Mobile Mini Trucks: Where any event is better with flowers

Heather Graves

Staff

August 12, 2024

NEENAH – A 1969 Dodge pickup and dozens of freshly picked flowers – Sami Schmidt said for those who know her, it’s a combination right up her alley.

The Fox Cities native said she has always had an interest in flowers.

“What girl doesn’t like flowers?” she said.

When she was little, Schmidt said she would spend hours in her grandmother’s flower garden – picking anything from daisies to sunflowers.

As she got older, she said she had dreams of opening a flower conservatory of her own – however, the cost of doing that sent her down another path.

“I thought, ‘how can I make this more doable for me right now?’” she said. “I didn’t want a brick and mortar because I didn’t want to be tied down – I like being mobile.”

Enter a 1969 muted yellow Dodge truck.

“I wanted something that was going to be an eye-catcher, and the truck is that,” she said.

Armed with an idea and a vintage truck, Schmidt launched Mobile Mini Trucks, LLC – a mobile flower truck.

A few speed bumps

Launching Mobile Mini Trucks, Schmidt – who has an interior design degree from Fox Valley Technical College – said, took a lot of determination.

“A lot of setbacks have happened in the year since I started the business,” she said.

Though the idea behind the business always included a truck, Schmidt said she launched the business before the truck was in the picture.

“I launched the business in April 2023,” she said. “We ended up finding the truck in July 2023. My thought process was, if I didn’t start it when I did, I would keep dragging my feet. So I told my wife, ‘I’m doing this. I’m starting the business and everything else will fall into place.’”

Though the truck wasn’t yet part of the equation in the beginning, Schmidt said the pop-up flower business took off – as she booked bridal showers, birthday parties and weddings.

A handful of months later, she said she found the truck.

“Things naturally fell into place – which is good because I was getting a little nervous,” she laughed.

Schmidt said she found the truck on Facebook Marketplace.

“The guys who were selling it brought it up from Arkansas intending to restore it,” she said. “When that didn’t work out, they decided to sell it. I told them what I had in mind for the truck – they loved the idea.”

Though purchasing the truck completed the big-picture vision of Mobile Mini Trucks, Schmidt said it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

“Two months after we bought the truck, the coolant plug fell out, which blew a gasket and fused two cylinders – a whole domino effect of problems and the entire engine needed to be rebuilt,” she said.

A driving success

Though growth has happened gradually since spring 2023, Schmidt said she can’t believe how much has changed over the past year.

“I didn’t think I would get as big as I have in a year,” she said. “I feel like every time I go to network or talk to people about my business, they already know who I am. I didn’t realize people knew who I was or what Mobile Mini Trucks was.”

When you start something, Schmidt said, “it’s such a big idea.”

“You see it as your baby and you think, ‘I’m going to start it, and eventually it’s going to grow and enter the crawling stage,’” she said. “Now, I feel like we are in the walking stage, and I’m like, ‘I don’t’ know if I’m ready for this yet, but it’s happening.’”

The social media side of things, Schmidt said, has been the hardest part of business ownership thus far.

“I feel like I have worked twice as hard on social media to get noticed,” she said. “It’s easy to showcase your work in person – show off the flowers and talk to people face to face, that’s where I thrive.”
With social media, Schmidt said you have to sell yourself and your business in an engaging way. 

“That is the most challenging part for me,” she said.

Learning who Mobile Mini Trucks’ target audience is, Schmidt said, has also been a challenge.

“It is vintage truck lovers, flower girls, folks who love going to farmers markets and getting fresh flowers, wedding people – navigating that has been a major hurdle as well,” she said.

Meeting people and sharing her passion for flowers, Schmidt said, has hands-down been the best aspect of the business.

“I love meeting people, I love talking to them and telling them about the truck, the flowers and what we do,” she said. 

Schmidt said she loves the instant smiles the truck brings to people and watching the excitement it brings to kids.

