Our service techs are $400ish an hour, 4 hour minimum weekdays 8 hour minimum weekends/holidays/2nd or 3rd shift.
So yeah don't sell labor short.
Our service techs are $400ish an hour, 4 hour minimum weekdays 8 hour minimum weekends/holidays/2nd or 3rd shift.
So yeah don't sell labor short.
Our service techs are $400ish an hour, 4 hour minimum weekdays 8 hour minimum weekends/holidays/2nd or 3rd shift.
So yeah don't sell labor short.
Looking professional?
Somebody passed along a plumber to do some work in our bathroom - guy says he'll stop by at day end on Friday. Sounds like a productive guy not slacking at end of the week.
Late summer day he shows up in shorts, t-shirt, flip flops and a coffee in his hand. He's on the way to the bar and wanted to scope out the work. He grilled my wife on who gave her his number cause he's getting a divorce and is hiding this side work money.
He got aggravated we didn't have the fixtures so he could come back the next day. I'll email you a quote, he says....leaves and we never got the quotation.
In reply to pheller :
Windshield time costs more than work time. I'm not sure why you don't think you should pay for it. As it is, that cost is baked into the hourly rate and any hours spent on a service call are billed to that call.
Quoted jobs almost always bill for more than time and material jobs. You may think you are getting a better price but I have to charge for every issue that may come up in a quote. With time and material jobs, the customer shares that liability and can benefit from jobs that go quickly. While the hourly rate for quoted work is frequently lower, hours are added to make up the difference. I pretty much don't quote service work, only replacement work.
I charge a premium to install customer-supplied parts and will not warranty them in any way. If I don't control the supply chain, I have no recourse to warranty the parts. The customer gets to eat that and all the associated costs including removal and installation of the replacement part.
I'm not sure why you think a homeowner should pay less than a shop owner. The work is pretty much the same. The quality of employees is the same. The truck is the same. If you want to pay E36 M3 prices, expect E36 M3 work or service companies that pad their invoices every way they can.
It's interesting to hear the man who wants better pay, easier work, and fewer work hours complain about service charges. The service charges the owner uses to pay his employees and himself.
My pat answer for anyone who doesn't like my prices is for them to call someone else. Please call someone else. Those customers are the reason my rates are as high as they are.
My complaint or concern is not about the costs of doing business, but more that consolidation of increasingly large companies with larger overheads and higher demands for profit margins make building and housing maintenance astronomically expensive, and that creates these feedback loops where labor needs higher wages, businesses need to charge higher prices for their good and services to afford their space, commercial and residential rentals need higher leasing prices to cover the cost of maintenance.
I advocate for systems that give the "small guy" a huge competitive advantage without passing along profits. IE, owner operators that make good wages and charge reasonable prices because their taxes are low, healthcare is free, and they aren't run out of town by the proverbial Walmart.
In reply to pheller :
I hate to break it to you, but larger companies have lower overhead per field employee.
They have one admin for 50 employees instead of one for 6. One CEO for 1000 employees instead of one for 6. If I was CEO of a large company I'd be making 7 figures instead of a little more than my employees.
They get better pricing on insurance than I do. They pay less for vehicles, fuel, and maintenance. Everything about large businesses is cheaper due to the economy of scale.
That's how they end up putting the little guys out of business.
The only way I stay ahead of them is by being better than they are in every way. Better service, better people, better communication, the works.
Right, but I'm advocating for you. Because when you're out of business, I get stuck with them, then they are free to charge me whatever they want.
In reply to pheller :
Your math ain't mathin.
You are complaining about the price and claiming you are an advocate of Toyman, but his rates shown above would make the price comparable to what you paid (a little bit more)
Don't forget that someone had to pay the staff while you argued with them about their rates.
You should DIY it next time.
In reply to Toyman! :
Off topic but when I first started our business I put " Reliable, Experienced, Better" on our cards and car magnets.
The amount of people that were stunned that I was shooting for "Better( or best)" instead of cheapest was funny. One person asked " Why should I give you my work if I know you are making more than the minimum amount"?
I told him something a long the lines of he wasnt "giving" me work, he was paying to make sure the job was done well, correct and once. Paying to do a job more than once is always more expensive.
