I will start by saying im a tradesman who runs there own business so my view is bias.
Ill try to keep my rant short.
But this comment really annoys me.
Do you really think 500 a day is a lot?
Sure if he gets picked up from home driven to the job, doesn't have to quote has no over heads and only has to work he is doing alright.
The thing most people don't understand is, there is alot more work to running a business then just the physical work to a job.
About 30% of my time is spent quoting planing and paper work. The majority of the quotes you do for first time customers are unsuccessful.
Should this 30% of my time I do with out charge?
I certainly don't. I incorporate this into my hourly so the charge is passed on.
You also have overheads. Car, phone, warehouse, insurance and so on.
This all adds up.
But when some gets a Quote for $100+ an hour the carry on, cause your a tradie and don't deserve it. They don't see the big picture.
Ill just get someone from overseas and pay them peanuts. Then they wonder why there sons and daughters cant get jobs or cant make ends meet.
End Rant.
Back on topic, I do agree that lots of tradies do the wrong thing by the customers. You just need to find good tradespeople and when you find them look after them and pay them well. In turn they will look after you.
Dave
I'm going to be really blunt about this, and you probably wont like it.
I have a bachelors degree in pharmacy. I was in university for 4 years living in semi poverty. Pharmacists must undergo continuing education. Pharmacists pay thousands in ongoing insurance and licensing fees. Pharmacists, by and large, are paid a little over $30 per hour.
I left my profession to pursue building because I could not justify the economic outcomes that went in pharmacy as compared to construction. What kind of twilight zone do we live in when that kind of thing happens?
So yes, $500 a day is a lot. A Hell of a lot. The tradesmen that I deal with are borderline retarded. They do light physical labour that isn't terribly different to the exertions of a standard factory worker or storeman and receive far superior renumeration.
I get very annoyed at the sense of entitlement had by some tradesman, who are completely detatched from the lot of people outside the construction game, particularly in professional services. It is socially unconscionable that someone painting a wall with an IQ of 90 is being paid more than a doctor who has plowed 6 years of their life and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into education, who has to slave away for several years more before they reach wage parity with a painter or tiler or cabinet maker. You have a warehouse, they have a study or office. You have a phone, they have a phone. You do quotes for free, they study medical journals for free. You have cars, they have cars. You have insurance, they have insurance.
Tradesmen are NOT special.
Also, when you're making $500 a day, you only have to work a couple of days before making the average Australian wage, when others work 5 days or more for that thousand bucks.
You can try to justify it with all sorts of unpaid expenses and blee blee blah blah but the bottom line is that most of the tradies I know are driving $80 000+ cars, blowing hundreds a weekend on drugs/alcohol/clothes, regularly holiday, or are well ahead in the property game, while those in other industries with far higher obstacles to entry are renting, budgeting, driving secondhand cars, and are otherwise economically eclipsed by tradies who whine like jet engines whilst proudly proclaiming that they don't get out of bed for less than $400 a day.
I'm an opportunist. I grew up in a building family. I've done the tradie thing, the white collar thing, the small business thing (ongoing) and the developer thing, so this isn't a rant against one or the other industry - since when building slows, I'll dip back into pharmacy or whatever. This is simply a statement of common sense, and social fairness - when tradesmen who are flat out passing high school have a better standard of living than the best and brightest in society and make ludicrous statements that making half the average weekly Aussie wage in a day "isn't a lot of money", it makes them sounds like spoilt, unappreciative brats as detatched from the rest of us as they are devoid of common sense.
"$500 a day isn't a lot of money" what a load of pus.
Like all them investors with propeorty & equity & money the *******s !
