Podcast #1 Introductions: Unlocking Spray Foam Safety: PPE, Certifications, and Industry Best Practices with Jeremiah Schoneberg and Dan Benedict

Get ready to uncover the critical safety secrets of the spray foam industry with our host, Jeremiah Schoenberg, a seasoned expert with nearly 25 years of experience. Discover how Jeremiah's career took a surprising turn from a gun range in Montana to becoming an industry stalwart and learn about the rewarding yet intense work that shaped his passion of the industry. Alongside, co-host Dan Benedict shares his journey from the cattle industry to owning Spray Foam Arizona showcasing the rich diversity and dedication within our industry.

This episode delves into the heart of safety, discussing the importance of personal protective equipment (PPE) and fostering an open communication culture around safety concerns. We emphasize the need for engaging and practical safety training and reflect on how individual safety practices impact the broader business ecosystem. We also highlight the importance of certifications and training to boost workplace safety and efficiency. Join us to set the stage for future enlightening conversations on equipment, mental health, and industry best practices.

For comments, suggestions, safety shares and questions email us at sprayfoammafia@gmail.com
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Chapters

• 0:00 Spray Foam Safety Toolbox Talks
• 14:31 Safety Philosophy and Industry Conversations
• 25:17 Certification and Training Recommendations

Transcript

Dan: 0:00

hey, welcome. Toolbox talks on safety for the spray foam industry. This is our inaugural episode and, as you can see, I'm trying to hype it up. I don't know if I can be like a monster truck announcer.

Jeremiah: 0:15

I'll show you the sunday, sunday, sunday, you'll only need the ads.

Dan: 0:20

Thursday thursday wait, it's friday. It's friday, so we're cool. Yeah, it's Friday afternoon, yes, in a lovely air conditioned office instead of sweating it out yeah, out in the sun, all right. So basic introduction to your host here. First off, jeremiah, go ahead, tell us all about yourself, your background story, your history.

Jeremiah: 0:43

Well, I was born in a small cottage. No, my name's Jeremiah Schoenberg. I'm a technician for UPC. I've been in this industry a little over 20 years. Almost 25 years Owned my own rigs, ran companies for guys everywhere from interior, exterior, roofing, coatings, um all across the board. Um I've been with uh upc a little over six months now. Um been a tech for about 10 years, uh for manufacturers as well. And come to you know, find myself in arizona in this podcast trying to help guys understand the importance of safety and gets information out to the masses the best way we can and help each other.

Dan: 1:27

What was your introduction to spray foam and then what got you hooked to stay in at this time?

Jeremiah: 1:32

It was a gun range in Montana when my good friend said, hey, I got some work you can do on the weekends and make some cash. And I was using a lot of four-letter words that first day, right, because it was not an easy time. We were spraying you know eight inches of clothes selling a gun range and definitely was a weird introduction. But, um, that's how I got started and was doing it on the weekends with buddies and you know, to make extra cash Cause I was doing HVAC um during the week as a journeyman there installing and troubleshooting. And what got me hooked, man, as I tell everyone, if you make it past a year you're probably never going to get out, and it was. It was a little over a year.

Jeremiah: 2:08

You know me and a buddy were out in Hawaii spraying track homes day in and day out and it was just us, the rig and you know the beach and that's kind of where I fell in love. It's just every day. You know, spraying foam and learning all this stuff. And you know, out there with energy bills, the way they were, you know it was a big deal because they could be $600 to a thousand dollars for a single family home and we made big changes to a lot of things out there and that was kind of where I got hooked is out there just working on the, you know, on a crew, and just doing everything we can. Like I said, it just never got out of. It Went from there to project management and estimation and things like that and just kind of kept adding to the my toolbox and, like I said, now I'm lucky enough to be here, so awesome.

Dan: 2:53

Uh, what formal education in the spray foam world have you had, other than mistake after mistake after mistake, until you figure it out it's not formal education, no-transcript.

