tonyshelton

This is a great thread! But, memories are short and the same people will make the same mistake next time some charismatic liar makes them drool. That's why it just goes back and forth every other election or so. I'm afraid the only way to change it is the way the south tried to change it in the 1860's. Maybe this time it will work if we elect president who is willing to let the states go about their own business and not be willing to murder thousands just because they want to secede from a corrupt federal government. How's that for crazy? Maybe it won't sound so crazy by 2015 or so.

There is another side to the story too. Yesterday Chris and I went alone to finish up the last of the stuff we put off for the Tampa RT. We worked our butts off filtering a variety of old units that required bending/squatting/pulling/pushing/lifting AND quite a bit of thinking because the filters were not matched right to the unit numbers (my fault- took shortcut) It was 4 hrs - 105 degrees - high humidity paper filters so no spraydown relief from the pressure washer and we net less than $500. That's what happens when you misbid and take shortcuts. It sure does feel good to be caught up though!

The three of us with two temps today. 6hrs 5g's. (gross) - $25.00 lunch for all at 7-11. Cheesburger bite isnt' even changed at all during digestive process.

You guys would have died if you saw Lou Gardner at the coil cleaning class. We had a short (6inch) variable degree wand that he turned on and accidentally hit it and moved it to 90 degrees at 3500/6gpm. He went around in a circle a few times. It was like a cartoon!! I couldn't get the camera out fast enough.

I'm not the right person to ask. Maybe Scott Stone or someone else who does a lot of garages. For petroleum oil stains purple power or anything with sodium metasilicate works better than sodium hydroxide in my limited experience.

Thanks to roundtables I've resorted to trying to obtain a higher starting weight so the loss will appear more dramatic. How am I doing so far?

This "crew" of three has $12400 in regular filter changes/cleaning and a little bit of quarterly coil cleaning to do this week. (we will use two of the temps two days this week) Servicing filters produces a big appetite. After weekly lunch expenses we will net about 500 bucks. :)

Before you spend too much on it Sodium Hydroxide is not a very good degreaser for the type of grease you are talking about.

Chris, that's a question only you can answer. Do you want to keep doing the physical end of the work? What type of lifestyle do you want? If you are averaging 16k per month it might be time to go ahead and look into getting one good guy who lives in the service area and setting him up with a truck. There are a lot of good people out of work right now.

Chris and I can pull down $3k per day in filter/coils cleaning. On the other hand if Chris or I go out with another worker it slows us down to about $2300/day. Because we use the lift, and we have not yet made the decision to hire a full time manager one of us always has to be onsite to supervise. I theorize that we will only be hitting about $1800 per day once we stay in the office and put crews to work by themselves. Does that sound like an accurate prediction based on what you guys have done in the past?

Sounds like the tip is too big for whatever you are spraying??????

Commercial Flat roofs - needles, stacks of beer cans, lots of porn, and guys living quarters in the covered areas.

Having owned a dry clean delivery business with quite a few vehicles, it makes a lot more sense to have older cheaper vehicles like Jim has than new one's. For example: 1996 Ford F350, low miles, $3000 cash. Spare 1996 F350, low miles, $3000 cash. Outlay $6k Average life of trucks 4 yrs. Repairs = MaX - $6k Total cost 4 yrs = $12k Vs 2010 truck $700/month Cost over 4 yrs = over $33k It's crazy. No contest. In our part of the country you're more likely to be looked at as overpriced if you drive up in a new truck. That's part of the reason we have a Crown Vic instead of the BMW that lost us a big account.

