I held to this line of thinking for a couple years. From what I’ve read, it works in a lot of areas.
It doesn’t work in my area, and I’m sure it doesn’t work in every area.
I make around $75/hour on residential and large commercial. But, I can’t make that on storefronts. There’s too much competition in my area.
I wish I could just drop store front work, and I probably will someday. But, I don’t yet have that luxury. Until that day, I have to charge what the market will bear. In my area, that’s $50-$60/hour. I have a few that make around $75/hour, but not as a rule. I won’t rule out a $50 job that takes me an hour, especially if it’s close to another account.
I have pretty much the same feelings about the area I am in. Especially here lately. It seems that we do avg more than $75/hr on large commercial and residential, but on storefronts, its more like $50-$60/hr. That fifteen dollar an hour difference adds up. 15 X 8 hours/day X 2 days/week (we only do route work 2 days a week) = $240… times 50 weeks a year is only $12,000…only…that’s three new WFPs, 15 new squeegees, 5 Gross rubber, and one roll of Unger tablets.
Back to your thread though, I just acquired a very similar building. It have 100+ panes, exterior only, monthly. I bid it $189.00 for the initial and $164.50 for the monthly afterward. They picked us and we have done it once now. It took 4 hours the first time. Now, I know that we’ll get faster with it–as we always do for this type, but that is only $41/hr. Well, part of the reason I bid it so cheap, was A) To get the job, B) Because it is all in one area, that BTW we already have the entire surrounding and adjacent property to clean, and C) I have got the tenants to let me clean the inside, at their expense, and I am making more than my money up on that part. It turns out that that low bid job is netting a nice piece of change for the time we are there.
However, I do think that your prices are a bit low. Are you bidding this against other Wc’ers? If so you might have to walk that ever-so-thin line of getting the numbers just right for the customer. How well do you know them? That may make the difference in how I’d do that.
over here in the Dallas area the comp has been getting crazier and crazier. There’s so much lowballing going on right now and the storefronts can smell the blood.
I have always only went after residential and stayed away from the commercial. But lately I have been snooping around trying to get a feel for the going rate around here. I’m just so surprised every time I hear of some of the prices the commercial owners say they are paying.
It’s .50 a pane all over here. And some of the sizes of the panes they keep charging only .50 a o pane is just nuts.
