Teen entrepreneur flies above
Guy Matthews details the bottom of an airplane. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Guy Matthews soars in business. He’s known for detailing vehicles, but it’s not cleaning cars. It’s airplanes.
The teen entrepreneur is proprietor of Plane Clean in St. Louis, Missouri.
“Plane Clean is based out of Spirit of St. Louis Airport, Chesterfield, Missouri,” he said. “We actually are located within an air charter operation on the field. We basically go around the field detailing jets, general aviation aircraft, a lot of cool stuff. We even detail flight simulators for FlightSafety, which is the largest flight simulator operation in the world. They're worldwide. They do all the training for the airlines and all the huge jets.”
Guy, 18, and his team handle private and charter craft.
“We serve a lot of those operations on the field,” he said. “There's not a really big commercial presence in regards to airlines. It's more medical flights, air charter, general aviation flight training, things like that within aviation. Our goal as aircraft detailers is to service those people, those individuals who have those kinds of assets.”
Guy’s business cleans any type of plane.
“We detail everything from small biplanes and flight training aircraft all the way to huge jets like Dassault Falcon 900s, Gulfstreams, Bombardier Challengers, etc.,” he said. “Our customers are really diverse. It's from flight schools to corporate flight departments. It's crazy cool how it's set up.”
Guy said even detailing a small plane is a lengthy job.
“A prime example for that would be a Cessna 172 Skyhawk,” he said. “That's your most common trainer. The way we do it can take around two to three hours minimum, maximum five to six. It just really depends on what service we’re actually doing. It really does vary based on what the customer was wanting done.”
Guy fills a need as there aren’t a plethora of plane detailers.
“It's a really niche industry within a niche industry, which is kind of crazy,” he said. “In St. Louis, there's myself as well as two other major companies that do what I do. Across the United States, there's a few large companies that are spread out across regions like the Southeast and the West where California is.”
Guy said problems arise for plane owners forced to clean their own craft.
“A lot of people have to do it themselves,” he said. “They have to figure it out, try to do the best they can. They have to use a lot of times, car products, which are never really the best option because they're not meant for that. Aircraft paint is really thin. Car products, they're horrible for airplane paint. A lot of people end up ruining their airplanes cosmetically because they don't know what they're doing.”
Guy said the Internet doesn’t help.
“If you go on YouTube and search it up, there's very few YouTube videos that teach you how to clean airplanes,” he said. “And the ones that do teach you use car products and it does not work. It ruins the airplane. Not immediately, but over time through constant use.”
Guy stressed an airplane is too valuable to not treat properly.
“It's crazy when you think about how expensive some things really are,” he said. “But that's where we come in. We do the job, we do it right, and we make sure that everyone we work for is taken care of, no problem.”
Guy said a plane’s interior also requires a special touch and special products.
“A lot of the aircraft interior is really luxurious, really bougie,” he said. “It's goatskin carpets, all that crazy stuff you'd find in a Rolls-Royce is in your small to mid-size airplane. You gotta be really careful, especially with woodwork and things of that nature. That's actual wood. It's not like your car’s wood-colored plastic. We've got to use aircraft-purpose products, because you've got to be safe.”
Guy said plane detailing includes maintaining expensive seats.
“The seats are exposed to a lot more UV rays,” he said. “When they're up at 45,000 feet, 30,000 feet, they are constantly being exposed to tons and tons of sunlight, which degrades the leather, makes it crack and makes it degrade. We have to use special products to make sure that doesn't happen, make sure it remains protected, that the moisture within the leather remains secure and good to go.”
Guy added other parts of the interior also require special care.
“You have some couches in there that are fabric, so you're really careful around those,” he said. “Can't put anything on fabric. The walls are sometimes fabric-lined. It's just one way plenty of things can go wrong. You've got to be an absolute expert in what you're doing to make sure that the aircraft is clean and not messed up in any sort of way.”
Guy described the toughest part of cleaning large planes.
“It’s because of the type of engines,” he said. “For example, a King Air 350 has two turboprop engines. It's a twin engine aircraft. It is disgusting because of the amount of soot it puts out the exhaust, which circulates around the aircraft during flight and creates a really nasty coating of soot.”
Guy said even when the engines are situated in a better spot, there’s still challenges.
“A private jet like a Gulfstream G IV, the engines are located on the rear, so not underneath the wings like the airlines,” he said. “It's located on the rear of the airplane next to the tail. So all that exhaust output is centralized and located in one particular place, which makes it a lot easier to clean. But the downside is they got that huge mass, that huge fuselage that's 10, 15 feet tall and 10 feet wide. That takes a little more time to coat and clean and make sure it's all up spec.”