Jeremiah: 3:02

That's the school. Hard knocks, dan. Well, I learned from the people around me. You know I've been very lucky. Like I said, my good friend just needed help on the weekends and next thing I know I'm out in Hawaii and we're spraying foam seven days a week, 12 hours a day, nonstop together.

Jeremiah: 3:20

Like I said, I've, you know, been surrounded by good people, whether it was from you know um, as a superintendent or as a project manager or you know just knowing good owner operators and good you know CEOs and presidents of companies that take the time to give you the information. Like I said, I've worked for, you know, gentry homes, haas, insulation. You know Masco with David James and all those guys. Like I said, there's bits of information that you take from these guys that you add to your own thing and you make it your own. And as you grow and evolve in this industry that's, you know, kind of how you got to look at it is like you never stop learning. You're never good enough to take a second and listen to someone, whether they have six months of experience or 40 years of experience. I've learned bits and pieces of information that have got me here. And then, of course, you know the support of a great family, a good partner.

Jeremiah: 4:14

I work. You know, when I was a tech, I was on the road four weeks out of the month. Right, you know I'd be home on the weekends. You know, come home late Friday, leave first thing Monday. So the work-life balance and have a good partner in this industry is definitely something that's important as well. You got to know we're working this way for a reason, um, and it's not to keep working, it's to support our families. So, yeah, right, tell us about your family. Um, I have four kids, um 23, 14, 13 and nine three girls and a boy. And, yeah, they are the reason that I do what I do. I want them to have all the stuff in life that you know I didn't have as a good parent. You want to give them the opportunities and, like I said, they are the reason I keep doing what I'm doing. So, and yeah, I'm Dan Benedict.

Dan: 5:02

I'm one of your co-hosts. My wife and I operate Spray Foam Arizona. We are an independent spray foam contractor based in central Arizona and do it all spray roofing foam, insulation foam, open cell, closed cell, you name it. If I can make money spraying foam, I'm going to spray it. Started out growing up as a kid in the cattle industry cattle feed, yard, cotton farms. If you want to double down on going broke, we did it.

Dan: 5:27

Since I was a little kid operating equipment shoot, if we could walk we could drive a track, you know, through lots of bales of hay fed, lots of cattle chopped, some rows of corn, you know. You know, through that whole life we always were having to build things. Shades got blown over in thunderstorms and microbursts, corrals had to be rebuilt, feed mills had to be fixed and maintained and worked on and overworked and rebuilt all the time, tractors, trucks you know the way things break all the time. We just had to have our hands in fixing it. And that all laid a foundation for me to transition into the construction industry. I'm a general contractor, commercial and residential. I started doing some green building with a community foundation and it was an integration of teaching students that were construction trades people, along with doing some energy efficiency stuff. That led to even some LEED Gold certified projects. And that was my introduction into the world of spray foam. We were building these units offsite out of SIP panels and then putting them on to stem walls that we poured and gluing them together with spray foam and gluing them together with spray foam. And when you see what those products in combination can do for the energy efficiency of a home and the versatility of what you can do with it, you can't help but be amazed to it or amazed by it.

Dan: 6:58

You know, covid era comes along. We've got to do something different in life. We've got to keep the kids fed, you know, got to keep the bills paid. And we transitioned and moved back to Arizona, right back onto my wife's family's farm. As we did that, it just the spray foam thing kept calling us out. We knew it was the premier product in the insulation world. We knew we didn't have to sell it very hard because it was good enough to sell itself At that time. It was all the savings we had, all the pennies we had put together to go on our own. So in your mind, what's this for? What's the need? Who's it for?

Jeremiah: 7:45

Well, like you said, dan, I mean it's we do a lot of things for a lot of people and it's usually for a paycheck, right.

Dan: 7:51

Yeah definitely.

Jeremiah: 7:52

Yeah, it's usually to pay the bills and they're one way or another. It's. There's a lot going on, but this is a way to you said give back the knowledge that we've accumulated through the years in hopes that others don't make all of the mistakes we did. Right, that's really the goal is you're going to make mistakes. If you're afraid to make mistakes, you're not going to be successful. It's really that simple. You're, you have to be able to take that first step, and sometimes you trip, but we want less tripping for now.

