I just Can't handle Bad advice given , especially when it comes to standards

Ron Musgraves

Ron Musgraves

Exterior Restoration Specialist
Staff member
The warning here when bidding a Job is great, but suggesting you walk or charge more after you agreed to do the job is just your own Fault.

Second walk away from a Job, folks the only reason people need us is to remove Gum and Oil.


We do this more effective than anyone else can.

Third I personally do not do work not removing gum.

Some May think I'm hating John, not just can't stand to listen to advice that is wrong.

Of course its just my opinion



http://www.powerwashcommunity.com/threads/640-WARNING-Unknown-Gum-appearing-on-Parking-garage-deck!!!!!!!!!!
 
I have under bid before, more than once. I have had people tell me they wanted to pay me extra because of my low bidding. I told them no it was my fault and that a deal was a deal. ***( let me ask, should I have taken it? )*** Its hard to stick it out but you have to do it, your reputation is on the line.
 
junker1 said:
I have under bid before, more than once. I have had people tell me they wanted to pay me extra because of my low bidding. I told them no it was my fault and that a deal was a deal. ***( let me ask, should I have taken it? )*** Its hard to stick it out but you have to do it, your reputation is on the line.
Click to expand...

My biggest issue is this is why we should be selling more frequent service. I did and under ground delivery Area the other night, I knew it would take 24 man hours based on the footage. I needed to charge .13cent

I also know sold on a 30 day or 15 day cleaning I could Charge .04 and make the same rate.

I also never walk away from GUM....I love LOTS OF GUM
 
If someone offers to pay me extra because I underbid should I take it or stick to the original price? and then charge accordinly the next time.
 
If someone wants to give me a tip for an extraordinary job that is one thing but I will always stick to my bid. The only time i change it is if they change the scope of work.
 
junker1 said:
i would probably stick to the original price.
Click to expand...

If they recognize you underbid, and you refuse it and then they insist, I see no problem w you accepting it. Consider it a blessing and receive it as one.


Doug Rucker Clean and Green Solutions 281.883.8470
 
I did underbid. The gentleman asked me if i needed anything extra for the extra work and i declined telling him that a deal was a deal.I did not finish the job in the red, it just wasnt far enough into the black to make me happy. We then came to an agreement on some additional work and we made it up on that end. It all worked out in the long run.

But if i quote a price I have to stick to it. I cannot ask for more because I messed up, as Paul said the only time that can happen is with a change order.

Doug thank you, I didnt think of that. If they mention it a second time then I can speak up and ask them what they think is fair. I never plan on underrbidding but sometimes the unforeseeable happens. and we just have to deal with it.
 
I charge a lot of money so most people don't offer to pay extra, but if asked, I tell them they are free to pay whatever amount they want, but all I'm going to ask for on the invoice is whatever amount the quote was for. In the summer when I have helpers give them any extra pay as a tip.
 
I see quite a bit of bad and false information in that thread. As for John, he made a rookie mistake. You gotta make sure you know what you are getting into before starting. I know how I would improve this situation, but ...oh shoot, never mind.
 
I think we have all had jobs that we have kicked ourselves on for not bidding any higher that what we did to begin with. As for garage cleaning I offer 3 types of cleaning and I leave it up to the decision maker as to which one they would like done.

Cleaning "A" Includes Washing Down Walls, Surface Cleaning Floors, Rinsing and Attempting to Remove Oil Stains (No Gum Removal)
Cleaning "B" Same as Cleaning "A" but with gum removal
Cleaning "C" Same as Cleanings "A" and "B" combined but with degreaser for the oil stains

All with full water reclamation.

I sometimes ask the decision maker if they have got any other bids and what they were for. Some of them will actually tell you if you ask. Then I ask if they are looking for low price or quality of work. If I they say low price and I know I can't compete with the lowest price I still leave them my bid anyways.

I rather bid high on a job and not get it than go too low on a job and take it in the shorts.
 
Hey Ron it's been awhile. I have 8 pages of post here to look at... Cool. I like killing the late hours reading the boards.
I didn't realize this post was about me but your title had me interested to see what's up.

Is this a rookie mistake? Maybe since i've only been doing garages for around 5-6 yrs. I'll give you a little more info on this job. Where basically getting .05 a sq' on the floors where contracted to clean which is about 1.2 million sq' out of the 2million sq+garage. It's huge. 3 of the floors are a cake walk. 1 is completely asphalt where it only has to be rinsed. Another floor is 1/2 asphalt which only has to be rinsed and the other half is concrete but this is floor #8 which is hardly used. Floor 9 is all concrete but once again it not used much. Those are the floors where heading towards this week.

