RyanH

Over the years I've tried all sorts of spot-cleaners for carpet: Resolve, Spot Shot, Eureka / Hoover extraction chemicals, enzyme-based cleaners, Oxy-Clean, etc. and have not had fantastic success with any. Of the ones above, Resolve has probably been the most consistent, but still not great. I was walking through Target the other day (I think my wife and I were looking for some new toy for our daughter....no, not a human daughter, a cat) and found something stuck away on the bottom shelf. Cleaner by the name of Folex.....no fancy packaging, it looks like it's from a local distrubutor but I'm not sure. Anyway, I bought a bottle (something like $6 for about 1 liter) and put it to the test in one of my janitorial places...a wedding chapel with buffet tables on carpet. It worked fantastically on everything I tried it on.....meatball grease, barbecue sauce, some kind of red punch, chocolate stains, some makeup from the dressing rooms, rust stains in the office. Anyway, good stuff. I don't know much about the company and I'm not promoting them personally, I just thought I'd let everyone know about this stuff in case you have a need for it in your personal / professional dealings.

I guess scenario 2 would be you might lose some volume, but have increased revenue from the ones you retain, so your net income remains the same, albeit with less effort and work on your behalf. Either way is a benefit to the business owner, to a point. With your extra time, you have the opportunity to explore other avenues or customers you may have ignored due to lack of availability. I suggested a similar approach to my wife's firm during this year's Christmas party. Bourbon and beer were involved, so I didn't mind offering a group of attorneys some advice :) They take in pretty much every law case that walks through the door and are all over-worked. There are always people who believe they are getting better value than that for which they are paying, so a slight increase doesn't represent anything negative to them. They can selectively ignore cases with a high PITA factor and still have the same cash flow. The concept is equally applicable to the PW industry. I vaguely remember something from economics 101 about this situation and it's why Taco Bell ($1 crappy taco, but HUGE volume) and Uncle Julios (good mexican joint in Atlanta, $8 taco, not so huge volume) both experience awesome cash flow.

Saw this last week...couldn't believe it. I SOOO wanted to ask these guys if they would let me tie off and go for a scoot down the side of the building, but I don't think the wife would've approved.

I don't think even the labor market in Atlanta would be that crazy to attempt this. No, this is in Shanghai, China. I was there recently on some business and saw these guys coming down the building and thought some of you on the board would appreciate the nerve [or stupidity] this required.

I had a cleaning contract in a union shop where having 2 men doing the job of 1 was prevalent and commonplace. I wondered the same thing but dared not speak me thoughts too loudly.

.oot dnim egtrans a evah ouy ,siht daer anc ouy if Holy crap, it even works when it's backwards! (read from right to left).

Length of rod with section of flat bar welded to the end at a slight angle (redneck propeller) attached to my 18V DeWalt drill. hold at angle in the tank for maximum mixing effectiveness.

sodium hypochlorite + ammonia. There, now I've contributed to the delinquincy of America. Not exactly chlorine gas, but poison enough. Quick, somebody stop this exchange of information. Before you know it enough things will be regulated that we will forget how to make concrete. Again.

The problem with saying that the lowballer will be out of business in a year is that another lowballer will come along to replace him. In the past 5 years I haven't seen a decrease in the number of $99 house wash signs littering our corners. Just think...if it cost $99 five years ago, and still costs that today, imagine the diminished quality you can expect considering their overhead has increased drastically. When confronted with "so and so only charges 1/5 what you charge" I tell the customer that they have indeed found an exceptional offer and should consider their services because for the equipment and effort I put into a job, and the satisfaction the HO can expect afterwards, I simply cannot compete with them on a price level. However, if they want to discuss *quality*, that's a whole new ballgame.

Is there no limit to what a government will spend when all they need to do to replace spent money is to tax and collect more??? When I see these trailers I like to test out the calibration of my speedometer...over a range of about 40 mph (speed limit - 20 mph to speed limit + 20 mph). So far they are all pretty close, though it's funny to see how they flip between my speed and that of the guy in front of and next to me.

Take the customer a bottle of rubbing alcohol (or acetone + gloves) and a toothbrush and have him accomplish two things at once: a cheap solution to an easy problem, and a lesson for his 5 year old daughter.

