Roofing Road Trips with Heidi Welcomes Duro-Last’s Tim Hart and Dan Ervin

By Karen L. Edwards, RCS Editor.

In this Roofing Road Trips podcast, RCS Partner Heidi J. Ellsworth is joined by Duro-Last Vice President Tim Hart and Director of National Accounts Dan Ervin.

As you may have heard, Duro-Last was able to quickly shift gears in their manufacturing facility to begin making much-needed COVID-19-related personal protective equipment (PPE). Tim and Dan talked with Heidi about the idea and how they were able to adapt so quickly.

Dan shares how the idea came to light,  saying, “…over the course of February and really into March as things started to really, really come to a head with COVID, you didn't have to look far to realize that there was beginning to be a heck of a lot of talk about severe shortages with PPE for frontline providers. We have some very, very entrepreneurial, very smart people in our organization, in our manufacturing group, in our R&D, in our product development team. And essentially it was just kind of a small group of people who came together and said, ‘What can we do?’”

After learning that there was a shortage of non-surgical protective gowns the team made up their mind to try to manufacture some. Fortunately, Duro-Last CEO Tom Saeli sits on the board of William Beaumont Hospital and was able to connect them with a team at the hospital to help them work through some prototypes.

“What we developed was a six mil, nontoxic, nonpermeable, isolation gown,” explained Dan. “Literally within a matter of [days] from a Saturday on one week to the Friday of the following week, we had begun delivering to William Beaumont Hospital, these gowns in the hundreds and thousands and within a couple of weeks, had begun manufacturing up to 3000 a day.”

As word spread, they began receiving calls from around the country to order the gowns. The company also began manufacturing plastic face shields over the last couple of months. Tim shared, “We're a custom fabricated house. We always have been. Our philosophy is if you can draw it, we can make it. So, I'm not surprised in the least bit that our employees quickly figured out how to make it, and that we stepped up to the challenges that our industry was facing and our families were facing.”

You’ll want to listen to the full conversation to learn more about Duro-Last and how they developed an innovative Safe Stuff line of products to help contractors keep their employees and customers safe.