Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Fort Collins. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Nick George helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Fort Collins, Colorado.
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
E27: Why Your Mobile Home Needs Specialized Parts and Where to Get Them
Finding the right parts for your manufactured home can feel like an impossible task. Randy Dolph experienced this frustration firsthand during his 20+ years in mobile home construction, which ultimately inspired him to create a solution: Mobile Home Parts-4-U, a specialized hardware store dedicated to manufactured housing components.
"Mobile home parts are very specific," Randy explains during our conversation. This specialization creates significant challenges for both homeowners and contractors unfamiliar with manufactured housing's unique requirements. Windows serve as a perfect example – regular residential windows simply don't fit the precise openings in mobile homes, yet many contractors attempt to force standard components to work, creating costly problems. Even finding service providers who understand mobile home systems proves challenging, with many plumbers and HVAC technicians declining work once they discover the property is a manufactured home.
Randy's business addresses this knowledge gap by providing exactly what mobile homeowners need. Beyond simply selling specialized parts, he's created educational resources through his YouTube channel "Randy the Mobile Home Guy," offering valuable tutorials on maintenance and repairs. His business philosophy centers around getting customers "the right part for the job," saving them "time, money, energy, all those things." The conversation reveals Randy's passion extends beyond business – he writes poetry, paints, keeps bees, and travels extensively with his wife. His perspective on challenges reflects his entrepreneurial spirit: "You're either winning, or you're learning."
Whether you live in a manufactured home or work with clients who do, this episode provides valuable insights into a specialized industry that serves millions of Americans. Connect with Randy through his website at https://www.mobilehomeparts4u.net/, by phone at 970-222-2731, or check out his YouTube channel to discover solutions for your manufactured housing needs.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Nick George.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a reputable and established mobile home parts provider? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, randy Dolph, with Mobile Home Parts for you. Randy, how's it going? It's going great today. How are you doing Good? We're excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us about it.
Speaker 3:So we are a mobile home or manufactured home specific hardware store where you can come in and you can get everything from doors, windows to bathtubs and skirting for a manufactured home, which is, of course, very unique. All parts for mobile homes, manufactured homes are very specific. So about seven years ago we opened up a little store for everybody to come in and visit.
Speaker 2:Nice. How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:I was into construction and then my father. He said, hey, there's this business for sale that just works on manufactured housing. So I said I don't really know much about them, but that sounds good. So we bought this small, cheap business and pretty soon that became all I ever did for 20 some years. And then through that we figured out that hey, the mobile homes have very unique parts and we can't find them anywhere. So we started shopping around and so, after having worked on them for 20 some years, we sold the construction part of the business and we opened up a little hardware store to be able to provide those parts to different people that needed them.
Speaker 2:What are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 3:That everyone knows about mobile homes, even contractors themselves. They don't really have a very easy time trying to find parts. So for instance, mobile home size windows, they're very unique and they fit into the exact hole. So contractors will cut big holes in the home to try and fit a regular house type window. So a lot of times the misconstruement comes a lot from contractors and also just people's ideas of how to gather contractors.
Speaker 3:That's a real hard problem because if I call a plumber they say we'll be out in 20 minutes or an hour. And then they come out and they say, oh, call a plumber. They say sure, we'll be out in 20 minutes or an hour. And then they come out and they say, oh well, we don't work on manufactured housing plumbing. So sometimes the people on the phone is where you really can try and cut a lot of those things out of the process, like by starting saying we own a mobile home, we own a manufactured home. Do you work on a mobile home furnace and make sure your contractors are really versed in the intricacies of manufactured housing. So a lot of the problems come with people not understanding that their mobile home is very unique.
Speaker 2:Who are your target customers, Randy? How do you attract them now?
Speaker 3:Our target customers are, of course, anyone living in a manufactured house or mobile home, park managers, those kinds of things. So we do a lot of going out and talking to people. We have a YouTube channel that has a lot of videos Randy the mobile home guy. We have a ton of videos that show hey, here's how you do this, here's what you do, and here's a lot of the problem-solving issues. So our targets are, of course, are people that live in manufactured housing all over the United States.
Speaker 2:Outside of work. What do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:I write books, I do poetry, I paint paintings, I keep bees, I do lots of gardening and really just hang out with my wife and go travel. That's exciting.
Speaker 2:Let's switch gears.
Speaker 3:What's that? I didn't hear what you said. Go ahead, oh yeah. No, we go to Florida a lot and we're trying to knock off all the providences of Canada. We're trying to just hang out and have fun with life.
Speaker 2:Let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger? What comes to mind?
Speaker 3:Well, we, A long time ago, business we started up a business not knowing much about it. So and then we, we found out that business is harder than than than just jumping right in. So but before we figured that out, we said, well, I had opened a business. And my wife said, well, let me open one too. So we kind of had a little fall down in that business. So we had to start over and we picked the pieces up and learned a lot from that. So that's what our whole life thing is. I mean, if you're not, you're either losing, or you know you're winning, or you're learning. So that's how it goes.
Speaker 2:Randy, please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about mobile home parts for you.
Speaker 3:That there is parts available for mobile homes. That's the main thing. Parts available for mobile homes that's the main thing, really. I've dealt with contractors. I've dealt with a lot of people that feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm going to run to the hardware store and grab something.
Speaker 3:But there is a huge difference. And getting the right part for the job. That's what our motto is getting you the right part for the job, because there's a lot of things out there that you don't want to try. So getting the right part's a lot of. There's a lot of um, a lot of things out there that you don't want to try. So getting the right part taking a window out and putting the exact window in place saves you time, money, energy, all those things. So, um, but just you can call, you can talk to us. You can look at our videos online and we can stir you in the right direction. You don't have to buy something to to give us a try. You can just call and say, hey, I'm coming up with this problem or that problem and we can kind of talk you through it. So that would be. We're readily available for that.
Speaker 2:How can our listeners learn more about mobile home parts for you?
Speaker 3:You can go online mobile home parts. Let's see mobilehomepartsforyounet. You can give us a call 970-222-2731, or YouTube videos. Of course, we have Randy the mobile home guy. You'll learn a lot about it.
Speaker 2:Well, Randy, I really appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your business the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I really appreciate the invite and hopefully it'll help a lot of people and hopefully we can do something else later.
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 GNP Fort Collinscom. That's GNP Fort Collinscom, or call 9, 7 0, 4, 3, 8 0, 8, 2, 5.