Guy said a large plane may take half a day to clean.
“When it comes down to actual times, we can get a Dassault Falcon 900 done in probably 10 to 12 hours for a full service detail,” he said. “With an King Air, it probably takes around eight to nine. What's the worst is when you have an aircraft that is as large as a 737 MAX. That's like the airline aircraft that Southwest flies but converted to a more upscale version of it. That is definitely the worst one to clean for sure. The engines are located in the same spot as a King Air, underneath or on the side on each wing.”
Guy said his team typically doesn’t tackle the largest size, but will do any plane if needed.
“We love to take on a challenge,” he said. “Anything we can get our hands on, we definitely will. We definitely love to see what we can do.”
Guy’s business has detailed expensive aircraft.
“The Falcon 900 is definitely the most expensive,” he said. “That runs around $40 to $50 million. That particular aircraft, sometimes even more. If you mess up the smallest thing on a $50 or $40 million aircraft, that's not $20, that's 50 grand, that's 100 grand. We have to take that into account every single time we're doing a job, make sure it's safe, that we're acting professional, and that we're ensuring quality across the whole job.”
Guy enjoys dealing with his clientele.
“It's the interactions I get to have with my customers, because we're not just dealing with clients’ regards to maintenance,” he said. “We're not like charter companies who just talk about trips and stuff. We're not a broker that just talks about selling and buying airplanes. We get to engage with everyone within the aviation industry. We're talking with mechanics all the time. We're talking with charter operators, pilots. We're talking with aircraft brokers. We're talking with line service professionals all the time.”
Guy enjoys the variety of his work.
“My interactions every day are so diverse and so unique that it doesn't make it boring for me because it's always something new,” he said. “There's always someone different that I'm talking to and because of that, it makes every day seem like a brand new day. The aircraft is always different, too. So we're not always detailing a King Air every single day. It's a King Air. Then we go to a Piper Warrior, and then the next day is a flight sim, and then the next day could be a Gulfstream or something like that.”
Guy also likes working with planes.
“I love airplanes,” he said. “Just the idea of flying through the air, going hundreds of miles an hour is just mind-boggling. I'm a pilot myself. I love getting up as much as I can and just getting on airplanes again as much as I can.”
Guy said the site of a plane’s engine determines where the hardest part of the vehicle is to clean.
“It really ranges based on what kind of airplane it is and where the engine is located,” he said. “Let's say the engine’s on the front of the airplane, the hardest part is going to be the belly and then the gear wells, because the gear wells contract so much grease because those threads are lubricated. All that excess is pumping through and getting splattered on those gear wells. And then you have all that exhaust excess as the exhaust is mounted on the belly. The exhaust fumes travel on the belly and creates a whole line of soot and excess oil and nastiness. That's what makes those aircraft brutal.”
Guy pinpointed the dirtiest area on the bigger craft.
“When it gets to the larger airplanes like the twin engines, if it's piston-driven, then of course it's gonna be the engine,” he said. “The engine, it's gonna be all that nastiness where all the exhaust rests and seeps in the paint and then probably the gear walls, too. Gear walls are the worst. They're so tight, compacted. There's a lot of sharp edges, so you cut your hands up and get a bunch of grease in your fingernails, which makes it really rough and annoying.”
However, Guy said the job is worth any aggravation.
“You make do with it because you love what you're doing,” he said. “You just get through it, get done with it and keep moving.”
Guy even enounters animal caracasses during detailing.
“We've encountered bird strikes where we found feathers underneath the wing,” he said. “Like a cake splatter with feathers. We found spiders in gear wells, a bunch of spiders. One time, it looked like they ran over something, like a rodent. There was a bunch of blood splatter all across the gear, the main nose gear. Stuff like that.”
Guy has dealt with unsanitary jobs.
“We clean a lot of medical airplanes,” he said. “One time, we had to clean HIV off a gurney, so we had to exercise some biohazard precautions. We have had to clean a lot of nasty stuff up, even vomit on the inside, because some people have too much wine or food or get air sick. People do not treat airplanes the way they should a lot of times, and they do not take precautions. But bird strikes, they're common. We take care of it, clean it, not a big deal. But for the inside stuff, it's always a nightmare.”
Guy said hot weather doesn’t help with odors emanating from a mess.
