Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
OnTrac Garage Doors: Chris Colton's Journey from West Coast to Alabama and Garage Door Innovation
When your garage door groans louder than your morning coffee maker, it's time to listen in on my chat with Chris Colton, the spirited owner of OnTrac Garage Doors. Chris's tale isn't just a business narrative; it's a heartfelt story of a family's bold move from the sunny coasts of California to the welcoming heart of Alabama, and the birth of a legacy that's changing the way we look at the humble garage door.
Strap in as we ride through the transformation of Chris's career, from beginnings sweeping floors in the family business to establishing one of the largest residential garage door dealers in Birmingham. His dedication to customer service is as unwavering as a well-oiled garage door track. Chris and his team's philosophy strikes the perfect balance between personal touch and professional service—a tale of growth, dreams, and the kind of neighborly goodwill that makes you want to bake a pie just to have a reason to say hello. Join us for a conversation that might just make you push the button to see your own garage door in a new light. #GNPBirmingham #OnTracGarageDoors #BirminghamGarageDoors #Birmingham #GarageDoors #garagedoor #garage #garagedoorservice #garagedoorrepair #garagedoorinstallation #doors #garagegoals #homeimprovement #garagedooropener #home #liftmaster #garagedoorlife #newgaragedoor #garagedoorreplacement #garagedoorsprings #garagedoormaintenance #sectionaldoors #garages #curbappeal #renovation #overheaddoors #garagedooropeners #garagedoorrepairs #homerenovation
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Chris Colton, and Chris is the owner of OnTrack Garage Doors in Birmingham. Chris, how are you today?
Speaker 3:Good morning, I'm doing great. How are you?
Speaker 2:Wonderful hey, tell me a little bit about your business.
Speaker 3:So we are a residential garage door company specializing anything from service on or repairs in your garage door. If you're having a loud, noisy, squeaky garage door, you've got a problem. Your garage door is on the floor, sitting on top of your car. We can come out and fix it. If you need something new, we can come out and replace it. If you're building a new construction home, we can supply you with all different kinds of options to best fit your home with the perfect garage door to boost your curb appeal of your home. So anything in between we can do it.
Speaker 2:You know it's not something you think about very often. Your garage door you press the button it opens, you go in and the door goes down. That's it. It occurs to me that it might need just a little bit more attention in order to work longer and more efficiently for you and not end up being on your car one morning.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we get that a lot. Nobody thinks about their garage door until when you hit that button and it doesn't open or close properly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we can work with you on that right.
Speaker 3:Definitely yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, tell our listeners about you have a really interesting journey, chris.
Speaker 3:Tell us how you got here, not only with Garage Doors, but here in Alabama 1994, my dad started OnTrack Garage Door Company out of our home in California and he started it by himself. Our warehouse was our garage. He'd leave super early in the morning, go out, pick up material, go do estimates, service calls, installs, and figured he didn't want to do that forever by himself so he hired a guy and hired a guy, and hired a guy and in the early 2000s we were up to about 80 employees at one time in California. We're one of the largest dealers in California for residential garage doors. I started working for the company when I was 14, 15 years old in the summer sweeping the warehouse floors, cleaning the trucks, unloading trucks for the for the installers and service techs for the next day, and somehow fell in love with it. Didn't think that I was going to be doing garage doors for my entire life, but 22 years later I'm still in it.
Speaker 3:And about almost four years ago my family my wife and our four boys made a decision that we needed to change our lifestyle and get out of California.
Speaker 3:And we had some family here in Alabama and we fell in love with the area and the people and the way of life and so I told my dad hey, we're moving, I'm quitting the company and need to change something. So we moved cross country our four boys, two dogs, my wife had some chickens that she wanted to move, and so we came across the country, found a place out here in the country and fell in love with it. And things at the company that I came out here to work for weren't going the way that I wanted to, and so we made a plan, me and my dad, to expand OnTrack Garage Doors into the Birmingham area, and so June of this year 2024, will be our first year completed in Alabama and things have just blown up. Completed in Alabama and things have just blown up, and I think in part to that is the customer service that we can provide to every single customer that calls OnTrack Garage Doors.
Speaker 2:So that's Well tell us a little about that. I mean unpack that.
Speaker 3:So my idea of a perfect company would be somebody that can answer the phone, give you answers that you want and come out and either service service your garage doors, install new garage doors, give you a free estimate on a new garage door for your home In a timely manner and have all your questions asked in one appointment.
Speaker 2:So I mean, you're you're trying to hit a sweet spot. Either you are going to be a one man shop you know, one arm paper hanger, who, who answers his phone sporadically or, on the other end, get really, really big and end up being that call center that you know you can't get beyond that. You have to leave a message, are you? Are you kind of trying to wedge into that very small crack between those two and those two growth?
Speaker 3:destinations? Yeah, yeah, because we don't want to get to a point where, just like you said, we're a call center. Nobody likes calling and getting to a call center and having somebody have to give you a call back or you leave a message or you don't get your email answered in a few days. That's not good customer service and that's not what's going to make a company thrive in a market anywhere in the world. You need to have good customer service, you need to have good knowledge and that's what we plan to do is grow our company to a position to where we can handle every call as our only call.
Speaker 2:That's what I want our customers to feel like I think I kind of look at that as like that's very un-California. Now, I am a California native, so I am speaking from experience that in California the inner relationship between people is not close, and it just it feels to me, when you speak to me, that you want a closer relationship with everyone, not just your family, which compelled you to move, but also with the people that you work for and with.
Speaker 3:Community is a huge thing and if you can build that community upon trust and relationships, that's the biggest thing. That's going to help you grow as a company, and not only as a company but personally.
Speaker 2:Chris, what do you do for fun when you're not working?
Speaker 3:So fun is a weird topic around our house. With four boys, baseball is huge. I have a senior in high school, a sophomore in high school, a 10-year-old and almost eight-year-old senior in high school, a sophomore in high school, a 10-year-old and almost eight-year-old Everybody plays sports. So this past weekend, memorial Day weekend, me and our oldest son just got back from Mississippi from a travel ball tournament, but outside of baseball and traveling to different baseball tournaments in Alabama, mississippi, traveling um to different baseball tournaments. You know, in Alabama, mississippi, florida, tennessee, um relaxing time is is being on the lake, um being on the river, spending time with family, fishing, tubing, wakeboarding, you know, just doing all that. That's. That's kind of where our, our relaxing time is.
Speaker 2:That sounds like so much fun.
Speaker 3:Fun is busy.
Speaker 2:It is but one day, chris. You're going to miss it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh yeah, yes, I know that.
Speaker 2:So what do you want our listeners to take away about on-track garage doors?
Speaker 3:about OnTrack Garage Doors. So I think one takeaway would be that I'm striving to have a company that treats every call as its only call. You will get the customer service. Garage Doors is a side note of calling OnTrack Garage Doors. We strive to have the best customer service, the friendliest technicians, the most knowledgeable installers. Whether it's me or somebody else coming out to your house, you're going to get top notch customer service, with a side note of your garage door being fixed or repaired or replaced.
Speaker 2:I think that's wonderful. How can our listeners learn more about OnTrack Garage Doors?
Speaker 3:You can visit our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram, or you can give me a call. If you need to learn more about me, you can give me a call, you can reach out and I'll answer your phone call, just like I do everybody else's.
Speaker 2:Wonderful and I will link to that in the description down below. Thank you so much, chris, for coming by and sharing life with us. We appreciate it. And for our listeners who are having a bad experience with their garage doors but want to have a good experience with somebody to fix them, call OnTrack Garage Doors. Thank you so much, chris, for coming by and sharing with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148.