Vincent Seccareccia III was confident his veterinarian practice would thrive when he launched it in 2005.
After all, in a state where residents notoriously don’t like to travel more than a few minutes for anything, Seccareccia would be the first vet to bring his examination room nearly to his clients’ front door.
And he was right. In the more than five years since Seccareccia opened All Pets Mobile Vet LLC, he has logged thousands of miles in his mobile animal hospital, tending to dogs, cats, birds, fish and even some llamas and alpaca across Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
The practice has grown about 9 percent a year at a time when other vets are losing some ground in a sputtering economy. “I’m almost maxing out on how much I can do,” he said recently.
Seccareccia might be mobile, but he’s not quite making house calls.
Sometimes, the vet will enter homes to tend to pets that are too sick to move or dying. But most times, Seccareccia insists that pets enter his camper-sized truck, which he says is better equipped than many animal hospitals in the region.
Seccareccia has the equipment to take x-rays, conduct ultrasounds and perform dentistry. The truck even has a surgery suite, a waiting area for clients and cages for recovery. Vet technician Carolyn Brown rides along, too.
Seccareccia is one of six vets in New England with a comparable setup, and the only one in Rhode Island. A mobile animal hospital is a concept that some clients find difficult to grasp.
One pet owner called to have his dog neutered, in part to have the animal avoid the stress of traveling to a hospital. But once Seccareccia arrived and readied the surgery suite in the truck, the client wanted him to do the surgery inside the home.
“He didn’t trust the sterility of the van,” Seccareccia said.
After reassurances that the mobile unit was safe, the surgery took place in the truck.
For all the success he has had so far, Seccareccia said getting the business started was a little more difficult than he expected, namely because he initially couldn’t get financing.
He was rejected by six different banks over a 10-week span in 2004 and early 2005.
“I had a 3-inch thick file of pictures and projections, but I didn’t fit into their boxes of what a business is,” Seccareccia said.
But it wasn’t just financing. Because the concept of a mobile vet was new to Rhode Island, Seccareccia struggled to get the proper licenses for his x-ray machine from the Rhode Island Department of Health, even though he said it posed little risk to anyone outside his truck.
“I had to jump through all these hoops,” he said.
Finding clients proved to be relatively easy. Seccareccia had worked relief duty at more than 60 animal hospitals around the region before venturing on his own. One of the last places he worked, a practice in Bristol, was closing down, so he managed to pick up a number of patients for All Pets Mobile.
Soon his business attracted the attention of WJAR-TV NBC 10, which ran a news story on the mobile practice. That generated 50 to 60 calls.
“Before I had started, I planned to work three days a week,” Seccareccia recalled. “But within three weeks I had to go a full four days – or 40 hours a week – because I had so much business immediately. There was so much buzz.”
The popularity isn’t just that people don’t like to travel. Seccareccia said it’s a matter of stress for the pet.
“When we come to the home, it’s not that big of a deal because they go out of the house, hop in the van and [that’s] it,” he said. “There are no other animals and no waiting room.”
There are advantages for the vet, too.
Yes, gas prices are putting a squeeze on All Pets Mobile and travel and traffic reduce the number of patients he can see in a day. But Seccareccia is thankful his practice isn’t tied to the fortunes of particular areas of the region, some of which have been hit harder than others in the recession. “I can travel town to town,” he said.
While the initial fee for the visit is a bit higher than a standard office visit charge, Seccareccia said his charges for other services tend to be lower.
Although there are no competing mobile services in the area, Seccareccia isn’t fearful some might appear in the future. “You could easily have another 10 or 15 of these [mobile practices], and I wouldn’t even notice because there is plenty of business out there.” •
COMPANY PROFILE
All Pets Mobile Vet LLC
OWNER: Vincent Seccareccia
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Mobile veterinarian
LOCATION: Haliburton Road, East Providence
EMPLOYEES: 2
YEAR FOUNDED: 2005
ANNUAL SALES: estimated $300,000 for 2011
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