He had someone else do the work. He did it poorly, smeared concrete on the side of his house and broke his dogs leg, had to be thrown off the property by the sheriff's too. Redid the job later and it's been fine for over a decade.
Better and ONCE is always the best option, I applaud you for always shooting for best
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Glad to read that you've been offered the job!
Antihero said:He did it poorly,
This is so, so, so common in the handyman world. The bar is very, very, low.
TravisTheHuman said:Antihero said:He did it poorly,
This is so, so, so common in the handyman world. The bar is very, very, low.
Sadly it's common in the construction world too.
In the case of this job it was a stamp job and the problem with stamp concrete is that you have a very limited time to actually stamp the concrete so you either do a limited amount of yardage or you have a very large crew.
This was something like 30 yards of an open faced stamp in the heart of summer. With a crew of four I stick to a maximum of 8 yards at a time so it was 4 pours and it was broken up basically perfect for it. The other guy poured it all at once with a crew of 2. By the time they got it laid down the first truck was too far gone to stamp so they started stamping from the end of the pour and over stamped it. They got about a quarter stamped, and then got in a fight with the home owner. The other guy decided that the homeowner was implying that he sucked at his job so he threw rocks at the dog and broke his leg.
Then because the homeowner was quite mad about his dog , they walked out in the still green concrete and started digging it out and throwing it on the house plus rubbing it into the siding and windows.
Sheriff literally had to drag him away and charges were filed. The general called me up and begged me for a deal but I told him that my price stayed, PLUS whatever arbitrary figure I came up with for concrete removal. They ended up taking it out themselves, which bluntly is exactly why I quote what I quote for removal, and we replaced it with a standard broom finish
The guy thought he was a competitor of us but in reality he was the best advertisement you could get. Hire us or you get .....this
He outbid me by a huge margin but ended up getting nothing but the advance and since he forgot that colored concrete cost a bunch ( pro tip: never go with green colored concrete. It's cheaper to just shred money and throw it in the concrete. This color was an extra $450 a yard . Which means he blew his bid by over 13 grand, charged it to his house account and then he got the crap sued out of him
In reply to Antihero :
Friend of mine is a residential plumbing contractor. He said he communicates clearly, shows up when he says he will, charges exactly what was proposed.
When he occasionally blows an estimate - no drama. Will make it up on the next jobs rather than force negative feelings into a customer. Because the industry is generally so flaky - he is busy every week of the year despite charging very premium rates.
When I started this journey, I was told that there was a gentleman at a manufacturer with whom I needed to get in contact. I called him, he texted back that he was in the middle of something and he'd reach out, I never heard back so I pinged him again and got silence. I figured it was no big deal - I didn't know exactly who he was so I assumed that he didn't really have anything open and didn't have the budget authority to make up a headcount and get something open, so I dialed him down on my priority list. I had lunch with the guy that originally told me to call him and mentioned I hadn't heard back and what my assumption was. My contact assured me that I really needed to talk to this guy, so I elevated the follow-up priority and texted him back. Basically just said that I knew we hadn't connected yet and I didn't want to hassle him, but that I'd love to talk if he had a minute because I was told by our mutual contact that if nothing else, he could give me some good advice. My phone rang before I could set it back on my desk. We talked for a while and his message to me was basically that he had talked to several people in his organization who all told him that he needed to find a way to hire me. His message was that he was putting together his headcount for the fiscal year which starts soon and he wanted to see what of those roles might be the best fit. It was kind of funny how he asked for my resume and told me to not to waste time getting it pretty or tailored - I didn't need to get past any gatekeepers, he said, he just needed it to see what I could do.
Lunch was a similar experience with a couple guys from another organization that is somewhat similar to the company I just left (or that left me). They ran down all the various people they knew in their organization and promised to make sure I was bubbled up to the attention of the hiring managers, internal recruiters, and a couple line-of-business owners.