“Especially when it was kept on the ramp for five days in July,” he said. “Line service didn't have any space for the hanger, so they left it outside. I about died. I got in there and I just went right back out. It was red wine and pasta that just sat in there for days. It was horrible.”
Guy uses a method to freshen a plane interior.
“We do that through scent bombs,” he said. “Imagine a gas bomb, but it is like a Febreze-type deal. But it really also just depends how long it's been in there, what it is. Usually, there's not really a big scent. Aircraft are not like cars. There's a good airflow through the whole cabin and there needs to be because you're going high altitudes. That scent really goes away pretty quickly if there is one.”
One pungent odor on a plane that hasn’t offended Guy’s olfactory sense is marijuana.
“Not yet,” he said. “We've encountered alcohol, some narcotics. I think that's more of a California thing and a charter thing. If anything, a lot of our clients are more or less the demographics of bankers and doctors. It's people like that caliber, hedge fund managers, sports team players. We don't really deal with the party people too often. In St. Louis where we live, there's not a lot of party people that get on airplanes. That's more a New York and Miami and Los Angeles type deal.”
Guy is mulling a possible expansion down the road.
“We're debating about what our plan should be for 2025 right now,” he said. “Constantly going back and forth because I'm doing this while in college. I've got a good structure set up here. They're doing pretty good. Do we want to add another chapter to the mix? I would love to. It's great. This is something that needs to be replicated but remain small and trusted. The question is where is the best spot to put a second and final or second and third final locations that we can continue to grow and monitor.”
Guy said the Sunshine State is a viable option.
“That's definitely going to probably be somewhere in the Southeast like Florida,” he said. “There's a large number of aircraft down there given the weather and also the clientele. They're really wealthy, upscale clientele.”
Further up the coast may work as well for Guy.
“There's some possibility that we will do something on the East Coast,” he said. “Virginia is a prominent location. That's actually where I go to college. I go to Liberty University. I'm a freshman there. We're thinking about opening up a location there pending finding the right airport. A lot of it comes down to find the right airport.”
Guy said the key is using an area that has multiple airports.
“You don't want to go to one airport and then rely on everything there,” he said. “You want to go to an area with multiple airports, three, four, five like St. Louis has, because you need a great aviation presence. You're only probably get a tenth or even a fifth of that. We've got to be able to gauge and see what's fungible for us.”
Guy said starting a plane detailing business takes time.
“It takes a lot to develop the relationships we have,” he said. “It's taken years to get to where we're at now in Missouri. Is it worth doing, trying to do that again, spend that time somewhere else? I think it is.”
Guy started his business three years ago.
“Wasn't my idea,” he said. “My dad, when I was 15, he goes and says, you know you’re not gonna sleep here and do nothing. You’re gonna get a job. I said I'm gonna go work at a car wash. He's like, no, you're not. He tells me you have two options. You’re either gonna be a line service guy at one of the airports, which is $10 an hour maximum. It's really low pay. Or I could start a detailing company because it's a need in the area.”
Guy opted for the latter, receiving startup cash from dad, a captain and director of flight operations for a company.
“He gave me a $500 loan, which I worked off, and he made sure I worked it off,” he said. “Trust me on that. That was not pretty work: detailing all his toys and over and over again. But once it was done, we just worked through it. I got my license. I got one client after the next doing a small aircraft from J-3 Piper Cubs to little Cessnas.”
Guy resumed work the next summer.
“I would again restart and then actually get in touch with an auto detailer,” he said. “He would show me the ropes of how to detail, how to be effective, how to clean properly, how to be safe. Then I would take that and combine it with my dad's knowledge of aviation safety and the importance of what to look for and then just keep working at it. We got our first contract for a flight school. I did 20 aircraft that summer. It was pretty neat.”
Just when business died down for Guy, a new opportunity arose.
“After that, it just died off, which sucked,” he said. “You're like where all the jobs go? Well, winter comes around. Then that November, I got a call from a company called FlightSafety. They said we want you to detail flight sims. Okay, well, I don't even know what those are. Show me. I got to go to the facility, I have to get security clearance, the whole thing. And then I'm detailing flight sims.”
Business started to boom for Guy.
“Another flight school says we need you to detail six aircraft in two days,” he said. “And I'm like, well, I guess things are booming. Then everyone hears a word about me. They started calling. Then I got in with a charter company here at Spirit Airport.”
Guy was set up in his own office at the airport.