Welcome to the board! The best way to avoid the drips <ahem> is to upsell the project up front to include windows and garage doors, trim...basically the entire house. If the customer simply wants the gutters cleaned and nothing else, you can try putting a smaller quantity on the gutters. Use just enough to "get the job done" then rinse adequately. For this, you'll put away the Xjet and replace your applicator with a pump up sprayer, then use your pressure washer to rinse copiously. Pre-rinse the areas of concern (windows, etc.) to ensure that anything that hits the surface will be immediately diluted, then continue to rinse frequently. Spray gutters, scrub, and rinse no more than about 6 feet at a time (that's worked for me pretty well). If you simply must use the Xjet to get the chems up high, simply douse the house with water first, apply the chems, and rinse the house immediately while the chems work. Then blow off the gutters and the house together. Again, welcome to the board. How about a little info about you in your signature?

Err...note that i said 1 gallon "solution." And while it is true that flushing your lines once or twice isn't significant, when done many times over the course of a job it can add up. The additional cost may be neglible to some, not so much others. There is a definite advantage in not having to carry around buckets and extra hose though.

Hey Doug! Where in Newnan are you?

The downside is that your entire line fills up with the chemical mixture, so you will have to be vigilant of when to switch your tips so that you don't up wasting too much chemical (a little over 1 gallon of solution per cycle with a 3/8" line at 200 ft...kind of defeates that "uses less chem" argument). However with experience you will be able to tell when you should switch to still make use of the chemical in the line. If you are doing large commercial applications or something like condos where you will be applying chemical for a relatively long period of time, a downstreamer is ideal. However, if you are doing smaller residential-type jobs where you will be changing between rinse water and chemical water often (every minute or two), an Xjet is the better solution.

Stupid government telling private companies what they can and can't charge. I have to pay 100% for items I order online days before I receive them, why should services be any different? As for the fee if the job can't be completed, that's a good idea. I had a customer who had other work being done at his house at the same time he wanted me out. I was expected to work "around" the guys installing a pool while I was cleaning a roof, and to work "around" carpenters while I was supposed to clean a driveway (their equipment took up 1/3 of the driveway...the "expectation" was that I would return at a later date to complete the other 1/3). He was shocked when my final price included service charges for the 5 trips I made to the jobsite for a job that should have taken a total of about 8 hours. The service fees totaled more than the cleaning job itself. Having that arrangement up front saves both of you in these situations.

Bush got me through some long, hard times. If I could, I'd vote for bush for the next 60 years.

Try zipping along on a snowmobile at 70 mph when the air is 10 below...better be dressed warm, of course then you can't move! Or pee. Atleast not outside of your suit. Not that you'd want to in that cold weather.

You're pissed about the war budget? You should take a look at what the candidates spend on their campaigns! If that doesn't alert you to the type of free-spenders these people are, I don't know what will. I understand the money they spend is from donations and such, but damn!

I always thought it was Festus until I took a closer look. Now I don't know. I think JOgden has the best avatar...I always liked Mega Man, and that one is WAY COOL!

Any indication your insurance company will drop you now? Just asking after someone brought up that TLV thread awhile back.... Glad you had the arrangements to take care of your guy and he wasn't hurt worse than he was. If he decides to come back to PWing, he'll be the most loyal employee you'll ever have for taking care of him like that (he should be, anyway).

Somewhere along the line, most people have forgotten this.

Still points to the issue that it is mostly a surface defect and can be remedied by getting down to the undisturbed medium. Good post...my jeep's headlamps look like crap. I may check this stuff out.

The $.45 - $0.48 is the standard IRS mileage deduction; that's how much you can deduct from your total income when you file your taxes, and has no real bearing on what you can charge. The actual value is posted on the IRS website, but I think it's currently $0.42 per mile. Richard's point is what you should take: use the fuel economy of your vehicle and the time it takes you to get there (along with your desired hourly rate of pay) as your basis for cost. If you want to count beans about it, then you can also account for miscelleanous costs. For example: If you have your oil changed every 3k miles, and it costs $50 to have it changed (plus your cost for waiting), you would add " Mileage x $50 / 3000 " to your cost. If you change your tires every 80k miles, and it costs $800 for new tires, you would add "Mileage x $800 / 80000" to your cost. And so forth...basically anything business related to you being able to do business, you should charge for. That's why you are able to take the tax deductions, because the government assumes you account for these costs of doing business in your fees. Many small time companies ignore these small fees and just "give away" their time. Other companies lump all of it together and call it "overhead." I've had many headbutts with my management about having such large overhead when we could break down costs in this manner and apply it to specific jobs.

Imagine going to school to study law and such...and you end up in a job writing these agreements. Boy, I bet conversation around the dinner table with that guy is a hoot.