I have worked for some semi nationals and my experience has been good with a few. Never tried USM and the such, but the more regional companies have treated me well.
no kidding. how long untill people get fed up, working for them sucks, how long untill they cant get enough subs. and businesses get tired of having different people plowing constantly. i dont see how any business in their right minds would hire someone to plow thier snow that doesnt even own a snowplow! they will find people to do all the work for them.
Nothing but good things to say about the two we have worked/work for. The rates we are paid are above average, pay is slow, usually 45 days. but knowing thats the case ahead of time, its fine.
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Originally Posted by TwoBrosLawn
.....i dont bid jobs anywhere near as high and in depth as the people on here do...I bid based on what i wanna make on it, i dont include gas, insurance...blah blah blah i charge what i think is fair without ripping the customer off like most people on here do!
Ditto that. We have worked for a number of seasons for a couple of national companies, and have no issues. One does pay in 60 days, but it was part of the contract, and the cheques arrive every month on time, the other does direct deposit to my bank account each month. They expect that we will do the work within the context of the contract, but are very easy to deal with in general
Like anything, some are good, some are bad. To try and paint them all with the same brush is simply lazy. 30% of my work is from nationals. Pick the spots that make sense and avoid those that are truly bad news. Obviosuly, general feedback is the 3 letter version of the national is bad news and I feel the same way but I am sure there are hundreds of other companies who feel differently. They do over $300 million a year so someone is doing the work. Just not me!
Read the contracts, talk to their account staff and decide for yourself if it makes sense. While not perfect, nationals are here to stay. Every industry consolidates in some fashion. I buy tools from Home Depot because they consolidated their buying power and my saw is cheaper with them. However, there are 1,000's of mom and pop stores who feel differently. Exxon Mobil puts out mom and pop gas stations out of business every day. The good news for us? Nationals still need us. Maybe at a lower price point, or slower payment terms, but the work is there if it makes sense to you.
Things could be much worse for us.
Be sure they are for real. I have heard stories of scams operating where the national will hire a contractor who than hires a sub contractor to do the work. The original contractor gets paid by the national but never pays the sub-contractor who performs the service provides the material etc.
This is not the national but the intermediary contractor who fails to pay the person who actually does the work, so be sure you are dealing with a accredited management corporation and not some middleman sleaze ball rip-off with no intention of ever paying you.
Why is it with technology and how fast and accurate information can be exchanged we still see payments for services being stretched out past 30-60 days. It just seems to me if I service an event, and submitt it to a regional or national, it takes 720- 1440 hours to process payment on it. Am a I in a minority or do others see this happening?
I am not complaining but just wonder why everyone tries to push their operational cost down to the guys or gals that already have all of the risk in liability, and expect them to finance their operations as well. They just need to have more skin in the game is all I'm saying.
I can see this industry having high turnover as a result of companies not being able to cover operational costs. They will go where the money turns around faster like it used to.
IMO Nationals and regionals could easily tighten up suspense time to process payments and create a better enviornment in this indusrty but greed seems to be gaining ground.
I do work for a few regional outfits that are ok 90% of the time, but looking at the consenous of most of the people on here they appear at least on the bigger the operations not great to work for.
Guess you just need to try and establish yourself with the good ones and hope for the best.
I have worked for some semi nationals and my experience has been good with a few. Never tried USM and the such, but the more regional companies have treated me well.
Same here the ones I have dealt with have had only a few glitches. But smaller regional ones are so much better.
I have done work for Brickman for both lawn and snow for the last three years. I haven't really had to many issues to speak of with them. There is plenty of work oppertunity there if you want it. The first year they were slow on payment close to 40+ days but they were also re-organizing their office staff apparently. Now the I get paid on the same day each month for the lawn side and 15-20 days for the snow side.
I am sure there are bad companies out there or those who have had bad relationships with the nationals, but mine has been good thus far. Don't always trust what your read on the internet. Give it a shot for yourself.
I owned another company which is now out of business because of USM. I worked for them for 5yrs and they had there issues, slow pay, lots of paperwork, call in all the time, pictures.... all that was just part of the job. Then a women fell while stepping over parking blocks days after a snow storm and USM tried to pin the million dollar lawsuit on me. Then my insurance company will only cover me but there contract requires me to cover USM. USM didn't pay me tens of thousands they owe me and they expected my company to pay all the legal expense of USM since my insurance didn't cover USM only me. Needless to say the whole not getting paid and the lawsuit put me out of business. BEWARE Don't work for USM without having your lawyer and insurance look at the contract or you might be next.
As far as the slow paying goes, that is actually a business strategy used by many larger businesses to aid cash flow. The general idea is, YOU (the business) keep YOUR money as long as you can. If you pay all the bills from your supplier (in this case, the plowing contractor) as soon as you recieve them, but you client (Home Depot, Wal-Mart, etc) isnt going to pay you for 30-45 days after you bill them, it can be very difficult to keep enough money in the checkbook to keep the business going. Its a vicious cycle really, and can be quite confusing. Hope that makes some sense.
As far as the slow paying goes, that is actually a business strategy used by many larger businesses to aid cash flow. The general idea is, YOU (the business) keep YOUR money as long as you can. If you pay all the bills from your supplier (in this case, the plowing contractor) as soon as you recieve them, but you client (Home Depot, Wal-Mart, etc) isnt going to pay you for 30-45 days after you bill them, it can be very difficult to keep enough money in the checkbook to keep the business going. Its a vicious cycle really, and can be quite confusing. Hope that makes some sense.
This conversation goes on every year yet there are still guys lining up to work for them. Low pricing, high liability, and slow slow payments if any. Just think if everyone that actaully owns the equipment decided not to work for these national and regional companies. Maybe then they we be forced to go out and buy there own iron and see what it really cost to run a snow business.
Almost cut my hair, happened just the other day, getting kinda long, could have said it was in my way!
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