“They showed me the airplanes and they just had jets, something I had never really done previously,” he said. “I did good work. I put my heart into it. A lot of it was faith-driven. I'm a Christian, and a lot of what I've done started this year has been really faith-driven. That's really driven my focus, my vision, because it went from profitability to just the idea. And because of that new mindset and focus, we've gotten so much more work.”
Guy’s revenue kept rising.
“We've absolutely quadrupled our last year's revenue within quarters 1 and 2,” he said. “Quarter 3 was big as well. And we're looking to finish up quarter 4 really strong. We're trying to maximize pretty much everything we got going on here. We're playing to expand and get some more contracts now given that we can enough handle more than the current schedule we have.”
Guy is excited by the company’s future.
“It's fantastic,” he said. “It's been such a unique and crazy cool thing to be a part of. My business partner, Gabe Daniel, and I have been working on some other projects. Just having people like him by my side as well as others that mentor me along the way. It's been huge. I never thought I'd be here three years ago and it's not been easy.”
Guy found his youth brought disdain from some quarters.
“It's been really rough and no one wants me to succeed because of how young I am,” he said. “A lot of people, especially 40s, 50s, even 60s, have been trying to put me down, trying to get me to go away. But I don't know how to quit. I've just kept going and kept doing my thing.”
Guy credited a higher power for his success.
“It was definitely by the grace of God that I got what I got,” he said. “He’s given me such great guidance and drive. He's really helped me focus and because of that I've been able to make my ideas, my dreams become a reality. A lot of people are not able to make that happen because they always quit. I didn't quit and I got through it. A lot of people just do it because they're so focused on the money. I was able to manage and focus on the mindset and the idea. I'm just going to keep growing, keep moving.”
Guy must deal with the cost of operating a business.
“I'm up to 35 percent to 40 percent in taxes,” he said. “Almost half of my income is being taxed. It's definitely a struggle right now, trying to make sure that we do things right by the book and make sure that we're able to put food on the table for my guys.”
Guy isn’t afraid to be open about his faith despite it being unpopular with a vocal segment of society.
“It's wrong to hide it,” he said. “I know a lot of people try to shut other people down because they don't believe. I'm the opposite way. I like people interacting and talking and coming together. That's the most productive thing. We're all humans at the end of the day. I don't think we should hate each other for what the other person says or thinks. I think that sharing is what makes us successful, what makes us who we are, which is so much more important than hating and trying to separate us and divide us into these little groups of people. We should be together.”
Guy’s business wasn’t the impetus to become a pilot.
“It really came down to my need for speed,” he said. “I'm a pretty big guy, stand 6 foot 8. I'm 230 pounds. I always feel like I'm too big for a lot of places. When it comes down to it, flying and driving, going fast and doing these crazy cool things make me feel like I'm not the biggest thing anymore. This whole sky is so much bigger than me. It's just such a cool thing to me. It allows me to feel free.”
Guy’s height does hamper his maneuverability in some aircraft.
“I always have trouble trying to fit inside training aircraft like Cessna 172s and Piper Cherokees,” he said. “I am also very limited to what aircraft I can fly given my long legs and sitting height.”
Guy relies on his religious faith for motivation.
“Faith is my biggest motivator,” he said. “But also my motivation is to be better than I was yesterday. This business allows me to cultivate my gifts, my talents. I want to make sure that I can replicate and double what I've been given and continue to make good use of what I have. I've been really blessed and I've been gifted in such a special way. I need to keep putting my best foot forward and doing what needs to be done.”
Guy said aspiring pilots should appreciate the space they’ll inhabit.
“Just looking up and seeing the sky,” he said. “If you don't think that's the place for you, don't go. But if you look up in shock and awe, then go chase it. That's what being a pilot's all about is about chasing the adventure, chasing new heights and aiming as far up as you can. It's the coolest thing around. I wouldn't do anything else. And neither would my father, who's a pilot, neither with my grandfather and great grandfather, who were pilots, nor would my friends and the people I work with and clients I serve that are pilots, because they knew very well that that's what they want to do with their life — where they belong.”
Guy said budding entrepreneurs should be passionate about their work.
“If you're doing it simply because you love what you do and because you want to strive for greatness, and to be innovative and be revolutionary, then go start your own business,” he said. “Entrepreneurship is where the dreamers are. This is where we change the world. This is where we cultivate the newest ideas and newest technologies and where we make the future become a reality. And it all starts with questioning yourself and finding that motivation.”
Guy’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planecleanstl/
Guy’s website: https://planecleanstl.com/