Having spent a time in my youth defying my religious beliefs and taking advantage of others I have a different outlook on things than most people have. Sometimes I can see signs of activity that someone who hasn't been there wouldn't recognize. I was also a private investigator and was trained to pull the truth out in taped interviews in cases where all other methods of exposure had failed. It was through that training that I learned how easy it is to fool people and make them believe whatever you want them to believe. I used that knowledge for my own personal gain till God put a life changing experience in my path and my seared conscience was softened again. That was about 20 years ago and I've never looked back since. Not even once. But I still carry the experience with me and it puts me on guard in ways that many people think is ridiculous. I will never turn back to who I was before again, but being that person has made me who I am today and I can't escape it. I'm labeled negative by many. I don't think I'm negative anymore than a mother who holds a child's hand to keep them from running into the street is negative. It's her knowledge of what will happen if the child runs into traffic that motivates her actions. I ran across this today trying to explain my "negativity" to someone in a PM. Before you blindly follow anyone (including blindly believing anything I say) you should at least be aware of how the other side works. This is an interview with one of the most notorious con men in the world. It is an open, candid look at how a con man works. They are very short. I'd suggest you listen to both of them. Con Artist Hall of Infamy : Con Watch

Are you on dope?

You forgot to mention how many "unnamed" bbs members have called you complaining about Scott's harrassment. And don't forget to mention Scott's lack of experience. How about a poll. Here you go I'll give you a good sample poll to work with: "IF you have you ever driven in the state of Alabama please vote below telling the world your stance. Please only vote if your initials are RS and a non-vote will be automatically recorded as a vote for option #3." 1) Yes - and I have a checkered past, live in a trailer and have never pressure washed in my life. 2) Yes - and I immediately reinstate all banned members from *** 4) NO - and I dislike all children, this country, all pressure washers and I hereby renounce my citizenship and my natural sexual orientation AND immediately reinstate all banned members from ***.

David, There are plenty of people you and I have personality conflicts with and we "don't like" them. It's inevitable. But if you or I started digging into their taxes, criminal records, searching the internet for any errant word they may have said that would make me OBSESSED. There's a difference between a healthy personality conflict and an obsession. David, I didn't know anything about your hurricane situation till someone OBSESSED with you brought it up. I'm glad I found it now because after the laundry is all dry, it looks like you have been doing the best you can in a bad situation. Russ and Scott are not taking money from contractors under false pretenses or to forward their own agendas. They are minding their own business, doing what they can to help other contractors free of charge and are not claiming to be the "voice" of the industry. Therefore, their own business is their own business. Hours do not need to be spent on the phone harping about their level of their experience. Tricky, contrived polls don't need to be posted to try to "trap" someone into a lie about their own personal business. Some people don't like Jim. Some people don't like Russ. Some people don't like Scott. I like all three of them. They are my brothers in the industry. There's no need for this mess. Please feel free to ask any of them and they will tell you that the way I post is exactly what I say on the phone. David, thanks for stepping up. You're another guy who seems to be consistent on the phone and on the web and even though you and I may make a lot of enemies that way at least we can sleep well knowing we're not fakes.

David, I'm with you. Banning is not the end of the world unless you make it that important. You and I have both been banned plenty. This whole thing makes me sick. Jim is a good guy in so many ways, but his little mean streak and the obsession with being accepted as an expert on garage cleaning has made him act in ways that I bet would have been inconceivable to him 5 years ago. That obsession is the cause of 90% of his failure to communicate effectively. I like Jim. I hate to see this happen to him, but polls like this are obvious digs at Russ and Scott. Anyone who has talked to Jim in the past 2 months should be able to recognize it.

He doesn't realize how little it would have taken to be reinstated to ***. If he only knew that without all that phone and PM drama he would have been back on *** within a couple of months would it have changed things? I'm still waiting to hear from the guys who are always calling Jim in his defense. I was a defender of Jim too for a long time until it was clear to me that there was going to be no change in his attitude towards anyone he thinks wronged him. One of you are looking at this thread right now. I see you at the bottom of the page. If you really want to help Jim you need to help him get away from the obsession he has with Russ and Scott and try to point him in a more positive direction. It probably won't work though.