Now the problem. The reason we got this job wasn't because we were the hi or low bid. These two brothers who own 90 malls nationwide were coming here and this is when I got the call. My Bid was in a month or so earlier. We also got a call to do a demo which we did.

The facility boss said if I can start it in a week and have to get two floors in so they can be striped before these bro's got there it's mine. So I had to work this job in with other jobs where doing which is great. Busy is always good.

This garage was never power washed and it's at least 33 yrs old. What they did was sand blast it in 92 & they had this paint like sealer put down on the main floors.

The mistake I made and we've done probably 40-50 garages now(average 8-10yr) was I saw alot of gum....but.. The grime was so thick that when we cleaned the surface there was probably 4x the amount of gum you could see now then you could see initially.

I have priced gum removal for complete garages in the past but I always charged high on that and only once did a complete gum removal and the garage was nothing like this.

When doing large jobs there are times unforeseen problems that can arise and people with experience know this especially in the garage industry. This isn't doing a residential house or your typical store front and in 17+yrs I only walked off two jobs. One we did everything for this guys house while he was buzzing us with his plane but when I fell on one of his roofs 4x I told him we can't do his roof and there is no charge for that. The other was when a guy kept telling me that I can't use the surface machine on his concrete patio and it was huge. Both of these were over 10 yrs ago.
As for this garage I am on the hook for a few thousand out of my own pocket so far. They understand whats going on here and yes I am going to talk to the facility boss Monday because I already talked to his 2nd in charge there who says he understands and because of the size of this garage and the problems that happen they have paid more for many contractors who work for them.

Oh yea I forgot to add that they have a broken water line causing us to only be able to use the water on the south corner of the garage on the first floor that happen right before we got there and it's still not fixed and that water line is the main line that goes to the upper floors as well. They also have a pump problem that is massive. When it rains hard the top exposed floor drains down and it when it gets to be alot of water the pumps blow the water back thru the drains on the lower floors at such a high rate the water hits the ceilings and it floods the floors. This happened to us twice already.

So these are some of the factors that bring me in to talk to the boss.

Don't you just hate rookie mistakes.
 
Clean County PW said:
Hey Ron it's been awhile. I have 8 pages of post here to look at... Cool. I like killing the late hours reading the boards.
I didn't realize this post was about me but your title had me interested to see what's up.

Is this a rookie mistake? Maybe since i've only been doing garages for around 5-6 yrs. I'll give you a little more info on this job. Where basically getting .05 a sq' on the floors where contracted to clean which is about 1.2 million sq' out of the 2million sq+garage. It's huge. 3 of the floors are a cake walk. 1 is completely asphalt where it only has to be rinsed. Another floor is 1/2 asphalt which only has to be rinsed and the other half is concrete but this is floor #8 which is hardly used. Floor 9 is all concrete but once again it not used much. Those are the floors where heading towards this week.

Now the problem. The reason we got this job wasn't because we were the hi or low bid. These two brothers who own 90 malls nationwide were coming here and this is when I got the call. My Bid was in a month or so earlier. We also got a call to do a demo which we did.

The facility boss said if I can start it in a week and have to get two floors in so they can be striped before these bro's got there it's mine. So I had to work this job in with other jobs where doing which is great. Busy is always good.

This garage was never power washed and it's at least 33 yrs old. What they did was sand blast it in 92 & they had this paint like sealer put down on the main floors.

The mistake I made and we've done probably 40-50 garages now(average 8-10yr) was I saw alot of gum....but.. The grime was so thick that when we cleaned the surface there was probably 4x the amount of gum you could see now then you could see initially.

I have priced gum removal for complete garages in the past but I always charged high on that and only once did a complete gum removal and the garage was nothing like this.

When doing large jobs there are times unforeseen problems that can arise and people with experience know this especially in the garage industry. This isn't doing a residential house or your typical store front and in 17+yrs I only walked off two jobs. One we did everything for this guys house while he was buzzing us with his plane but when I fell on one of his roofs 4x I told him we can't do his roof and there is no charge for that. The other was when a guy kept telling me that I can't use the surface machine on his concrete patio and it was huge. Both of these were over 10 yrs ago.
As for this garage I am on the hook for a few thousand out of my own pocket so far. They understand whats going on here and yes I am going to talk to the facility boss Monday because I already talked to his 2nd in charge there who says he understands and because of the size of this garage and the problems that happen they have paid more for many contractors who work for them.

Oh yea I forgot to add that they have a broken water line causing us to only be able to use the water on the south corner of the garage on the first floor that happen right before we got there and it's still not fixed and that water line is the main line that goes to the upper floors as well. They also have a pump problem that is massive. When it rains hard the top exposed floor drains down and it when it gets to be alot of water the pumps blow the water back thru the drains on the lower floors at such a high rate the water hits the ceilings and it floods the floors. This happened to us twice already.

So these are some of the factors that bring me in to talk to the boss.

Don't you just hate rookie mistakes.
Click to expand...

Yes cant stand it


Text me anytime for question 480-522-5227
 
Ron Musgraves said:
Yes cant stand it


Text me anytime for question 480-522-5227
Click to expand...
We all make mistakes. I made a few. What guys in the parking industry never teach is what to do when you may have made a mistake. With quitting as always a last option what steps can you make to turn your mistake into a winner.
I have those answers but you'll have to go to Vegas to find out..J/K.

Best thing to do is learn by your mistakes and on this one the mistake ultimately is my responsibility but being a business person there's always a way to re-open the door of opportunity so all sides are happy and when in this case one of my aces here is that then facility supervisor has brought it up to upper management about all the gum he soar as well when we were cleaning. It's things like that I look for when something is not working out to my advantage.

Either way he is getting the best service a parking garage company can give him and a service that works as hard as possible to get the desired results. They know that as well because of the hours where working and none of us really stop except for a 15 min dinner break. My guys are like me. When I stop to long I get tired so we keep going.

This post is even good for the most experience parking garage cleaners to read because if they done enough garages they will and do run into unusual problems somewhere down the line such as serious water issues and draining issue problems that were no cause of there own.

I call it "Livin & learning"
 
John just did a loading area attached to a parking garage. If you have ever done one then you would know these are worse than the parking garage areas in less than 30 days they look like a garage abused for 6 years.

I wash 47 garages on a regular basis.

I've talked with Jim about cleaning garages. I won't use fire hoses unless its new construction.


Text me anytime for question 480-522-5227
 
Last edited:
47 garages a year is no small accomplishment. I think I'm around that total since I did that first garage around 2006-7. This is the only Powerwashing I still do. Not the gum part. I drive the Swabby and keep the machinery running and move the vacs and make sure water isn't going where it shouldn't be going like down an elevator shaft.

Where done now with the 3 main floors. There not loading floors. Thats all done on an asphalt part of the garage which is just a rinse down. Now I'm finally going to make some money. Also the price stays the same bit the facility supervisor said today that we don't have to do half of another flow where the gum is again bit at a smaller scale then what we were dealing with. He's going to have that part sand blasted so he can get it sealed. He's keeping the price the same after we talked.
Now it's smooth sailing and I'll turn a profit and I learned a valuable lesson. Go back to charging hi when they ask for full gum removal so if I get it again I'll make top dollar.

The beauty of this garage is where slated to do it now twice a yr with 3 rinse downs between the 2 Powerashing dates.

So this story will have another Happy ending:)
 
Clean County PW said:
47 garages a year is no small accomplishment. I think I'm around that total since I did that first garage around 2006-7. This is the only Powerwashing I still do. Not the gum part. I drive the Swabby and keep the machinery running and move the vacs and make sure water isn't going where it shouldn't be going like down an elevator shaft.

Where done now with the 3 main floors. There not loading floors. Thats all done on an asphalt part of the garage which is just a rinse down. Now I'm finally going to make some money. Also the price stays the same bit the facility supervisor said today that we don't have to do half of another flow where the gum is again bit at a smaller scale then what we were dealing with. He's going to have that part sand blasted so he can get it sealed. He's keeping the price the same after we talked.
Now it's smooth sailing and I'll turn a profit and I learned a valuable lesson. Go back to charging hi when they ask for full gum removal so if I get it again I'll make top dollar.

The beauty of this garage is where slated to do it now twice a yr with 3 rinse downs between the 2 Powerashing dates.

So this story will have another Happy ending:)
Click to expand...

I do most monthly , I have a formula for you later ill post off another similar job a freind of your told me his operating costs detailed.


Text me anytime for question 480-522-5227
 
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