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Whitney says that he sends out three-person crews to about 40% of the jobs, sometimes cutting a crew to just two people depending on the size of the job. But depending on the size of the job Arrow will double up crews. On a recent job requiring 30,000 lineal feet of striping they sent out two crews who were able to complete the work, excluding arrows, in two nights.

Whitney schedules as many as 15 jobs a day, acknowledging that scheduling can be stressful. "But after doing it for 10 years it gets easier," Whitney says. "Knowing how long a job should take really helps. It comes down to knowing what the different jobs involve and knowing your guys and what they are comfortable doing. If it's a simple layout, for example, I can send out some guys who are not experienced with big jobs and they won't get spooked like they would on a big job."

He says that when possible he schedules jobs in the same area of town "so if we have three jobs to do the crew isn't driving all over town, back and forth, to get them done."

He says matching the crews to the different jobs is an important part of Arrow Striping's ability to make life easier for the contractors it works for.

"There are always big jobs and small jobs going on at the same time, so do I send two crews to the big job to get it done quicker and send other crews to the smaller jobs? Or do I send one crew to each job knowing that the big job is going to take one crew a couple of days?" Whitney says. "A lot depends on what's going on in each individual job and what we have coming up. Maybe it's best to send a couple of crews to the big job so we can knock it out and get those crews on to other work. Maybe it's best to get that big job done for that customer. If a job is out of town I have to make sure to keep enough people in town to do the work around here.