Jeremiah: 8:23

And this, this stuff, is to get information out from subject matter experts in this industry to give guys an opportunity, like you said, going down the road on the job site, listen to stuff, you know. Get that stuff out to guys so they don't make all the same mistakes that we actually had to make because there's no one there to be like hey, here's a net once in a while instead of all the time, cause you're right, some of those mistakes you have to, you have to see, you have to learn to understand how to deal with them.

Jeremiah: 8:49

But I just I feel the need and the why is really to help guys not make all of those mistakes. Make the mistakes that you know, help you be successful. Don't make the mistakes that have you going home covered in ISO at the end of the day. Right, that's, you know, not that not to many, that happens a lot, thankfully, but, like I said, that's a drastic example. But that's what I mean. It's like. Let's make the mistakes that a business makes to get successful, not the ones that have you sitting home for a week because you made a mistake. And that's what this is about getting safety and knowledge out to prevent those things and make sure you have a path towards success and no scrapes and bruises down the road. Right, just enough, but not too many, that's right.

Dan: 9:32

Yeah yeah yeah, chicks dig scars, but not a lot of them, not a lot of them, not if you can't walk, it doesn't work very well yeah.

Dan: 9:39

And you know, from my standpoint and where I am in my business right now is that we're busy. We've got things pulling us every direction and I'd like for every one of my people that works for us some of them are even family that they know that one. They've got people that give a damn. You know they have ownership, that cares, or you know they have people that want to make sure that they're going home, like you said, in as good a shape or better than where they left. They get to go home with some pride.

Dan: 10:18

But that, these talks, you know safety talks and stuff the industry in general requires them, but the people don't like them.

Dan: 10:30

And so if we're providing an outlet so that people can have a conversation and think a little bit ahead, pre-plan just a little bit that saves the broken finger, cut legs, you know heat exhaustion, yeah, um, you name it and, like I said, it's an outlet that these people, the people in the field cruising down the road in the truck, can listen to this and be like, oh dang, today we're gonna be in the tightest attic we've seen in years and it's gonna be blazing hot, and do we need to just pull over and get some more ice, I mean just anything like that, just to think ahead just a little bit. That saves some guys, some gals, some frustration or potential injury or bodily harm or mental anguish at the end of the day, for sure, or mental anguish at the end of the day, for sure. And I think, presenting it in a manner that's done differently than the typical safety lecture from the guy with a shiny hard hat and a buzz haircut oh man, we could do like an 80s video game if we want, like get the sideburns going.

Dan: 11:44

I remember watching those. That's what we had right. Shake hands with danger, yeah.

Jeremiah: 11:47

It was the one that I always remember Like bell bottoms you could put on like some corduroy, exactly.

Dan: 11:53

Yeah, they sure do it that way. Yeah yeah, get whistles to blow at everybody when they're wrong. You know that kind of stuff. There you go. But I think in general there's so many operators out there that are owner-operators. They're in the truck with their rig, maybe their entire life savings behind them, hoping the check that comes in tonight buys groceries for their kids, and they may have a helper or two with them and those helpers are reliant on that guy to make sure that they're busy and they're going to feed their kids.

Dan: 12:28

And we want all three of those guys or four gals I keep saying guys all the time, even though I have one all girl crew that kicks ass. I got to be careful when I say this they, they can talk about it, they can talk to each other about it and they can be comfortable talking to each other. And I want the guy that sweeps floors and scrapes walls to be able to talk to one of my sprayers and go. That deck on that scaffolding is looking pretty bad these days. Maybe we ought to say something. Or you know, whatever. We're missing this tool, we're missing this. I want everybody to be able to have that conversation because it may make a difference to somebody someday.

Jeremiah: 13:12

Oh yeah, for sure.

Dan: 13:13

Yeah, so we may be saying this twice. Give me your goals for this thing and give me your philosophy behind teaching safety to all of our family.

Jeremiah: 13:26

Yeah, I think our goals we've been kind of talking about is like we want to get information out to people in our industry the best way we can and make it readily available for the time constraints that we have in our jobs because, once again, like you said then, there's little to no time to sit down and take 15 minutes when you don't have it right, especially during a week, especially when you're working every day. Um, so my, like I said, the goal is to get this knowledge and this information out to guys in the any way we can. Um, to make sure that they can, you know, either use this as their own safety toolbox, talk where they can sign in and they can have that, you know, on file. So if anyone ever asks or they're ever, you know things like that. Or if, like you said, just going down the road starting a conversation amongst a crew of like, oh man, we don't do that.

Jeremiah: 14:13

Oh man, we didn't, I didn't even know you could drink pickle juice to say, hi, drink, I mean, you're really bad, like all these little ins and outs. You know, the guys that have been doing it for years have it. Kind of ties into my philosophy on safety too is if you don't take time for safety now, it will take time for you later, like if you're not wearing your eye protection, you're not wearing PPE. Down the road you're going to wish you had Right, and that's once again one of those things like down the road, you want to be doing this for many, many years, if guys and gals, dan, take the time to train and make this their career. A career is not a week long thing. It's something you do, provide for your family until retirement.

Dan: 15:03

Yeah.

Jeremiah: 15:04

And if you, once again, we want you to be safe and everything else you can do this for many, many years. Yeah, Because if you can't spray foam, you can't buy foam, the manufacturer can't sell foam, we can't make foam, we can't employ the people at the plant. You can't employ the people like it's again, it's the circle of life in this industry and my, my philosophy is like if we can all teach each other and take time to teach each other, then we're going to, we're going to be better together. Instead of selfishly trying to maintain or think everyone's competition which we're not we're all trying to do the same thing.

Jeremiah: 15:35

This is a great industry. We're all trying to make money, do our jobs and do everything we can and that, once again, if we're doing it the best and safest way, we're going to be doing it longer, right, and if we have those conversations, those conversations will be had more and more often. Right, more people will be like hey, like you said, the helper would be comfortable. You're like I don't know about that, instead of just Not saying anything because of the situation. Right, if you have the conversations more, it becomes regular for people to care about these things instead of, like you said like oh, I don't know if I should say something. Right, you know, I know it's going to cost a couple hundred dollars. I better just wait, right, you know we don't want that, right? So it's yeah. It's the whole thing.

Dan: 16:15

Yeah, and I look back through all of my years in the construction industry and the safety managers that are out there. Their intentions are good. They they want everybody every day to be safe and uninjured and unimpeded and be able to get their job done. But the old approach to it just makes everybody hate it. You know you can't get people that their minds are programmed like us to sit in a room for eight hours or 24 hours of onboarding somewhere and listen to somebody talk about. You know you need this, osha, you need this, this, you need this and that and want those people to change their identity to fit the safety mold that is in there. You know you look at this industry and you know, especially you go online anywhere and you know there's a lot of these guys. Identity is I drop two sets of perfect butter every day this entire week and my guy scraped for five minutes. It was the cleanest job we've ever done. That's their pride and that's their identity and you wouldn't want to take that away from any of those guys. But you sure want to enhance the fact that.

Dan: 17:33

Okay, you did that and every night you went home and you had enough energy and enough physical wellbeing. Night you went home and you had enough energy and enough physical well-being, well-being and mental well-being to interact with your friends and family and, uh, you know, you go back to a old term they've used in aviation for years um, a good landing is one you walk away from. A great landing the airplanes used again. So, um, you know meaning to anybody, yep. Um, so kind of an outline of what you're going to see out of us in these podcasts. We want them to be kind of short and sweet, enough time for you to drive to a job site, be playing it in the truck or play at your shop. I mean, if you're barbecuing burgers for your crew one day, you know, play some of these. But what are we doing to make it viable? What are we doing to make it good? What are we doing to make it credible?