Jim, are you going to deny that you asked me to check into Russ's old posts on *** to see if he claimed to have joined in 2001, thus claiming to be a member of *** when we all know it would have been impossible for him to be a member. Are you going to deny that when I informed you that Russ didn't even become a member till 2004 or 2005 that you said you were going to check his posts to see how many years he claimed to be in business? I can keep going. Do you want all the people who think you are picked on and can do no wrong to actually know to what extent you will go to try to discredit anyone you have a problem with? Do I dare Jim? Or are you ready to put this all behind you and start from scratch? What about Scott? How many times have you told me on the phone that Scott claims to have a lot of years cleaning garages but you know for a fact he has X number of years and he's lying? That was a good try Jim. It's time to shut down the problems you've had with Scott and Russ and worry about Jim. You've got a lot to offer the industry. Start doing it by putting the money you've made to work helping others. If you only work 100 days a year or whatever you say, why aren't you all over the country meeting with guys and encouraging them? You can turn this around right now Jim. But denying it is just digging a deeper hole for yourself. Denying only works for a short time. Just ask the former ***** ED. Good luck Jim. I hope you take this to heart.

We were fortunate in our line of work in that we had a decent amount of cash available and plenty of credit when needed to start off on the high end and back down to find the threshold. Now that money is tighter we know where we have to be to keep a decent profit and we just try to stay a little above that.

If there is anyone else who has talked to Jim on the phone and heard him make remarks about how little experience (he thinks) Scott has, or about the missing years of Russ that Russ didn't care to disclose when he joined the boards around 2005? Maybe it was just me. Maybe I've just been the butt of the joke.

Jim, this is why you have so many problems on the boards. From this perspective the poll appears to be an attempt to cast doubt on the abilities and validity of some of the people you have had problems with in the past. Is it me Jim? Are you pointing out the fact that I owned a dry cleaners, a documentation business, a car lot and a computer store before and maybe that means I don't have any business sense in this field? Or is it Scott? Do you want the date he first cleaned a garage so you can publish it to make him look like he has less of an ability to complete job than you do? Or maybe it's Russ. Maybe you want him to account for the missing years in his business AGAIN that he's already accounted for. How many times does he have to account for it before it is sufficient for you? Don't play innocent this time Jim. The mere fact that you made it a public poll so that everyone who answers the poll is listed as a permanent record bears witness to the intentions behind the poll. Time and experience are things you bring up to people on the phone to try to bring down anyone you've had problems with. How do I know? Because I have been on the other end of the phone conversation PERSONALLY. It's time to quit playing one-up games and either get with the program and offer information that your experience has taught you and quit spending your time thinking of ways to GET BACK at people who you think have wronged you. You won't listen on the phone. Will you listen on the open board? Please don't insult my intelligence by pleading innocent. You may fool plenty of guys who don't know you outside a phone conversation, but I'm not fooled. Have you been wronged in the past. I would say yes. But your actions after that almost justify what happened to you in the first place. It's time to start over. You can do that be committing to meet these guys face to fact this year and quit talking about how much money you have and use it to go to roundtables and meet guys.

It will also pop if you let your stuff freeze. Don't ask how I know.

Rod, it's not that I don't have sympathy for people who are truly wronged. It's just that people most people today seem to have the "victim" mentality when they brought it on themselves. What about the Lady in Beth's example? She probably has a legitimate complaint. But for every legitimate example like that, how many opportunists go out and see a speck on their deck and go on the rampage just trying to get theirs done for free? The answer in Beth's example is to turn in a claim to the neighbor's insurance company. Then the insurance company can decide if they simply want to pay out or if it's worth going after the hack. What are some other alternatives to meet your goals without asking the government to make decisions for the homeowner? What about the media? Beth, why wouldn't you call the local TV station about the lady's deck? What about negative advertising. The college educated (indoctrinated) marketing guys will tell you it doesn't work. But some of the most successful ads use negative advertising. Hasn't those pictures of nasty ducts made you at least think about getting your ducts cleaned? Ads with pictures of your beautiful work will bring in the high dollar customers, but ads showing shoddy work will bring in the thrifty ones. My video on youtube of hack filter work has gotten me at least three big accounts. We don't need the government to babysit us. Rod, I can't stop. I'm obsessed. I just know that one day you're going to break down and become a republican!:cheers: