school buses

[Scott Stone]

I do not have a problem with you or scott or anyone else charging cheap prices,salesmanship goes a long way in this trade.And yes If I owned a fleet of buses they all would go though a stand alone truckwash and wright it off in taxes,I wouldn't put up with a mobile washer.

Uhm, I never said that is what I would charge. I know that I cannot do the work that they want for that price, so I pass on bidding.
If they took them through a rollover or drive thru, it would be at the bus barn. Personally, I think that they are paying for a bunch of buses that are not getting washed. That is the only way I can figure that money is being made, since they are hand finishing the all of the windows, too.

 

[Larry L.]

Scott I fully understand the "cannot do" but a newbee doesn't understand as to why he cann't either.Thats one reason you'll never see me post a lowball price on this board,they can learn that later on down the road.We know the differents in volume washing and custom cleaning which in a way is what we do.Volume is more of a splash and dash and custom is more detailed.

When a newbee makes a post we that answer the post should pay more attention as to what is said in the post.

Notice he already washes a few trucks on weekends plus washed a RV for the guy over the buses.Notice who washes the buses now and what some of these guys make an hour plus as slow some are it could be costing them more than a stand alone truckwash.Thats the reason I said salesmanship goes a long way in this trade,knowing alittle about the account helps in setting a price.If a newbee sets his price to low he will not make it in fleetwashing as in "cannot do",help keep the price up by not posting a price you yourself can not do.

Happy New Year and more power to ya...

 

[biodude]

Notice he already washes a few trucks on weekends plus washed a RV for the guy over the buses.Notice who washes the buses now and what some of these guys make an hour plus as slow some are it could be costing them more than a stand alone truckwash.Thats the reason I said salesmanship goes a long way in this trade,knowing alittle about the account helps in setting a price.If a newbee sets his price to low he will not make it in fleetwashing as in "cannot do",help keep the price up by not posting a price you yourself can not do.

You're correct on a number of fronts, Larry. In my opinion, step one should be for the new guys to see if they can even perform the job up to the standards required. Next is to see how long it wuld take them to do so. Then finally, figure an hourly wage desired for them to still make money, divide by pieces per hour, and you come up with the unit price. You're right, for some that may be in excess of $35/hour; for others with different equipment and methods it may be substantially less. I always recommend that they do a sample wash of a couple of pieces first to get an idea of how long it takes to wash them with their equipment, and it allows them the opportunity to see what the future customers expectations are and how they may be to deal with in the future. But unfortunately, there are a lot of guys that don't follow that advice, throw out the lowball price as you call it, with no idea as to what they're getting into. Then that price gets lodged in the customers mind. and he thinks that everyone can do similar quality or better for equal to less money per piece. It's not right, but it seems to be the nature of the beast....

 

[Scott Stone]

If you noticed I stated teh price and said that I cannot do it for that price. It is ridiculously low, in my opinion. I do not see how come anyone would want to work for that kind of money and run a business off of it.

 

[biodude]

We're set up to wash large fleets extremely quick, and we don't even charge that. So anyone that would definitely doesn't know what they're doing or shorting the customer....You'd NEVER get by with doing that up in the North country with eveything getting so dirty up here. I question whether you'd even get by with that down in Scott's territory, California, or Florida.