innovative company created for the metal roofing industry
Meet Mario
My name is Mario Lallier, owner of Metal Plus, LLC, and have evolved to a place of having Patented products that I manufacture and distribute along with other metal roofing accessories and products. The purpose of this continuous 2023 blog is to educate and inform people about my process and transition from being a asphalt roofer, to owning a successful Standing Seam Metal Roofing company. We will learn together how I evolved, after making mistakes that I ultimately learned a lot from, and I hope to help you to avoid.
I immigrated to the USA at 19 years old in hopes of a better life and future. My hope was fulfilled, but it took a lot more than just hope. What it took was handwork, sacrifice, a willingness to learn, consistent motivation and the most important one, a supportive wife.
Being in good physical health and motivated, I would take on asphalt roofing projects that no one else wanted. Most would involve the stripping of old asphalt shingles and installing new. I was working 10 to12 hours of hard labor a day. As a teenager, I did masonry work with my father who was a stone mason, and I would joke with my friends that I have a better career now although, one is just as back breaking and painful as the other!
After being a roofing contractor for several years, installing asphalt roofing with repetitive bending, I began to experience health issues. The first, due to being bent over all day (you other roofers can attest to this) I was in excruciating pain in my lower back. Come to find out, this was due to having two herniated discs. The other major health issue was from being bent over two feet from the roof all day. I was inhaling toxic petroleum fumes, which are incredibly erosive to the throat and esophagus.
I ended up having to see two different specialists a neurosurgeon and a gastroenterologist!
Well, I received good news from my doctors. They said, “stop installing asphalt shingles and inhaling their toxic fumes and bent over all day and your health issue will get better”. Well, the installation of Asphalt shingles all day was pretty much my livelihood! So, I decided to try and do an installation of a Standing Seam Metal Roof on my own garage. I placed an order for standing seam panels but, I still wasn’t sure about the bending over issue. However, I would no longer be inhaling those toxic petroleum fumes! Interesting to find out was, the installation process was not as hard on the back because of constant movement, bringing each panel up individually, and then bend over to install. I decided this might be a great new experience and a worthwhile business adventure for me! Now, I needed to convenience my wife! When discussing about the purchase of new equipment and the need of a costly roll forming machine to fabricate Standing Seam Panels, and that, finances would be tight her reply, “whatever makes you happy, that’s what is important” this is another reason why after 43 years we are still married.
The next step was to go to a bank to secure a small loan and purchase my first Standing Seam Roll Forming Machine to makes panels . Obviously, the transition from asphalt roofing to Metal Roofing was not overnight but, within a year or so, I had completely transitioned from asphalt to strictly standing seam metal roofing . Maybe this will be hard to believe, but my income literally was almost triple to what I used to make on asphalt shingles! Now, after 25 plus years of installing Standing Seam Metal Roofs, I have owned many different brands of roll forming machines, hand tools and equipment. Some of these tools and equipment were good and others useless! That said, over the years I solved some of these problems with my patented inventions of our Product Line of Standing Seam Metal Roofing Brackets and Our Universal Safety Anchor (USA). So, now I will hopefully assist you in avoiding the same mistakes I made!
On my next Blog we will start to discuss costly Roll Forming machines.
