Scott Stone

Here is what I bought last week...

Thee is an 8 cent road tax that is additional on every gallon of fuel. In order to claim it you will need to keep the receipts seperate and be able to show how many gallons of pressure washing fuel that you bought. There are also additional credits available if the diesel fuel you buy has the big truck road taxes on it. There fuel tax rate is different than cars or small equipment. As for the truck, if you are claiming miles, there are ways to claim every mile that you drove. Mostly, unless you are using it as a family car, too, every mile is deductible. Your accountant should be able to help you out with this. For what it is worth, I saved about $3000 last year in road tax credits.

I am conducting a poll on everyone's profitability. We are running by percentage to help establish a baseline. So, why don't we say it is the income you declared on your taxes, divided by your gross profits. If you did do something like buy a truck where the whole thing was deducted at one time, then add that into your taxable income, less one years allowance. For Example: Gross 250,000 Taxable income 80000 New truck, Fully deducted 40,000 5 year life 8,000 Net income reduction 32,000 so the equation is, 112,000/250,000= .44 or 44% For Obvious reasons, I do not want dollar figures. Some of us have really good years, and some bad. We will also break it down in 5% increments.

For what it is worth, I do use DI water for my fleetwashing in a lot of cases. We have really hard water and it is necessary to get the quality of work that I expect. As for being hard on pumps and other parts, it does attack the metals and try and remove the Hydrogen atoms from it and causes hydrogen embrittlement. When I started washing this way, I was told of all sorts of dire consequences to my equipment, but felt I had to in order to satisfy my customer. My experience has been that it is not excessively hard on the pump. I have had to replace a pump twice in five years. This is an easy 5000 hours for my machines. Incidentally, I have replaced the engine on the machine three times. The coil stays clean. After a certain length of time it does eat the zinc from teh galvanization off of the interior of the coil. This does cause the machien to shoot rust out and that is really bad. It manifests itself as being black water. In order to combat that I use the machine as much as possible for flat work and other jobs with tap water. This causes a lime buildup that usually has to be descaled, but with DI water it is not necessary.

Okay, that is a weak excuse, but I will take it. Just kidding. I hope that you are feeling better, and are able to get everythign else in your life taken care of...

I don't want numbers, just percentages. And, nothing like waiting until the last minute.

Okay Jon, You are getting really Random, so back away from the computer very slowly. The voices you hear are not real....Uhm...If you can hear them... I'm still waiting for the 35% you promised me.

That is the cheap one. The next one will be 80k... It is on order.

Curious that everyone wants to know what others profitability is, yet, want post their own numbers. For what it is worth, this is a blind poll, so no one can see what you answered. Scott

Dang, I have been to disneyland three more times since December. My wife bought annual passes last summer. That is okay, as long as I get to relax, and kick back I am good.. We do want to do D-World, but time is running out because our oldest is getting ready to turn 17. We also want to do Hawaii. We'll see. As for the Air and Space museum, it is well worth the trip, especially to Udvar-Hazey. Absolutely a place to geek out. We (I) really enjoyed it there when we went to DC in 04. ON a related note, Soaring over California is AWESOME!!! If you get a chance, try the tower of terror. ALso very well done.

Any good art store would have it, especially if they sell sign painter supplies. I am pretty sure it is called mastic. I will try and remember to check. It ahs been a while since I have been involved in that world.

FIrst of all, welcome to the site. I do not know where you would be able to get a 48" surface cleaner. I think that the largest I have seen was a 36" The problem with such a large surface cleaner is that you would have to push a lot of water to make it effective. with the machines that most contractors run, 5.5@ 3000 psi, a 30 incher is on the edge. SO for a 48 inch cleaner, for the same effectiveness, you would need to be pushing close to 10 gallons a minute at 3000. There is the Swabby which is actually similar to a ride on lawn mower, but it costs $40k and you would still need to buy an 8 GPM machine.

Sign painters actaully have something like this. It might work for houses, depending on the substrate. Spray it on, peel it off. It works great.

Just use a garden hose with one of those spray nozzles on it. I think that would hurt plenty, although maybe without as much permanent damage. I am pretty certain that he would not say that would be damaging.

The problem with most inspectors that I have met, is that they are former construction workers, that keep getting fired, or are retired. The ones that get fired are fired, usually for insubordination. They think that they know it all. Obviously, this intellectually vacuous person falls in that category. What is interesting is that home inspectors without fail will inspect a home, and then, offer to come fix it, because they know exactly what is wrong. Something is just not quite right about that.

The only way it will lose pressure is if the "L" connection is too small for the hose, and the hose does not have a restriction on it. Since you are talking a pressure hose, Usually, the "L" is at least 3/8" and your hose is as well. You have a restriction at the nozzle, so there should be no SIGNIFICANT pressure loss. For a feed hose, you will have a pressure loss, because of the low pressure from the hose involved.

Last month we had 100,000 sq. ft of sidewalk that had to be in a 6 hour stretch. That was pushing it. We have also done a 500,000 foot parking garage.

Having spent five years delivering milk, I can assure you that being a milk man is not easier work. Try 5 and sometimes 6 14 hour days, as a start. My record was 130 hours worked, on salary, since I was considered management, in a 7 day period.

I always knew he was white... Wait, it looks like my brother in law, and he is 6'4":lgbugeyes

Oh fine, make fun of me... And notice that I did not post pic's of the FOUR Chris Gibson perv's. ( he might need to go east to make a change;))

Oh fine, now my wife is all concerned. Oh wait, I have never even set foot in Florida... Scott Stone

Hey, there is only one guy within a mile of me that I would have to kill if he looked at my kids funny. That significantly narrows it down. Scott Stone

I prefer top buy new. I guess I am unusual, but it seems that everytime that I buy a used vehicle that I am spending more money than the payment to keep it running. So I buy a new truck that I like, drive it for a few tousand miles, (Okay, that last one had 170000 on it) then turn it over to employees. The only exception is if it is a specialized piece for a particular contract, then I will buy used, and just run with it.

Ron all of the garages that I do do not have exhaust fans. They are open on the side, however. Besides, if you are not allowed to take gas in there, how do your trucks get in??? I have had the 2 am visits from the Fire Department before. These guys were relaly cool and just asked me to disconnect my hose from the riser. I had permission and had done it in the past without a problem, but the city had recently converted from a Commercial fire fighting contract to a City department. They were a little more enthusiastic, and probably cooler than the commercial guys would have been.

http://www.maxtool.com/cgi-bin/dbsearch.exe?mdb=/tools.mdb,tbl=IC_ITEMS,template=/hmpg/DPgen-3is.htm,DBCOMP=ABS,dbsort=cat4,DB_CAT2=Dpgenor These are not HOnda Generators, but the y are Chinese copies. I tried a couple out to just mount on my trailers for the crews,a dn they work pretty well. I have no complaints, especially for the price. They are such a thorough copy that even the shrouds and switches look like the Honda.