Jeremiah: 18:30

we'll have people on here that add substance to our conversation. Hopefully, you know equipment, people like you know um, people from graco, distributors, things like that, that will add their two cents, so to speak, to these conversations right, and subject matter experts to help get information out that they feel is important, because what you and I feel important might differ from the guy on the East coast to the West coast. So we want to make sure that we have guests and people from this industry that help add the conversation right. That's what these should be as conversations about health, about safety, about equipment, about storage, anything, mental health, of course, anything we feel would be important for guys to want to talk about. Like you said, if we can start the conversations about these things, hopefully that will continue.

Dan: 19:14

Yeah, and I really like some of the lineup of guests we have coming in. There's such a broad range across the industry and some of these guys see more every day than any of us will, that are on our own in our own little microclimate, our own little world. They see stuff and they've seen some of the biggest wrecks. They've been investigators on some of the biggest problems that we've ever had, biggest problems that we've ever had. You know, they see the small imperfections that every rig has that turn into a huge problem and they know how to fix them for you and they can probably tell us in five minutes like, go right now, look at this and go here and order this and it'll fix it for you. And those are some of the. I think that some of those guests will bring um to get that all out there and done.

Dan: 20:04

We're all active in the world of spray foam and active on different things that are going on. So we'll try to keep you updated on some of the current events and ask that you guys respond back. Hit us up on Facebook, uh, spray foam mafia us. Whatever contacts you can do, we're glad to have it. And, just in case you're wondering, our email is sprayfoammafia at gmailcom and our Facebook is Spray Foam Mafia. So, like I said, like and follow those for us while you're at it there.

Dan: 20:36

Another thing that we hope lends credibility to this is we're going to have some of the OG guys out there. Some of the guys have been grinding through this for 20, 30 years with stories, experiences they've had. We're trying to get a deal going with Rusty Schrader to give us Rusty's Wreck of the Week and maybe on the road with Rusty just to get his colorful commentary as he's driving, as he's driving as he's driving. Um, we just want everybody out there to know that nobody is immune from the mistakes, and where the mistakes have been made and what they've learned from them. Um, I think that's an important factor in teaching everybody because, uh, those people you know have built a lot of respect in the industry over the years. And what else do we have on here over pb katie's pp reviews?

Jeremiah: 21:34

there you go, yeah like contractors, reviews of pp and equipment and stuff that we might find interesting, that we want guys to know about or use or check out and stuff like that yeah, yeah.

Dan: 21:47

And if, like I said, we're gonna have some real world spray, everyday people um, you know, in all different climates, because you don't spray every day down, right? No, no no, no, I take sunday night off. Sunday night, yeah, usually from about 6 pm till you know about4 am monday morning.

Dan: 22:03

I usually don't spray that oh, okay, cool, you know guy needs a break now. Then four or five hours a week, yeah, that's all you really need for a break, um. But you know, I mean anything like head socks, masks, uh, fall protection, uh, you it, if we can get our hands on something to try it and just give everybody an honest opinion of how it works. So we see some of that. Oh, documentation, yeah, there's gonna be some editing on this one, just so, you know, we get Jeremiah to talk some more about some of these things too, so it's not just me the whole time you're reading.

Dan: 22:49

I can't read your wife's handwriting? Okay, so the getting the documentation and forms that we're gonna have, oh yeah on the page so oh yeah, so yeah.

Jeremiah: 23:00

so the other part of this guys is too, is like, if there needs to be documentation of the toolbox talk, we'll have sign in sheets and stuff like that, as well as links to CPI certifications and other things that are important to use an applicator as a contractor. We'll try and make sure that things are readily available, cause, once again, we want this to be not only informative in the conversation, but also if you need to document your toolbox talk on a weekly basis, depending on what kind of job you're on or what you're doing, we'll have that available for you guys to keep on file as well.

Dan: 23:30

Yeah, and I'd go a step further, not even if Just do it, just do it, it's good, it is. Whether you want to look at it from a liability standpoint as a company owner or not, it's just good to do it, talk about it, document it, have it. You may never ever need it and I hope you never have to, but if you do, we want it to be there for you. So for today and I guess today's little introduction, our little call to action that we're going to have every week, the first thing I'd like to see out of everybody is get your CPI certifications done for everybody, jeremiah. Tell them why that's important.

