A small shop with a short list.
Ask anyone in this state to name a bird and they will say loon, which is roughly the kind of company we wanted to be: known, unshowy, here for the long run. The truck is stocked at 8300 Commonwealth Dr, in the office park south of Eden Prairie Center where Prairie Center Drive meets Flying Cloud Drive, with Hwy 212 and I-494 a minute away. Minnetonka and Chanhassen are next door; Edina, Hopkins and Bloomington are one freeway leg; Plymouth, Richfield, the south side of Minneapolis and Burnsville sit at the edge of a ring we can cross in half an hour.
Fixing appliances here has its own logic. The suburbs draw from wells, so scale and iron are behind a large share of dishwasher, ice-maker and washer calls, and a softener that ran out of salt is often the real culprit. January parks garages below freezing for weeks, and the spare refrigerator out there goes quiet until spring. Five months of shut windows load condenser coils with pet hair; vent flaps freeze; the builder packages in Chanhassen and Shakopee subdivisions reach their first failures on the same schedule as their neighbors. The truck carries parts for exactly those faults.
The shape of a visit
A call or a form, then a real window and a text when we are rolling. At the machine the technician goes meter-first, names the part that failed in ordinary words — a fill valve scaled shut, a thermal fuse, a relay — and writes the repair as one number with the $99 already inside it. Yes means the part usually comes off the truck and the machine runs a full cycle before we pack up. No means the $99 is the whole bill and the diagnosis goes home with you. The floor is left the way we found it either way.
What we say no to
Microwaves, wine coolers, standalone ice machines, softeners, water heaters, disposals and restaurant equipment. Tell us what you have and we will tell you on the phone if it is ours. The six machines we keep — refrigerators and freezers, washers, dryers, dishwashers, the oven-range-cooktop family and the ice makers inside refrigerators — get every training hour and every inch of the truck.
Renters, owners, night shifts
Much of the west metro rents: the townhomes ringing Eden Prairie Center, the towers at the West End, the apartments along American Boulevard. Many people here work nights at Optum, the hospitals, the airport and the Shakopee warehouses. So tenants host the visit while owners approve by text and get the invoice and coverage by email, and the calendar keeps early and late slots six days a week for people who sleep during business hours.
