Or..as my buddy Joe says…..Rent a Drunk.
He uses them all the time. Labor Ready, that is. I chacked into it about a year os so ago..never followed thru…..sounded pretty involved to fill out the paper work to see if you even “qualify” to rent from them….
Then I got a stack of note pads and such on my wiper blades last week while runing into HD..and the guys biz card had their web site on it….so I figured I’d see how easy the “on-line” registration was.
It was easy. Just got the email noitfication back today with account numbers and “credit” limits.
I did a pretent order, as they don’t give the rates on the site….and found that 2 guys in the Carp catagory…for 6 hrs a day…..would be just under $170 for the day.
I wanted to price the demo/hauling catagory..as that’s what I’d use most..but the web page had an error on that subcatagory…but it’s gotta be similar…and probably a bit lower.
They handle all the legal stuff…..with holding/insurance/etc.
I’ve worked around lotsa their guys here. Some good..some bad. None what I’d call carpenters. One kid was decent helping build a deck and rail.
Most are …as Joe puts it…..rent a drunks. In the 5 yrs or so he’s worked around them…only had one big problem…..on a job I was subbing too. Some jewelry turned up missing…..the 2 guys..only 2 strange faces on the site…confessed pretty quick. Joe keeps them outside on in only when a company guy is there to watch over. They snuck away somehow that day while taking debris thru the house.
So…just by the nature of the job and type of work…there may be a bad one in the bunch every so often……and I’ve worked around more than a couple of them that “ate” lunch in their car and came back sweating out alchol later in the day…
But for a source of strong backs……I’m thinking it’s not a bad idea….
And lots cheaper than I had thought. I’ll gladly pay 2 guys $170 for 6 hrs so I can stand there and point at the walls and the dumpsters and say..I’d like that stuff there..in there.
Joe had a coupla carpenter level guys on bigger sites…..I never worked around any of them…….but he said they were not much more help than the labor level guys….really didn’t have much in tools…one guy didn’t even bring a hammer..and one guy that did have a decent level of knowledge wouldn’t listen and do the work the way he was told.
Posting all this just trying to help other small operations and one man bands like myself.
Jeff
Buck Construction Pittsburgh,PA
Fine Carpentery…..While U Waite
Replies
Jeff,
My old boss would use them occasionally and I guess they worked ok for demo and moving stuff, but if your paying 170 bucks for 12 hours of work, its about 14 an hour, Maybe its just because I'm in the midwest but that seems high compared to what labor gets paid out here.
Yup....right under $14/hr.
Real cheap....when you consider that's the whole deal.......taxes/insurance/over head.......not needing to keep and "extra guy" busy....
I could go get a body off the street....but what if they guy got hurt?
A "legal and insured" $14/hr guy is a steal.
I'm sure they only bring home somewhere $8/hr at those rates...if even that much.
I'm in the midwest price range here too.
JeffBuck Construction Pittsburgh,PA
Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite
Jeff,
Guess thats true when you take in consideration insurance and tax. Do you know what it would cost in insurance premiums to bring someone else on?
By the way, the guy I was talking about would also hire day labor off the streets in the city 10 bucks an hour cash, Guess he wasnt worried about them getting hurt or taxes though.View ImageGo Jayhawks
I got started in electrical work by pimping myself out at a labor group. Times were hard and I was out of work. Went down to a local labor shop. Got sent out with three other guys to an electrical contractor who needed warm bodies for pulling wire. Three phase 500MCM in runs over 200'. Heavy stuff to be toting around in 95+ heat and man holes ankle deep in rancid water.
The boss man hired through the temporary labor firm half a dozen people on a day by day basis. Of the six he got originally he hired on two full time as labor. Of the two I was the only one to go through a training program to become an electrician. He said it was a pretty standard procedure and it allowed him to observe potential candidates without commitment, yea its a guy thing, while they were put through their paces. Those who showed promise were kept. The others went back to the labor pool.
Jeff, I've used a company called Trade
Source for carpenters and while I had a few issues at times with a few
of the people they have provided me for the most part I've gotten some excellent
people. I've
only been interested in their top of the line people so I was paying around
$45 per
hour for the people they sent me. On
the last project
I used them for I think it was a year and a half ago I had a couple of their
guys running and when I needed more they sent over this one guy who just didn't
cut the mustard as high end finish carpenter. I told him thanks but we wouldn't
be needing him the following day and when I called to tell his supervisor he
wasn't up to snuff (one of the doors he hung need to be completely removed
and rehung) he gave me a half a days credit.