Jeremiah: 24:12

It's a basic understanding of where we begin low pressure, high pressure and every manufacturer and distributor I know. As part of your training, it is required that you have your CPI certification. Everyone should have it. It's good for two years, it takes 15 to 20 minutes to do and it is just a basic rundown of a few things in this industry to start off with High pressure, high pressure, low pressure, chemicals, a little safety and it's required. By doing near everyone I know, and I as far as our certification and our approvals, same thing like do you have your CPI certification. So it's just, it's a great starting point and it's, once again, just like anything else. When you get certified or approved or whatever or whatever, there's steps to it and it's something that you have to have in place and it's free. And it's free, it doesn't cost anything except some time. Right, and once again, it's it's good for two years, so it's not hard.

Dan: 25:06

Yeah, the the younger generation could probably do it on their phone, Like you said in 10 to 15 minutes.

Jeremiah: 25:15

You can do it on your phone too, but like it's, it's take a few minutes for your job, for your career, for your. For the beginning, it's like I said, it's just do it, it's not hard.

Dan: 25:21

No, it's, it's not. Yeah, not. And it's a good thing to have um, and maybe that's a starting place as a company owner, to mandate that to all of his people, to just start changing people's mind the more people that do it, the better off we all are, and it once again, it becomes normal, like you don't have to ask if you have this certification.

Jeremiah: 25:43

It's just if you're an applicator and you're spraying foam, you got it.

Dan: 25:46

You got it, yeah, no right, exactly, uh, and you know basic osha 10 yeah it's basic OSHA 10.

Jeremiah: 25:55

Yeah, it's good, Basic OSHA 10 is really good to have the 30, maybe not.

Jeremiah: 25:59

You got to have one guy on the company you got to have one guy, but not everyone I don't think needs to sit through that. The 10 hours definitely good information to have. It gives you an understanding of the common sense that OSHA does have and what to look at. But, once again, the 30 hours, like I said, something you know someone in the company should have to understand, but I don't think everyone really needs it. But if you have the opportunity, get it.

Jeremiah: 26:22

You know, once again, it's not a bad thing to have, like any other certificate or approval or a class you can go to. Just do it. You know. You know, every time I see something on LinkedIn or Facebook, that's. You know, let's talk about chemicals, let's talk about HFOs. You know I sign up. Yeah, oh, cool. Well, it's half an hour on the way. Well, I'm going to take half an hour on a Wednesday to see if there's something you know and get some out of it. Take the time to learn more. Yeah, and once again, anything we come up with or talk about, we'll post on the on there, especially if we find it's an important thing for you guys to know, we'll, we'll mention it, make sure it's out there for you guys to take um, because once again, all this stuff should be out there, um, because the more you, the more you have, the better you are for sure, right yeah, um, is that okay, all right, so, so, what's that?

Jeremiah: 27:22

I don't know what, making it still first or yeah, this is, this is stop, this is just keep going rolling.

Dan: 27:28

This is keep rolling, yeah and click, click, click, click is. We're not really sure what that means yet, other than Jeremiah is enjoying himself. Ok, so again, toolbox Talks on Safety for the Spray Foam Industry. Please like us, subscribe us wherever you get your favorite podcast, that please come back. We'll have an episode every week and with a new topic.

Dan: 27:57

Some of these that are more in depth, maybe two topics, but we don't want to take up much of your time. It's too valuable of a commodity, so we want you to be able just to get through these quickly and concisely. We're on Facebook Spray Foam Mafia. Please like us share it with all your other friends in the community of spray foam or, heck, even in the rest of the construction industry. A lot of these topics will cover um outside of the spray foam industry, even though it's geared directly to us in the industry. Um, spray foam mafia. Gmailcom is our email. Please contact us, give us any ideas of topics. You want us to get in depth and talk about comments. You know commentary, anything we're doing. We're glad to hear from you Questions you have of anything we discuss. Please let us know. We want to be there to help. Yeah, so I believe that is all for now. Stay tuned. Next week I think we're launching heat stress for our very first in-depth episode.