Now, that's all talk so far, so there is no guarantee of any sort of result out of that. But so far in my job hunt, the most traction that I've been able to get has been through knowing people and using that network to get around the screening process. By just using the job boards and even companies' own career pages, I have gotten a single screening interview so far out of probably two dozen submissions. A couple of those are still what I would consider "active", but most of them are either closed now with no response or I got an automated rejection response. Mostly worthless. If I could go back in time a couple years and give myself advice it would be to not let my network wither the way I did. Having been in the industry for so long, I have met a ton of people and I've done a really piss-poor job of staying in contact with them. I should have been sending out LinkedIn connection requests every single time I met someone and there's a core of people that I should have been arranging to meet for lunch, coffee, or beers on a much more regular basis.
Antihero said:TravisTheHuman said:Antihero said:He did it poorly,
This is so, so, so common in the handyman world. The bar is very, very, low.
Sadly it's common in the construction world too.
In the case of this job it was a stamp job and the problem with stamp concrete is that you have a very limited time to actually stamp the concrete so you either do a limited amount of yardage or you have a very large crew.
This was something like 30 yards of an open faced stamp in the heart of summer. With a crew of four I stick to a maximum of 8 yards at a time so it was 4 pours and it was broken up basically perfect for it. The other guy poured it all at once with a crew of 2. By the time they got it laid down the first truck was too far gone to stamp so they started stamping from the end of the pour and over stamped it. They got about a quarter stamped, and then got in a fight with the home owner. The other guy decided that the homeowner was implying that he sucked at his job so he threw rocks at the dog and broke his leg.
Then because the homeowner was quite mad about his dog , they walked out in the still green concrete and started digging it out and throwing it on the house plus rubbing it into the siding and windows.
Sheriff literally had to drag him away and charges were filed. The general called me up and begged me for a deal but I told him that my price stayed, PLUS whatever arbitrary figure I came up with for concrete removal. They ended up taking it out themselves, which bluntly is exactly why I quote what I quote for removal, and we replaced it with a standard broom finish
The guy thought he was a competitor of us but in reality he was the best advertisement you could get. Hire us or you get .....this
He outbid me by a huge margin but ended up getting nothing but the advance and since he forgot that colored concrete cost a bunch ( pro tip: never go with green colored concrete. It's cheaper to just shred money and throw it in the concrete. This color was an extra $450 a yard . Which means he blew his bid by over 13 grand, charged it to his house account and then he got the crap sued out of him
He's lucky the sheriff didn't get a call to come pick up a dead body after breaking the dogs leg.
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
With all that wet concrete?
What body?
Toyman! said:In reply to pheller :
Quoted jobs almost always bill for more than time and material jobs. You may think you are getting a better price but I have to charge for every issue that may come up in a quote. With time and material jobs, the customer shares that liability and can benefit from jobs that go quickly.
As a customer I agree 100%. I just finished a job that was quoted to 5 (not my deal on quoting 5 places long story), 2 no quotes, 1 quote $151K, 1 quote $53K, 1 quote "look I am not quoting this, the spec is too ambiguous, I will do it T&M, if we start with a PO of $50k we can see where it ends" Bold move huh? you don't know where you are going to end up cost wise but hey neither did the other 2 bidders. Total cost of the job ended up at $40,627. I shared the risk, contractor made his $ for the work he did company saved somewhere between $12-110K. Note: the T&M contractor is one I have used many many times and I trust that they are trying to skin me, that relationship is how you can do that.
ShawnG said:In reply to TravisTheHuman :
With all that wet concrete?
What body?
ShawnG sounds like MarG.
OHSCrifle said:In reply to Antihero :
Friend of mine is a residential plumbing contractor. He said he communicates clearly, shows up when he says he will, charges exactly what was proposed.
When he occasionally blows an estimate - no drama. Will make it up on the next jobs rather than force negative feelings into a customer. Because the industry is generally so flaky - he is busy every week of the year despite charging very premium rates.
That's the right way to do things. In this case the guy tried underbidding me whenever he could so essentially he lost money on pretty much every job. This was his Genius Business Plan. Oddly did not work
When I was working for another company I actually worked with him for awhile and ended up just replacing him. He would try to sabotage me but it was always so stupidly sad like something he would consider to be a huge inconvenience was really kinda minor if you actually could finish concrete so he was always super annoyed that his plans were foiled.