If I was to get a project again that required me to surge and put a lot of
people on a particular venue I would use them again. What's the alternative?
Running a want ad to hire "independent contractors" for a limited time period
project? Given the cost of running an ad, and the cost of the time to interview
candidates for the temporary position, and the risk of them not working out
I think Trade Source is a decent temporary solution.
Just wondering though this Labor Ready solicitation didn't have anything officially
to do with Home Depot did it? I'm thinking it was probably a Labor Ready salesperson
taking their own initiative to paper a bunch of contractors windows? I ask
because I know Trade Source or at least the people who founded Trade Source
formed another company called InstallInc which has contracts with Home Depot
Ace hardware and some other big companies to handle "installed sales" in several
states. From an atnewTYork.com article:
From a Tedmag.com (The Electrical Distributors Magazine ) new bulletin:
And from PMmag.com (Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine) there's an article about
Installinc: A
New Approach To Installed Sales
All that stuff is old news now from the 2001 calendar year so I'm wondering
how it worked out or is working out for InstallInc(TradeSource) and their supplier
partners like Ace and HD.
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"Experience is a hard teacher, because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." ~
Vernon Saunders' Law
There was a time that I worked thru labor pools like this and I have hired the same way recently. A few years ago the markup on what was paid out was 40% but the last time I called to inquire it was 70% so I hung up.
I'd asy that in my experience, about eight or nine out of ten are the losers. There are other reasons than alcohol - mental or emotional instability or drugs or family preoblems or just free spirits. It's a good way to try out new help without commitment.
One of the best hands IO ever had was thru such a service. The guy didn't want a regular job because he did some logging and hunting guide work [seasonal] and was building his own house so when he wanted extra work he called them.
He wasn't the brightest bulb in the fixture but he worked hard and listened to what I said. I even left him alone a few times and he always got more done than I expected from an unsuperised helper. He got an extra hundred bucks when I was done using him, off the record of course.
It's a crap shoot but when you've got heavy and demo work, it can save some paperwork. The outfit around here will also let me choose my own help and act as a payroll service but like I said, the markup is steep. For permanent help, I'll do it myself..
Excellence is its own reward!
Pif...some of the best job site humor can be had when my buddy Joe get's on the cell to place orders. I was there one time he called in to place a rent-a-guy order.....he got the girl on the other line..said he needed 4 guys......
Then told her if any of them need medication...make sure they take it first. The week before...he had a guy that showed up..worked fantastic till the first break....slowed down by lunch..then at lunch...he told Joe he was starting to think he shoulda took his medicine that morning before coming to work!
Around the afternoon break..he was starting to make everyone else on site nervous........starting to fight with the demo trash he was dragging out......and when he kicked the dumpster Joe told him if he could clean everything up "real fast" he could leave early and Joe would still put him down for a full day. Told him to bring his pills the next morning so Joe could see him take them in person!
He did.....that day went fine.
But it was real funny hearing Joe calmly telling the girl not to send anyone that was outta pills.....and that he had a full day planned.....so not to send anyone that'd fall asleep after their liquid lunch.
Jeff
Buck Construction Pittsburgh,PA
Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite
Ya know I should add that TradeSouce does have the lower end non-skilled workers too although I've never used them for that.
Also way back when they once called me and told me they had just hired a new guy available in the skill category I was looking for so I told them to send him on over. It turned out the guy was great! I mean this guy was really really good carpenter. However a few days later when I stopped by that project in the morning he wasn't there and almost at the same moment that I walked in I got a call from TradeSouce saying they had to let him go because the results on his drug test came back and he failed. Bummer I thought.
So really needing carpenters especially ones that could do curved work which he could I ran down his phone number and called and offered him a job working straight for me. In the next few weeks that he worked for us we all discovered he had something of a personality problem and while he may have failed his drug test for an illegal drug I began to think he may have failed because he wasn't taking his Prozac (kinda sounds sort of like your buddy Joe's story huh?).