“It’s how I felt in my grandma’s garden or going to car shows as a kid – it’s the experience,” she said. “Beyond the experience with the truck and the flowers, it is also about who Emily and I are as a couple and our involvement with the community.”

Schmidt said the vintage truck is also available to rent for events – such as weddings or family pictures.

Other services offered through Mobile Mini Trucks, she said, include custom-created floral arrangements for events, including weddings.

Schmidt said she also teaches floral arrangement classes.

A little bit extra

Since purchasing the truck, Schmidt said she has gradually added to it.

“When we bought it, it was just a Dodge truck,” she said. “In the beginning, it was used to haul things to events, and then I would set up flower displays near it.”

This year, Schmidt said a friend of hers and her wife, Emily, built a custom-made flower pot holder into the bed of the truck.

“The build-out allows me to pop my flower buckets into the custom-built holders in the truck bed – which makes it easy for me to set everything up in case my wife isn’t able to come with me,” she said. 

Other additions to the truck this year, Schmidt said, include a canopy frame and lights for night events.

“We will soon add sun shades, which will help with reflecting UV for when we do our daytime pop-ups,” she said. “Flowers wilt a lot faster in the sun.”

Schmidt said she also plans on adding battery-operated fans to go under the canopy to help circulate some of the heat away from the flowers.

Schmidt said Mobile Mini Trucks brings the best of both worlds.

“You have the guys who want to learn more about the truck,” she said. “And you have the women who love the flowers. We love that aspect of it.”

The girl behind the wheel

Schmidt said Mobile Mini Trucks is a proud woman-owned business that supports other woman-owned businesses.

“It’s hard to be a woman-owned business,” she said. “So, it’s important to showcase woman-owned businesses – we are thriving.”

The flowers offered through Mobile Mini Trucks – both for private and public events – Schmidt said, are handpicked by her at various flower farms throughout Northeast Wisconsin – such as Archer & Bliss Floral in Shawano County, The Ever Lea Flower Farm in Outagamie County and North Road Flower Farm in Winnebago County – all of which are woman-owned and operated.

“We support each other in different aspects and different ways, and I love that about us,” she said. “They’re prepping all year long to have, basically, four months of payoff. So, if I can show off their hard work through what I do, it is beneficial for everybody. I love that aspect of the business.”

For public events, Schmidt said she will often post information on her social media platforms showcasing where the flowers for that event came from.

“It’s one thing for you to support me as a woman-owned business, but I think it’s important to support other woman-owned businesses – so showcasing where I get my supplies and flowers from helps do that,” she said.

Building relationships and collaborating with other woman-owned businesses in the region, Schmidt said, has allowed her to use their space to do things in the off-season to help Mobile Mini Trucks remain viable year-round.

On the horizon

Though the truck has a season, Schmidt said Mobile Mini Trucks is a year-round business.

“Unless we have an event somewhere, we can pull the truck right into – we did that for a baby shower in February,” she said. “The truck’s season is basically from May to October.” 

Remaining viable as a business during the non-truck months, Schmidt said, includes pop-up flower bars at various indoor events – which she purchases flowers for from wholesalers.

What the future looks like beyond that, Schmidt said she isn’t sure – “and I like that I don’t have a big answer for that.”

“I feel like I always have a different trajectory of where I’m going – I let the wind take me where it will,” she said. “My goal is to eventually have a venue of my own so I can display the truck outside showcasing itself. If that is a brick-and-mortar, great. If it is in a space with multiple other vendors, that’s great, too.”

Schmidt – who describes herself as an emotional snowbird – said she would also like to eventually travel with the business during the off-season.

“My ultimate goal is to travel somewhere south with Mobile Mini Trucks in the wintertime and come back to Wisconsin in March, April or May,” she said.

For more on Mobile Mini Trucks, LLC, visit mobileminitrucks.com or check out its Facebook and Instagram pages.