you provide?

We do roofing, siding, windows, decks. Thats our mainstay roofing, siding, windows and decks. We also build pull buildings, and we do interior, minor remodels, residential, and we do light commercial. We do a lot of commercial roofing. We have three locations, one in Vancouver, Wash. We also cover the Portland market. We have a Long Beach location, and then here in Seaside. We go from Lincoln City to Ocean Shores (Wash.) on the coastline, and we go from Goldendale, Wash., west.

How did you get started in this business?

I had a friend who was in the roofing industry for 35 years, and he retired. I was in the commercial fishing industry, and I was a crab fisherman for right around 15, 16 years. This is our 16th year as Dr. Roof. About 16 years ago, I was helping a friend of mine, doing roofs. He was kind of teaching me the trade. He said I really feel you have the knowledge and are advanced enough to understand how to run a business well enough that I really think you should start a roofing company. And there really seemed to be a need for it here on the coast. There still is a need for qualified roofers. There are some good companies around, but most of them come from the outer-lying areas. I think when the economy crashed, there were a lot of people that put roofing on the side of their trucks or in their advertisements.

What is the volume of your business?

Usually were quite busy between about April to about the end of October, but we stay consistently busy with 32 employees year-round. Of course when the weathers better, it gets pretty crazy, and were running a lot harder, and more hours. The volume of business we do companywide is 70 roofs a month about 15 to 20 a month (out of the Seaside location). In the slower months, when the weathers not as good, you can only hope to get five or six (a month) in the wintertime.

What are the economic or other challenges facing your business?

One of the biggest challenges of running this business is the job-pool selection we have to choose from. Managing employees can be difficult. We drug test. We are only going to select from a very small portion of people we feel are qualified that we would have in our company. When you say drug testing, you scare off a very large portion of people in this area. Its hard to find good, dependable, clean, quality employees in this community. Of course your biggest liability is equipment, because you have so much equipment to maintain. I think we have 15 vehicles on the road on any given day, and thats a lot of liability. Economically, I think one of the biggest challenges we face is competition. Most of the competition that comes from the outer-lying areas does not know how to do a coastal application. We fix a lot of construction defects that others are doing. Our repair division is quite busy just from construction defects.