Read this first: these are not customers.

Tailgate Office launched in 2026. We have no published customer results yet, and nothing on this page is one. The three companies below are composites. The names are invented. The dollar figures are arithmetic built on published industry averages plus assumptions we spell out in the open, and your business will not match them.

When we have real pilot numbers — with a real company name and their written permission — they will replace this page. Until then, we would rather show our work than fake a track record.

One more thing to be straight about. The texting steps in the examples below describe how CallMitt™ and CrewFunnel™ behave once carrier registration and our SMS gateway are live. Today those messages queue instead of sending, and the CrewFunnel screening conversation runs as a web link rather than over text. The compliance page has the whole status.

Worked example 01 · Fencing · CallMitt

The 2pm call that never gets returned

A two-truck residential fencing company. Owner runs a crew, quotes in the evenings, average job around $4,500.

A phone showing a missed call followed five seconds later by an automatic text back from the contractor's own texting number

What happens today

Tuesday, 2:04pm. He is setting posts. A homeowner calls about 140 feet of cedar privacy fence. It rings four times and rolls to voicemail. She does not leave one — almost nobody does — and calls the next fencing company on the map.

He will never know that call existed. It does not show up as a lost job in any report. It shows up as a slow month with no explanation.

What changes

Five seconds after the missed call, she gets a text from his own texting number, a local number in his area code, and it says who it is straight away: “Sorry we missed you — this is Ridgeline Fence. Reply here and we’ll get you on the schedule.” She replies while she is still holding the phone. He answers from the truck at 4:30.

The arithmetic Figure Where it comes from
Inbound calls in a month40Assumed for a busy two-truck operation
Share that go unanswered62%Published industry average for home services
Missed calls per month2540 × 62%
Recovered by voicemail today<1~3% voicemail callback rate
Assumed reply rate to the text-back20%Our assumption — deliberately conservative
Conversations recovered525 × 20%
Assumed close rate on those30%Our assumption
Jobs recovered per month1–25 × 30%
Value at a $4,500 average job$6,7501.5 × $4,500
Cost of CallMitt$49/moPublished price

Illustrative example. Not a customer result. Two of those rows are our assumptions, and we have labelled them so you can argue with them. Halve both — a 10% reply rate and a 15% close — and it still comes out to roughly one recovered job a quarter, and one $4,500 job pays for 91 months of CallMitt. The honest floor here is “probably worth it,” not “guaranteed $6,750.”

Worked example 02 · Pressure Washing · NapkinPrice™

The website that has never quoted anybody

A one-truck pressure washing company with a two-year-old website. Average job around $450. Ranks page one for “pressure washing” in its county.

An instant-quote widget on a contractor website showing a real estimated price range instead of a contact form

What happens today

320 people visited last month. Four filled out the contact form. The site is doing its job right up to the moment somebody wants a number, at which point it says “call for a free estimate.”

People shopping a $450 driveway job at 9pm are not going to call three companies and wait. They want a range. Whoever gives them one gets the conversation.

What changes

The button says “Get an instant price.” Five questions: surface, square footage, one story or two, gutters, driveway. A range appears: $380–$465. To lock it in, they leave a name and a number. That is a lead with the whole job already spec’d.

The arithmetic Today With a quote widget
Monthly website visitors320320 — same traffic, same spend
Start the quote flow (assumed 8%)26
Finish it (assumed half)13
Leads captured413
Close rate (assumed 25%)1 job3 jobs
Revenue at $450 average$450$1,350
Cost of NapkinPrice$99/mo
Time spent quoting on the phone~20 min per lead0 — spec arrives with the lead

Illustrative example. Not a customer result. The 8% start rate and 50% completion rate are our assumptions and they are the two numbers that matter most — if your traffic is mostly people looking for your phone number rather than shopping, they will be lower. The part we are confident in is the last row: a lead that arrives with the square footage, the surface and the access already answered does not need a twenty-minute discovery call.

Worked example 03 · Landscaping · CrewFunnel

March, and you are three guys short

A landscaping and lawn company running four trucks. Spring hits, the schedule fills, and the crew does not exist yet.

A text-to-apply hiring conversation where an applicant texts CREW and answers screening questions by SMS

What happens today

He posts on Indeed. It is pay-per-click now, so a live post for a laborer role in a metro area runs a few hundred dollars a month for a micro business. He gets resumes from people who have never held a trimmer. Half do not answer the phone. Two say they will come Thursday. Nobody comes Thursday.

Meanwhile the guy he actually wants — currently on a competitor’s crew, mildly annoyed about last Friday — is not browsing job boards. He is sitting at a light behind one of these trucks.

What changes

Truck doors and yard signs read “NOW HIRING — Text CREW to (555) 010-4477” — his own texting number, his keyword. Applying takes eight seconds and no resume. Screening asks six questions, drops the unqualified politely, and books the rest into interview slots. (Today that conversation runs as a web link the applicant taps; it moves onto text when the carrier filing clears.)

Three weeks in March Job board Text-to-apply
Cash cost~$150–300/mo in clicks$69/mo, flat
Effort to applyAccount, resume, uploadOne text message
Reaches people not job huntingNoYes — every truck is a billboard
Applicants (assumed)18 resumes15 texts
Pass screening6, after you call them6, screened before you look
Show up to the interview24 — a booked slot and a calendar invite they can add
Owner hours spent~8 hrs of phone tag~1 hr reviewing and booking
What a short crew actually costsThree weeks of a two-man crew doing three-man work, in your best month

Illustrative example. Not a customer result. Applicant counts and show rates are our assumptions. The Indeed figure reflects its pay-per-click model as of August 2026 and varies a lot by market and role. The line we would defend in an argument is the last one: in the trades, the cost of an unfilled seat in March dwarfs the cost of any hiring tool.

Where the numbers come from

Two kinds of figures appear above. We keep them separated on purpose.

Published industry figures

Not ours, and checkable

  • ~62% of calls to home-service businesses go unanswered
  • ~78% of jobs go to the business that responds first
  • ~3% of voicemails get a callback
  • Average home-service job runs $300–$3,000 depending on trade
  • Competitor pricing taken from public pricing pages, August 2026
Our assumptions

Argue with these

  • 20% reply rate to a missed-call text-back
  • 25–30% close rate on a recovered conversation
  • 8% of visitors start a quote flow; half finish it
  • Applicant volume and interview show rates for a spring hire
  • Job values and call volumes for each composite business

Every one of these is a guess we made in public. Change them in the recovered-job calculator and see what your own numbers do.

Founding Pilot Program · a small first cohort

Be the case study that replaces this page

We need real numbers more than we need your money right now. So we are trading: you run all four tools through a full season and let us publish what actually happened, and we make it worth your while in cash and access.

You keep veto power over every word we publish, including your company name. If the results are bad, we will publish that too — that is the entire point of doing it this way.

What a founding pilot gets

  • A full season free instead of 30 days — we set it on your account by hand when you join
  • A founding-pilot rate held for 24 months on the full bundle, well under $199/mo — agreed in writing with you, because billing is by invoice and there is no card on file
  • We do the setup — widget install, your pricing rules, and your 10DLC filing the day that opens
  • The founder’s direct line, not a support queue
  • Your feature requests go first in the build order
  • Walk any time — there is still no contract
Apply as a Founding Pilot

Mention “founding pilot” in the notes box, or call (301) 268-1943.

No customer logos. Just the arithmetic.

Run your own numbers instead of ours: 30-day trial, no credit card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.