Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 27/01) - He prefers word of mouth to generate business, but no matter what the problem, he'll clean the carpet up.

Carl Bulger in his carpet cleaning truck. The man loves his work and he can get the tough stains out. - Jorge Barrera/NNSL photo

Carl Bulger, owner of Carl's Carpet Cleaners, can get the tough stains out as long as its not Kool-Aid. That stuff, he said, is impossible to purge.

"I don't bother any more with it," he said. "It's a dye."

He can't imagine what it'll do to the stomach but given that he can erase tar, oil and grease stains it does make one wonder.

A big man, with big hands and a firm handshake, Bulger said he'll never rip a customer off.

"If I can't do it I'll tell you," he said.

Twelve years ago Bulger was cleaning apartments in Yellowknife to make enough money to go on holidays.

One day a carpet cleaner came to a one-bedroom apartment Bulger was working in and cleaned the carpet in an hour.

Bulger asked the cleaner, Colin Hudson, now the owner of Creative Basics, how much he made and was told $80. Bulger's jaw dropped and they started talking and Hudson told him he was getting out of the business because the work was getting too hard.

Now Bulger has his own company. Capitalism works.

"It is very hard work, but I'm used to physical labour," said Bulger.

He does more than clean carpets, which hits peak season in the summer. In the winter, Bulger said, he gets lots of calls to clean up floods.

One winter he cleaned out 247 honey-bucket bags worth of sewage from a house. The sewage ran a little over a metre deep. He had to change his clothes on his porch in -30 C temperatures.

But he loves the work.

"I love getting up at 5 a.m. and going to work," said Bulger.

Bulger sees carpet cleaning as a science and breaks it down to the carpet's molecular level, the fibres. From here he makes all the decisions.

"The most important thing is to be careful when cleaning carpets," said Bulger.

He's had his share of disasters, ruining a couch once and parts of carpets, but he always replaces what he ruins.

"I'm going to do this until I can't do it any more."

And now with a new a baby boy, Lonan Vincent, just a week and a day old, Bulger will be keeping Yellowknife carpets clean for years to come.