Thirty-six years can turn a job into a career, customers into familiar faces and a local lumberyard into a place that becomes part of your life.
For Kenneth Van Diggelen, Rental Manager at Dunn Lumber in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, those years have included a move from the tool department to building a rental business, decades of serving local builders and more than a few unusual days on the job.
Through it all, one thing has mattered enough that when Kenneth is asked what makes him proudest about his career, his answer is wonderfully simple:
“Saying that I work at Dunn Lumber!”
Kenneth arrived at Dunn Lumber after being self-employed selling Snap-on Tools. At the time, he remembers Dunn Lumber as a small retail hardware store and lumberyard serving the community’s builders and residents.
His first impression has stuck with him.
“Everyone was helpful and welcoming,” he says. “It’s been so long ago I can’t remember a lot.”
He spent his first three years as head of the tool department before taking on a considerably different assignment: starting a rental business for Dunn Lumber. He has managed that operation ever since.
Over the decades, equipment, products and the business itself have evolved, but Kenneth says the people walking through the doors remain familiar. Dunn Lumber still serves many of the same types of customers he met early in his career.
“The customer type has basically stayed the same—small-town builders,” he says.
Those customers have given Kenneth plenty of reasons to enjoy coming to work. Asked to single out one relationship from more than three decades behind the counter, he can’t do it.
When the Rental Business Gets Personal
Managing rentals can mean helping a contractor get the equipment needed for a job. It can also mean helping a bride get through one of the most important—and occasionally most stressful—days of her life.
Dunn Lumber’s party rental business has put Kenneth in the middle of plenty of weddings over the years. Each brings its own challenges, and he approaches them knowing how much is riding on getting the details right.
“Bride stories are all different, but some are more trying than others, and you try to do the best you can on the special day,” he says.
One wedding about 15 years ago put that philosophy to the test.
A storm rolled in about two hours before the event and leveled a tent Dunn Lumber had installed, bringing it down on the tables and chairs beneath it. The tent was ripped beyond use.
Kenneth and the Dunn Lumber team headed back to the site. With the clock ticking toward the wedding, they installed another tent and put the event space back together.
They finished with about 30 minutes to spare.
The result, Kenneth recalls, was turning “one upset bride into a very happy one.”
Exceptional Customer Service Starts With Treating People Right
That story also illustrates the advice Kenneth offers employees beginning careers of their own.
“Treat everyone how you would like to be treated,” he says.
It’s an approach that has guided Kenneth throughout his career and reflects the kind of personal service Dunn Lumber has built its reputation on.
Dunn Lumber has changed over Kenneth’s 36 years with the company, including becoming part of Spahn & Rose. But what he appreciates is what hasn’t changed. He credits both the Dunn family and Spahn & Rose with maintaining the character of the business that welcomed him more than three decades ago.
A career that began after selling Snap-on Tools has now encompassed three years leading the tool department and more than three decades managing the rental operation he helped start.
After all that time, Kenneth’s pride still comes back to Dunn Lumber and the customers he has spent his career serving.
And after 36 years of helping builders, supporting customers and occasionally rescuing a wedding with minutes to spare, he has plenty of reasons to be proud to say:
“Saying that I work at Dunn Lumber!”