The last time he did it, our boss had us around the back of the building doing sidewalks and some decorative stuff while he and another guy were supposed to pour a decently sized driveway. What he did was pour out 10 yards of concrete without screeding it or anything to actually start the finishing process. Then called our boss and said he quit and left.
Concrete driver comes around the back of the house and tells me what happened so me and and another guy along with the truck driver went, screeded and laid down the front while my dad stayed and caught up the sidewalks and such in the back.
Our boss had broken his ribs pretty badly and wasn't supposed to drive but drove up to see what was up. Apparently the guy described it as totally berkeleyed and told him he was gonna lose all his money on the job because it was a disaster so our boss expected to drive up to a great drama and everyone yelling etc
Imagine the surprise when he drove up to us sitting down,eating lunch and bullE36 M3ting with the builders, everything well in hand and no problems
Don't get me wrong, if we weren't good at our job it would have been a disaster, but my dad, and I had worked together for years with the laborer and since it's concrete ...we had seen some E36 M3. It wasn't easy but we sure made it look like it was lol
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
I'm genuinely surprised it didnt end this way, the homeowner loved that dog a whole bunch and it was a big Anatolian Shepherd so it's not like it was a small rock.
It was in Washington and laws are different than Idaho in that case, maybe that was why lol
ShawnG said:In reply to TravisTheHuman :
With all that wet concrete?
What body?
Most of it wasn't wet anymore so maybe that's why it went down the way it did lol
In reply to NY Nick :
That's a good way to do it and a great option for great customers.
Another story time, sorry everyone lol:
A guy I did a bunch of work for had a friend who got royally screwed on his house where they remodeled a pole barn into a weird house. Super E36 M3ty done work everywhere, like a hallway that above it was a storage area where " the floor feels spongy". Yeah, that's because it was an 8ft span with 2x4s 30" on center with 3/8th OSB for flooring. And an added on lean-to that he had zero sheer and he had used too small of poles on so you could literally push the walls and watch the whole thing .....ripple.
So I didn't want the job because bluntly it was a disaster, but being the nice guy I was I did take it because both begged me to do it. They had an engineer go thru and design some batE36 M3 hand built trusses that we added inside to hold up the roof and a bunch of other weird details. Seriously doubt that many would have taken the the job.
I told him that I wasn't gonna bid the job because at this point everything was terrible so it was time and material. I told him it would at least cost xx amount and at least take this long but besides that I couldn't tell him what the upper limit was.
Ended up coming in almost 20 percent less in cost and a week later than my least time so you'd assume he would be happy, right?
Nope because I managed to come in under costs by redesigning some stuff obviously I could have saved them more and everyone knows that timing estimates are greatly exaggerated so I should have been able to take off 8 weeks of my 12 week estimate very easily.
So basically I was the bad guy for doing exactly what I said I would do. There's a reason why I don't involve my self in lost causes anymore
Ran across an interesting analysis of the current job market through Indeed postings. It's an interesting business model this blogger has too 
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineer-jobs-five-year-low/
Looks like tech jobs had the biggest boom and the biggest bust from the pandemic and are now back down to the lowest levels of the early pandemic. Also this data appears to refute the "section 174 theory" of the latest tech jobs crash.
I cooked up another question for the crowd... Working under the assumption that I'm going to be having interviews here in the coming weeks and that they're probably going to be Zoom-based, not in person, what do we think about dyeing grey hair? I'm going to 50 in August and I have definitely developed a lot of grey. Personally, I don't care and it has never bothered me, but we've talked ageism a bit here. I've trimmed my resume down to only reflect the last 23 years that I was at my former employer so that should help some.
I met an old friend whom I haven't seen in a few years for lunch yesterday. When he sat down at the table he commented that he didn't recognize me at first because of all the grey hair. That got me to thinking that it might be all an interviewer sees. This wouldn't be a long term thing, once I've got another job I'd let it go back to whatever the good Lord gave me. But what does the group think? Reducing the chance of ageism or just looking like more of a goofball than I already am without fooling anyone?
In reply to wae :
You could shave your head and remove the need to fake a color.
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