Picking Up Speed...
Things are slowly getting in gear again at the shop; The Co-op came for their snowblower yesterday, and today I completed the repairs on the two Sears machines. One was a simple tune-up, but the other needed a new friction wheel and disc, and those parts just arrived earlier this week. The repairs went a lot easier than I had expected them to - In the past, these machines were all chains and sprockets inside; The modern one (at least in this case) is gears that fit into easily-removed bearings, and the whole procedure took a little less than two hours. It was dark by the time I was finished though, so I wasn't able to take it outside to see if it really works. I'm confident that it will though, and I've made arrangements with the customer to drop it off tomorrow afternoon.
That's part of my current dillema though: How much do I charge Sears for the mileage? I was charging 45 cents per kilometer, both directions, and was pretty much getting screwed in the process. Sears will not pay labour while I'm driving, even though that takes me out of the shop and thus costs me lost time. Most of the local businesses around here charge $1+ per km, each direction, and labour on top of that, so I'm thinking $1.50 per km, each direction. But when I run the numbers for this current job, that comes out to $666.00 just for mileage! (It's 111km one-way, and I had to make two round-trips.) That's good for me, but I can imagine someone at Sears having a fit about that! Even if I lower it to $1/km (each direction) they're looking at $444 just for mileage, and that's as low as I'd go. The going-rate here is over that, so I think at $1.50 I'm being more than fair, but we'll have to see. In any case, Sears will take their sweet time in actually paying me, so all the more reason to get as much as I can from them.
We've got a small group of people here at the bowling-alley tonight: Friends of Trixstir's from work. With a Badger's (local hockey-team) game in town tonight, I'm surprised to have any customers at all, so this is fine. Still, these late-nights are hard on the system, and I'm looking forward to sleeping in a bit tomorrow. :)
That's part of my current dillema though: How much do I charge Sears for the mileage? I was charging 45 cents per kilometer, both directions, and was pretty much getting screwed in the process. Sears will not pay labour while I'm driving, even though that takes me out of the shop and thus costs me lost time. Most of the local businesses around here charge $1+ per km, each direction, and labour on top of that, so I'm thinking $1.50 per km, each direction. But when I run the numbers for this current job, that comes out to $666.00 just for mileage! (It's 111km one-way, and I had to make two round-trips.) That's good for me, but I can imagine someone at Sears having a fit about that! Even if I lower it to $1/km (each direction) they're looking at $444 just for mileage, and that's as low as I'd go. The going-rate here is over that, so I think at $1.50 I'm being more than fair, but we'll have to see. In any case, Sears will take their sweet time in actually paying me, so all the more reason to get as much as I can from them.
We've got a small group of people here at the bowling-alley tonight: Friends of Trixstir's from work. With a Badger's (local hockey-team) game in town tonight, I'm surprised to have any customers at all, so this is fine. Still, these late-nights are hard on the system, and I'm looking forward to sleeping in a bit tomorrow. :)