Alternative Models

[Stephen Moore]

Evo, there is nothing illegal about hiring another contractor to do a portion of the job. I sub out stump grinding, excavator and dump truck all the time. There is no foul play there. I include the cost of those contractors in my final price. I also inform the client of my intent to hire another contractor to do that portion of the work and MAY include a fee for management. This most likely includes disposal fees, the site for which I do not own, and therefor I must pay additional costs for that service to a separate contractor. Price fixing is not the same thing. Price fixing would be myself and the competition agreeing to set or control local pricing on a good or service. The contractors I hire are not in direct competition with me and provide a separate service

 

[evo]

Evo, there is nothing illegal about hiring another contractor to do a portion of the job. I sub out stump grinding, excavator and dump truck all the time. There is no foul play there. I include the cost of those contractors in my final price. I also inform the client of my intent to hire another contractor to do that portion of the work and MAY include a fee for management. This most likely includes disposal fees, the site for which I do not own, and therefor I must pay additional costs for that service to a separate contractor. Price fixing is not the same thing. Price fixing would be myself and the competition agreeing to set or control local pricing on a good or service. The contractors I hire are not in direct competition with me and provide a separate service

yes I know that.. But you can't have two independant parties bid, then the winner hire the other to work along side, or really any aspect. We are not talking apples and oranges, we are talking apples and apples.

 

[evo]

I also don't do that.. I just refer it out. Say I take a tree down, and dont have a chipper or stumpie. I will give the name and number to the client of people who do. Take the tree down and head home. Clean, and simple. If the other crews flake it's not on me.

 

[Stephen Moore]

Sure that works. I live in an area where many people own CABINS? Big assed waterfront houses and are only here for maybe 2 weeks a year. They like me to ensure the entire job is done and they wish to not have to deal with the other parts of it. For that I charge a management fee. I make it perfectly clear when we discuss the work. I explain the logistics and we shake hands. Most of the time my return customers don't ask for a quote or for any details, they just sign the cheque at the jobs completion. That is the reason I don't haggle on pricing anymore. I nicely bid farewell to people at the onset of nickle and diming.

 

[Fivepoints]

Sure it can work. We have been doing it for years. As I said in my original post, it has to be with the right people. All of us are responsible and ethical. We also trust each other. There no stealing clients going on or anything like that. One reason we do this is the labor pool around here generally is pretty pathetic. Most we talk to when looking for help fail the do you have a drivers license question right off the bat. I bet that stops 90% of the interviews. Whoever has gotten the bid is whose job it is. The others of us are subs. In our case, it's not really a lot different than hiring a crane company and a contract climber in our case as I'm the one that owns the crane.

There's no price fixing going on. We each do our own bids. Sometimes we have unknowingly bid against each other and one of us gets the job. I'm sure there's times when we have bid against each other and none of us have gotten the job.

 

[Fivepoints]

I also don't do that.. I just refer it out. Say I take a tree down, and dont have a chipper or stumpie. I will give the name and number to the client of people who do. Take the tree down and head home. Clean, and simple. If the other crews flake it's not on me.

If you think that your chipper crew flaking out wouldn't be on you, I think a customer is going to view that much differently. Your still reflected by the people you refer and associate with in the eyes of most clients.

Most of our clients want to deal with one guy to get the whole job done. I bet we would lose out on some jobs if we quit doing cleanup for instance. People don't want to spend more time hassling with contractors to deal with their tree problem. We also do a lot of removals in tight spots that you have to process the material as it comes down.