Thread: How to go broke and some hot boring action.

Originally Posted by shedhappens

2000/week x 51 = 102000 g's per year, how many small engineering shops would show that sort of
profit at the end of the financial year ?

My lathe did cost $20 000..... I paid for it through savings going without expensive things others enjoy like a social life and holidays and girls and outings and such...

I am not going to reveal how much my workshop has cost me, but it is a considerable sum and I know others here have spent large sums as well..

Whilst my workshop has been heavily subsidised by an over paid (but I am not complaining outside income stream.... I am not going to go and charge nothing as the machines do not have to pay for themselves... The $250 I will make out of this job will go towards a decent QCTP for the 10EE or maybe the DRO I need for it, or the larger drills I need.. the list is endless..

I actually only charge people that can do nothing for me.... That windmill job on the borer cost the client nothing.... As the client has a large crane that I can have access to for free..

I am putting the axle job down to experience.. Next time I would handle it differently rather then blindly saying yes... As it is the client got a bargain machining wise, but IMO is way out of pocket as while what I did is good, the rest is stuffed and a part out of a wrecked machine may have cost $1000, you may be ahead going that route if you want a long term fix... But for all I know the client may only want to do about fifty hours work with his loader, which the repair may do...

Originally Posted by .RC.

At the end of the day, I will probably charge $350 of which $50 is for material or so for the job and put it down to experience on what not to take on, and next time advise the owner to check out the wreckers first... The client wants to pay cash, which is no advantage to me.. I took him mentioning cash as him expected it to be cheap... I just spent $500 getting a small hydraulic spool valve repaired, which was probably around 4 hours work.. Shops around here are $100/hr minimum, which they have to be because of the costs and overheads..

The first question I ask most people who want me to repair or fabricate parts is how much is a new or secondhand one. I had a bloke from work just last week ask me to give him a hand making up mounts to bolt aftermarket seats into his car. Had a look at the seats one day, and he asked me how much for him to just drop the car off and me to do it. Told him straight out if that was what he wanted to do, he'd be better tracking down some secondhand mounting rails somewhere. If he wanted to drop past my house, and do some of the work himself, I was quite happy to give advice and a hand to get it done for next to nothing, but that wasn't what he wanted. People get a really dirty look on their face at that point for some reason, I've seen it a few times. Been asked to make various small tanks for car fluids, usually tell them to go on Ebay - they'll get a tank for 3/4 of what I'd charge to make it. Get the same look then.

Sure, if it's a special tank to fit in some oddly shaped spot, or repairing/modifying some unobtainable car part, I'll do it. And normally I'll roughly figure out the hours in it, then add 50% more to that, as experience has taught me that all the little details take far longer than you think they will. Then I'll tell them straight up before I touch anything it could potentially cost this much.

Yeah, I've lost quite a few jobs with this approach, but to my mind, if I can't earn a certain amount doing the job, I'd rather spend the hours working on my own stuff.

Originally Posted by Jekyll and Hyde

Yeah, I've lost quite a few jobs with this approach, but to my mind, if I can't earn a certain amount doing the job, I'd rather spend the hours working on my own stuff.

Give that man the kewpie doll...... I'll help out friends any time because when things go pear-shaped, they'll be there for me. Others pay cash. In full. In advance. PDW

Originally Posted by Pete F

You've got to be kidding, NO business runs like that, except on paper.

If you read the thread properly you should be aware that I already explained that

shed

Originally Posted by Steamwhisperer

Hi Shed,
not so much mobile welding but mobile engineering with a lot of welding attached. At the same time I also had a workshop with all the usual overheads.
I found that after the initial 'out of pocket' period (and after a while of overcharging the customers that I didn't like ) and of course offset by the customers that you had to waste time chasing the money from, things started to actually break even. Still further down the track it 'tends' to get easier. It is only on the odd occasion that customers like BOC send you a letter saying that they had decided not to pay accounts this month which was ok as I had decided not to eat that month
The point is, to really gain the benefit from jobbing, it has to be the long haul or use progress payments.
I'm not super happy I am on wages again but not entirely sad either .

