43,000 SqFt carpet and tile Solo in 5 days ?

[jerry ACC]

My bid at 15cents for the first cleaning, and 10cents quarterly will probably be too high but, I have an opportunity to do this 43,000 SqFt college for a maintenance co. I have not bid yet but going solo I don't think I can go much lower. (18 is usually my minimum). There is also a little over 2000 Sq of tile, but I was just including that in with the carpet. It is Truck Mount HWE only, no EnCrap. The job can lead to many,many more commercial accounts managed by the same company. I have never done a job this big so I have a few questions.
1. Can it be done solo in 5 days with my boxxer 421 ?
2. Should I pimp myself out and bid lower, just to put food on my table ?
3. As a O/O working alone, would you take this job on ? working hours are after 5PM only.
4. Should I try to bring someone else in on the cleaning ?
5. Is it worth bringing someone else in if the guy only pays 6 cents, just for the other probable work ?

Please chime in on your thoughts, especially if you have had this experience.
Jerry

 

[Jimmy L]

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[GeneMiller]

I once took a job that was 36,000 sq ft. It took one day with 2 trucks. We started at 730 am and finished at 430pm. I think its worth having a helper at least but you can definitely stroke it if you want to. All our strokes included dry passes . My helper prespayed and scrubbed with a 175 and we cleaned considerable more then the other truck that didn't have a scrubber.


Gene

 

[Dolly Llama]

2. Should I pimp myself out and bid lower, just to put food on my table ?

Jerry

NO! You should NEVER lower your price to feed and house your family.
you should sit in a room and wait for the Manna from heaven..... while you're counting the how many days left til your utilities are disconnected ... :roll:

Sorry , Jerry....I just couldn't resist that
You'll hear a lot of guys suggest you shouldn't leave the drive for less than $100, 200, 300 an hour
But what they never mention is, they're established and are busy as they want to be, or their wife has a good job with bennies..or both

donno what production you're capable of.
But a single man w/TM "should" be able to average 500sf an hour in the open areas

is it 43K sf of "building(s)" or is that the actual amount of carpet showing?
cause in a 43K building, there's not nearly that much carpet that gets cleaned...due to desks, file cabinets, storage areas, etc

and yes, I'd have help on that job...that's a LOT of carpet for one man .
a helper will make things go so much smoother and allow you to maintain decent production rates

Pay a brother-in-law, or friend cash to help you for the week


..L.T.A.

 

[steve frasier]

I do a 50,000 sq ft 4 story dorm building in 5 days, one floor each day, by myself. Usually take one day to prespot/degum.

includes 3 stairways, 80 dorm rooms and furniture moving and a little bit of ceramic cleaning in each bathroom

if you have someone doing some spotting or prespraying ahead of you it will make it much faster

a 2.5" filter and about 100' of 2.5" hose also helps

 

[Mike Draper]

I always have an assistant with me. He will pull hoses, fetch spot remover, take out stains, gum and hook up water, he also does the pre-spraying. I track every hour of work and every dime in and out of this business, square footage cleaned per hour, hours on TM etc.... I make about 35-40% more per hour having an assistant after costs are paid. I will never work without an assistant.

 

[KevinL]

Me too Mike, I'll do a small job or 2 by myself but a helper is indispensable on bigger jobs.

 

[steve g]

I can clean about 8000 sq ft minimum a day if its fairly wide open and that is doing a good job on it not rushing and carpet fairly dirty. I have done more area than that before but I count on at least doing 8k a day. decide a good days wage and bid it that way, it sounds like you would be doing this as a sub, keep in mind the main company is gonna wanna make some money too. I would prolly try to do it for 5k that is pretty much a grand a day. that is about .11-.12/ft huge areas you can drop the price because its not taking as long to do it per ft. biggest job I ever did was a school that was 171k sf ft, it took me and another idiot 2 weeks to do it. in that time I probably did 120k of it personally myself. the bill was 12k, which seemed like a lot $$$$ for 1996, I would not do it for near that cheap now, BTW that was back in my rainbow days we got paid straight commission my cut back in the day was 1400 bucks, what a friggen ripoff.









PS, now that I think about it why the hell did I split the 24% commission down the middle with the other guy, since I did so much more of the work, dammit I got hosed.

 

[The Great Oz]

1. Can it be done solo in 5 days with my boxxer 421 ?
Yes, and quite easily.
2. Should I pimp myself out and bid lower, just to put food on my table ?
If you get the job, it will be because you made your company stand out. Otherwise the bid will go to someone at .02 who will cheat on the work. Don't fall into that trap.
3. As a O/O working alone, would you take this job on ? working hours are after 5PM only.
Absolutely. You can comfortably clean (if you know how) about 2,000 sf per hour and do a good quality job when you have this much carpet to do at once. You could work five-hour shifts each evening and get the job done.
4. Should I try to bring someone else in on the cleaning ?
.15 x 43,000 = $6,450.00. Divide by 40 hours if you're not used to doing large commercial work and you gross over $161 per hour. Is there room to hire someone with that margin?
5. Is it worth bringing someone else in if the guy only pays 6 cents, just for the other probable work ?
If you take jobs that lose money to make money somewhere else, you'll often find yourself doing only the money losing part. Business 101: every job has to make a profit, otherwise it's got to be part of your marketing (or training) program. At .06 you'd gross $64 per hour at 40 hours, not much of a margin for a job you'll be learning on, but maybe better than doing nothing.

PS: Please don't stoop to using a walk-behind. Pushing dirt into the carpet won't win you any friends.