SALES   SERVICE   SELECTION

A and I Services, Inc.

In 1986, two friends were laid off from the company they were working at. Forced with the prospect of finding another job, they decided to go it on their own in the East County part of San Diego. They were Dan Anderson and Dennis Iverson. To get our name listed first in the phone book, we became A and I Services.

 

A small office was rented in the back of a building called Old Cars and Parts. We were going to fix pumps and generators for all the folks that lived out in the country part of San Diego. It did not take us long to figure out that there was running water and electricity so it became apparent that there would not be a big need to fix pumps and generators.

 

Big Red was the machine of choice at that time in San Diego. Robert Strickland had one and wanted Dan to do some work on it. We worked on it till almost midnight when we got ready to put the oil back in that Perkins diesel. Yes, 7 quarts went into the top and 7 quarts came out the drain plug hole we had forgot to put back in. Bob was right there with us cleaning it up. The next day he stopped by and suggested we could market ourselves to the carpet cleaning industry. Dan and I looked at each other and did not see how we could make a living fixing Big Red carpet cleaning machines.

 

We decided to give it a try. We checked every resource we could think of to find the names and addresses of carpet cleaning companies. Started sending out flyers and we were in business.

 

This company in Ramona called us and asked if we could do a 1000 hour service on his Prochem 150. Wow, there was some other type of equipment besides the Big Reds. We had not heard of a Prochem but we said we would do it. He brought us the manual and ended up taking his entire machine apart one piece at a time. We kept looking at this manual and looking at the parts until we could identify each part. We found out how to order the parts and somehow put it back together again. (And it ran).

 

The company started to grow and it was not long before we needed to move into a larger store. We moved into a building a few doors down when that business went out of business. It was a little bit bigger and for the first time we had a show room to display a few of the products we were selling. We started searching for the best products in the industry along with the best people in the industry. We found the best products in the industry and we trained a lot of people in the process.

 

We get inspected each year by various government agencies. One of my favorite inspections was when the fire department showed up for the annual inspections in Santee. Their big fire truck was parked out in front of our building and they were walking around when I asked them if we needed more fire extinguishers? Their response was not to bother; with their truck parked in front of the building and if it caught fire, they could not put it out before the entire building burned down.

 

A and I Services continued to grow over the years and started distributing more and more products. It was decided to move to a more central location in the county. We ended up on Balboa Avenue right next door to the 94th Aero Squadron. We partnered with a wonderful man by the name of Jon Simmons. He owned a company called Hydraspec in La Habra. We started to grow even more; we changed our name to Hydraspec and opened a few additional locations. In the early 90s with the economy taking a nose dive, we found it hard to stay in business. We separated our companies and we were once again A and I Services. After a few years, the owner of that building sold and we were forced to leave.

 

That's how we ended up on Chesapeake. We were still growing but as all good companies know, we had very little cash. I remember driving our fork lift down a side street to our new location so we did not have to pay a tow truck to move it. We could not afford the rent on the whole building so we split the building in half and shared the building with Rayo. It was their first expantion. About a year later, Ed Young decided to build his own building in Santee and expand Rayo. We ended up with the whole building and Ed has not stopped growing Rayo.

 

In 1996 after 10 years as partners; Anderson and Iverson decided to go our own ways. Dan fixed a few truckmounts in his garage from time to time and Dennis kept A and I Services. A couple of years later, the owner of the building on Chesapeak Drive passed away and his two daughters became the owner. They decided that the rent at the building was way to low and tried to put us out of business with over priced rent. I decided it was time to return to Santee were the rent was affordable and with the new highway 52 in place we were not that far away. Or so I thought. The phone company decided that they did not want to burden us with phone calls for the first 30 days in our new building. So the rumors flew that we packed up in the night and were out of business.

 

We built a show room, class room, offices and service bays. It was a big empty warehouse when we moved in. I'm very proud of what we have now and continue to make improvements. Stop by and say hi. We always have coffee for you.

 

 

 

Dennis Iverson

 

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