Phil

Where was your w/shop Phil ? When you had that business I was pulling spanners for Bowdie at Alex m/cycles.

How do you guys tout for work?
Do you advertise or get your work via word of mouth?
The reason I ask, is if you advertise you may leave yourself open for
liability insurance or even worse the tax man.
Depending on the customer and if you know them well or they are the friend of
a friend could be a major problem if something were to go wrong later down the track
regardless if it had anything to do with your repair or not...
People will always try finding someone to blame and or find liable, especially if someone gets
injured.
So PLEASE be careful and make sure your covered, even if you have to get them to sign something
waving any responsibility on your part.
Just my 2c worth

Matt

As for tax the threshold is now $75K turn over. That is a far bit if you are only doing it part time.

My biggest worry is if someone comes into the workshop and injures themselves. This is where public liability comes insurance comes in and your hourly rate has to go up to cover it.....

Ew

The job is gone and I am paid, client is pleased as punch and under no illusion as to the condition of the rest of the parts.. He is only looking at doing low hours with the machine.....

I would like to get into some more horizontal borer action....

2000/week x 51 = 102000 g's per year, how many small engineering shops would show that sort of
profit at the end of the financial year ?

That is not profit but turnover!!!!!!! would be nice if it was.
Kryn

Originally Posted by shedhappens

Where was your w/shop Phil ? When you had that business I was pulling spanners for Bowdie at Alex m/cycles.

Ya kiddin' me shed.
I was between Alexandra readymix concrete and Alan Hall the plumber in Peterkin Place.
Small world

Yeah one can have all these staff working for you, and at the end of the day be no better off than someone who is running a small shoestring operation. Get plenty of repeat custom and referal work, so we must be doing something right. Definitely not a huge turn over business, but dont have as much stress as many of the bigger firms. Dunno how some places keep going. The fact that a lot of the big manufacturing firms are shutting down kinda tells you something.

We will do some jobs that dont make much. But if we are busy and the customer wants to get pushy about some $60 job, then they get told the facts about that their elcheapo job wont keep the shop door open, or if you can convince the 5 folk if front of you that yours is more important. Get the occasional one that cant/wont wait, buts thats life, we cant keep everyone happy.

Then there's others we wont consider.... period. those cheap 4-6 sided gazebo tops immediately come to mind. Just have to let some things go if they are gonna be tonnes more trouble and expense then what they will make.

Like many other firms around we get our fair share of complete crocks come into the shop that simply wont survive any attempts at repair, or simply arent economical to do so. Just have to be prepared to be honest with customer and take it from there. Many times have simply said, "I aint touching it". Have to really spell it out if there's any doubts that the material is borderline and it wont last very log.

There's a lot of cheap Chinese "stuff" around nowdays and we get a lot of "can buy it cheaper off ...." "Well we are an Australian company, with Aust sized overheads, and we dont use rubbish materials."

Dont usually have the safety aspects to worry about when doing jobs. Stuff that is just isnt worth the hassle of lawyers if it all goes wrong for us.

Richard,
Nice to see that you have the horizontal boring machine working. I have a mate that has a general engineering repair shop and he often shows me the sort of jobs he gets in, a lot of earth moving, dump truck etc.He tells me that they mostly fall into one of two groups.They do not own a grease gun or they own one and never use it again after the first cartridge is empty. When he first started in business he used to machine and fit everything back together as good as he could, he soon found out that they would buck at the cost, now he is not as fussy.He showed me a job he had done the previous week that was back,the operator had just bent both hydraulic rams that he had just replaced and re bushed on a big bucket to resemble a boomerang, not easy to do on a 2.5" diameter shaft.
Bob -Holidaying in Hawaii

Wrt to those jobs like what R.C. mentioned, what we quite often do here is tell cust it is a timed job. Less chance of doing a job that turns out to be far more than expected.

Sometimes tho, despite best efforts, you do get stuck with a job that bites you.

Originally Posted by PDW

TCash jobs sooner or later lead to tears.

your not doing it right