TLC Plumbing, Inc. President Terry Cheek (center) with his team (from left): Estimator Jim Holt, Vice President DJ Walker and Estimators Corey Cilek and Bob Mathews.

Laborer Mike Smith (left) and Technician Greg Page are pictured on a job site with a TLC Plumbing, Inc. septic truck.

Terry Cheek opened TLC Plumbing, Inc. (TLC) with a dream of helping his plumbing clientele receive the very best service. With a full apprenticeship under his belt as well as experience with other plumbing companies, he began to feel the pull of entrepreneurship. In 1998, he and his wife, Cindy, a former law firm administrator, decided to give the business five years to become successful.

Terry and Cindy didn’t need the full five years to realize they made the right choice. Once the community began to see and hear of their quality of work, the floodgates opened and God continued to open doors of opportunity and provide work.

Today, TLC operates out of a 20,000-square-foot building, runs 28 vehicles and employs a staff of 30. Located in Griffith, Indiana, the company serves residential, commercial and industrial clients in Lake and Porter counties in Indiana and Cook and Will counties in Illinois.

Anything to Help Customers

Terry explains that it was versatility that drew him to a construction trade. He says, “My dad and brother worked in a mill, and I didn’t want to always work in the same place. That’s the great thing about the construction trades—going to a different place every day.”

He applies that same versatility to the business, describing TLC as a one-stop shop. “While some plumbers do all residential or all commercial, we do everything from plumbing a toilet to installing the plumbing systems for an entire hotel,” Terry says.

The company’s services include using smoke machines to test the integrity of sewers and drain piping, sewer rodding and mapping, video sewer inspection, and repair and installation of water heaters. TLC is a licensed waste hauler, can pump out septic tanks and lift stations, and has the equipment and skills to jet and vacuum manholes and sewers.

“We try to do anything to help our customers,” Terry says. “If we see a need, we try to fill it.”

He describes an innovative solution his team devised to help a local municipal client, which, like many, don’t have their own equipment. There was a problem in the sewer lines, and lack of visibility prevented crews from determining the location. The team attached a camera and flashlights to a Styrofoam cooler and floated it down the sewer in order to get a visual of the problem. “The city manager was there and was amazed that we were able to figure it out using a five-dollar cooler,” he laughs.

Some of TLC’s largest contracts are with companies such as grocery stores, fast-food chains and commercial and industrial complexes. TLC’s goal for any client, no matter the size, is to save them money and time. Terry keeps records of all past service history at his home and office so that when a call comes in, the team can quickly determine where clean-outs are located and all past rodding and repair work performed.

Terry says, “We are versatile and can handle most things that come at us. You’re only as good as the help you have, so we like to do it all in-house.”

Meeting the Needs of the Community

TLC’s “anything to help our customers” philosophy also extends to the needs of the surrounding Northwest Indiana community. The team is most proud of the projects where it has donated its services, such as a local domestic abuse shelter. TLC installed all the plumbing throughout the shelter’s brand-new facility.

In addition, TLC donated plumbing repairs toward the renovation of a cottage in the Black Oak neighborhood of Gary, Indiana. The building now serves as a community center, computer lab and Taekwondo studio for local residents.

There are also times when a donation isn’t planned, but it just feels like the right thing to do. Terry says, “We’ll go into a home, and it will be obvious from the conditions that the resident cannot afford unexpected plumbing work. We won’t charge them. That’s part of the beauty of owning your own business—it allows us to help people in need as we see fit.”

He adds, “The compassion of our people makes us special. We’ve had guys go back to service calls at the end of the day because they saw another problem in the making that should be addressed. I don’t question them on that and allow them to donate the material and service. We care about our customers.” Helping clients solve problems before they arise is part of TLC’s culture and makes the company stand out in the minds of its customers.

The area in which the TLC team lives and works has suffered significant flooding in years past. During the cleanup, employees worked around the clock to pump out basements at no charge. “Our customers have supported us, and we have to be there for them in their time of need,” Terry says.

One Call Away

When Terry and Cindy were first getting the company established, Cindy’s employer allowed her to run the TLC business line through her phone while at work. “Still today, a live person answers all of our calls,” Terry says.

No after-hours answering service is used, and any night and weekend calls are routed to Terry’s personal cellphone. He says, “On weekends, I enjoy drinking coffee at my kitchen table and taking calls from customers. Many times, I can walk them through a simple solution over the phone. It saves them money, and I’m glad to do it.”

One customer says, “I had a backup in the middle of the night, and with only one toilet for my elderly mother and me, I was in a hurry for a plumber. They had someone out within about an hour and a half, and the quoted price was very close to what was billed.”

‘We’ve Built a Good Thing’

Terry explains that TLC’s honesty has been tested over the years, as occasionally a new client will call with a supposed problem (i.e., spilled water on the floor as if there were a leak) to test the integrity of the company’s plumbers. “We are honest,” he says. “If there isn’t really a problem, we’ll tell the client that. But if there is, we don’t take shortcuts. We’ll fix it, and it stays fixed.”

Another customer says, “TLC is a company with integrity. They were truthful, charged a fraction of the price we expected and went the extra mile, doing other necessary things while here and ensuring everything was up to code. We were in a crisis, and they did not take advantage of it.”

Terry is proud that his company has been voted “Best in Region” for the past seven years by readers of The Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper. He says, “We work with honesty and integrity, but all that is cliché. We have very good customers and employees, and it’s about the trust we have built between them. We’ve proven ourselves over and over again.”

Looking to the future, Terry says the company will remain in the family. He and Cindy are parents to three grown children, and their son, Robert, has completed two years of college and five years of trade school and has earned his contractor license. Eventually, the couple will retire and Robert will assume leadership of the business. Terry says, “With God’s help, we’ve built a good thing here.”