Thank you mickey

[Guest]

Without your advice I wouldnt have made any money today. Old customer calls me up and wants me to clean his carpets. He runs a farely decent size day care so I was happy to get the account back after 5 years. Seems the local big truck guy kept raising his rates almost to point of .30 psf and he wanted something cheaper. So I offer to clean at the rate we charged back in 02. Naturally he aggrees to it and we set up for sat.

Tech calls in today and says these carpets are hit and it will be all day job. I run out to check and realize my .10 psf wont cut it. Here comes the advice mickey gave and I scoffed at. I pulled out my 175 with green pad. Prespray with my juice (accelerated enzyme prespray) and proceeded to prescrub the carpets in advance of my tech extracting. Long story short owner couldnt believe the differanc with just prescrub let alone the extracting. I made 150.00 per hour and is well satisfied with results. Job was 2 miles down road so gas was kept at a minimum. Biggest expense was the 90.00 my tech made for 3 hours of work.

I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. He will be calling me back to price out vct. Chalk one up for the small van owners.


Now if I can figure out how to get 2 pressure lines off one connection I may be able to bump up my sf cleaning rate and charge little less.

 

[ronald pantelas]

Yes this board is pretty amazing. Lots of successfull people here. Their willingness to help everyone makes you want to keep coming back, so yes Thanks Mike. Ron

 

[floorguy]

"Less" and ".10 a ft" are going to get you kicked in the groin around here...

more so when you attach "mikey advice" he aint going to like that

 

[TimP]

You can clean all you want at $.10 and I'll wait for you to go out of business.

 

[joey895]

You can clean all you want at $.10 and I'll wait for you to go out of business.

I understand it's a recipe for disaster if you underbid and either
a.) Can't hit your hourly goal or
b.) You rush through job and do crappy work inorder to hit your hourly goal.


But, his custy is very happy with the job and he made $150 per hour. Why would he go out of business based on that info?

 

[Guest]

Interesting Tim. I was able to pay my helper 90.00 plus taxes. Gas to and from less than 1 galx3.00 Chemical used was 5 gal of rtu prespray, 2 gal of emusifier. Propane on that job would be 1 gal at 2.10 per gal. My insurance cost was same weither sitting in driveway or at a job. 3 hours of deperation on my unit which I paid 10g for plus new motor over 6000 plus hours. Show me where I will fail at cleaning at .10 psf. 175 rpm has made me over 20g in the last 4 years. My blowers which I had running was drying the rooms in hour or so but as it was closed for the weekend if it took 3 hours to dry not a big deal.


I still made 150 per hour, didnt have to charge .30 and customer was happy. I will be giving a price on vct monday morning and probely be doing them next weekend.

My whole post originally was to thank someone for his advice. I might have lost my butt but instead made a nice profit.


Ps thats not even counting the exposure my van got for sittingin parking lot for 3 hours on a sat afternoon. Nor from the parents of 300 or more kids coming in. Just guessing on 300 kids but they have 8 class rooms and 2 nursery's.

 

[Fon Johnson]

Don't you idiots know that you cannot make any profit if you are getting less than five bills an hour!!!! IDIOTS!!

:roll:

 

[Mikey P]

Green on residential?

Yikes.




I did one this afternoon.
1200 sq ft of 30 year old gold high low.

She's had a dozen idiots out there leaving her with wet carpet for at least 3 days each and every time. She finally got wise and instead of playing Russian roulette in the yellow pages she got smart and ask a retailer. My wife had here prepped price wise, she new we "started" at .50

Carpet looked like hell in the TA's, had gobs of Formula 90 residue and some areas were rock hard with soil impaction.

I had my son pre vac while I went to get more diesel.

He filled the Sani's dirt cup with solid HEAVY dirt.
She was blown away by that and every other step we took. Comments of "Wow no one else ever did" that happened five times.

End result, carpet came out fantastic, she says it's the best they've looked in over 10 years.

The .60 didn't even phase her.


I'll tell all my friends......






You guys with out vacuums on your trucks, in this day and age should be shot.

 

[Guest]

Once again you read something into it. Where did you see it was residential? Day care centers are usually commercial.

 

[Mikey P]

Not reading anything in to it at all, just not reading ALL of it.


Good for you D. Smith.

 

[GRHeacock]

D.Smith- you can easily make a splitter for the solution line, one into 2.

My van came with 2 outlets on the waste tank, for a 2 wand setup, but only a single solution line.

When I wanted to do a dual wand cleaning, I made a splitter for the second line.

A short pipe nipple. A "T". 2 petcock shutoffs. Put a quick connect on the end of the short pipe that connects to the single solution line.

Put the 2 shutoffs into each end of the "T", and a QC into each shutoff.

Now you can connect the "T" to the main line, and connect or disconnect either of the lines from the "T".

I also used this setup when doing upholstery while my tech was doing carpets, or one wand upstairs, one downstairs, etc.

This "T" can be at the truck, or at any place along the solution line where there is a QC.

Gary
Gary

 

[The Cleaning Artist]

We must be in the cheap capitol of the states. My retires complain about $.25 sqft and in the same breath say how they love the way the carpets look and that no-one ever got them this clean. Then ask for an extra bottle of spotter because they won't see me again for a few years. LOl

Gotta love em though.