One day when I told him I was sending him in to a project we had going on in Manhattan he told me that this week would be his last with us. Didn't give a reason but I also didn't probe. I figured well I guess he just donesn't want to work Manhattan. When the GC on that project heard that he quit working for us he asked if I would mind if he offered him a job to which I said hey I have no problem with that but you might have a problem with him and told him a few of the anti-social behavior episodes I had seen. He figured it was worth the risk however and gave him a job.
A few weeks after we were essentially done on that project I went back to fix up a few things and pick up some equipment we had left there. I then learned the story of how this guys haywire incidents continued and got even worse until one Monday when everyone else showed up on that jobsite they noticed that all of that guys tools were gone. Apparently he showed up very early that morning and took all his stuff and never told anyone he was quitting.
He also didn't tell anyone he was taking my Hitachi 8" CMS, two Bostich finish nail guns, and a tool crate full of of other pneumatic parts and nails.
In all my years 25 years or so in these trades that the only time that I know of that I've been actually hit with theft. Not a bad streak at all over all those years but I did learn a moral lesson with that one I think. There is a reason why people fail drug tests. I guess the TradeSource people were smarter handling him than I was huh.
Does LaborReady make drug testing part of their sales pitch? TradeSource does. Does LaborReady even drug test?
View Image
"If you do what you always did, you're gonna get what you always got." --Yogi Berra
Trade source is in the area now too. From what I remember, when I talked to them before..about the same time I first talked with labor ready.....they were higher priced..but like ya said...for higher skilled work.
I'll have to check to see if they have a site..now that you've refreshed my memory.
The note pads were placed on a few obvious work vans in the HD lot. This particular HD was build around an existing neighborhood restraunt...and I'm guessing the sales rep hit the lot at lunch time knowing the restraunt always draws a big contractor crowd. I'd guess he was just prospecting...not anything to do with HD.
JeffBuck Construction Pittsburgh,PA
Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite
I did a job about 4 years ago and had to hire some those guys because no one I knew wanted to drive for 2 1/2 hrs each way and the general didn't want to pay drive time. This was in Los Angeles. I was paying around $30.00 per hour for a "journeyman" and $34.00 for a "master carpenter". It wsn't my money and we were in a bad hurt because the general contractor pulled all of his guys off the job and put them on another job. This left me with all the "rent a bozos" for for the remainder of the job. I had given one guy the job of using the 6" portercable DA sander to sant the detail of the faised panels befor they were put on the walls. When I came back the next day, only 4 panels were sanded and he brought in his sissy sander to do the sanding for the reast of the jao. I didn't have any patience for that and told him to use mine and he said it "was too big for him" and refused. My 14 year old son was there helping and looked at the guy and told him that he uses the sander and he doesn't have any problem with it. He still refused to use it and I fired his butt. Al he could say was that he shouldn't be firedbecause he didn't do anything wrong. The other rent a bozos were pretty quiet for the rest of the day. My son and I just laughed. The salesman for the labor immediatedly came by and tried to smooth things over. My reply was if he sends any one else like that gur again, I will kick every one of his people off the job and use another company. he then sent me replacement and this guy was incredible!.
One thing I can add to your use of Temps is to make sure the salesman understands that if he sends any one inexpreienced to your job, you will kick them all off and use another company. Be prepared to backup you threat. Also, they always try to send lesser experienced guys to your job. They pay them less, and charge you more. They save the best guys for repeat contractors and picky guys like me.
there's a spot on a street corner in shirlington outside of D.C. where hispanic dudes congregate, waiting for some contractor to come along and pick up an extra pair of hands or two. Usually they just hop in the back of your truck introducing themselves as..... "Me painter"..."Me carpenter"..."Me cement finisher"... "Me bricklayer...uh.. no need bricklayer??...O.K......Me carpenter!"
If you've seen them handing out free food in 3rd world countrys... then you can picture when i pull into the parking lot to pick up hispanic guys... I hire them as day labor and my insurance guy says i'm covered if one gets hurt... I think i'm fair with them... i buy em something to eat on the way to the job... buy em lunch at noon... and pay em about $11 to $12 an hour if they work... if they don't I'll put em back in the truck and take em back where i got em or pay em about $7-$8 an hour... they never ask what they will be doing or how much they'll be paid when i pick em up... they just want in the truck and want to work... any that have ever asked what and how much have never wanted to work ... around here if it wasn't for hispanics there would be no construction... we have welfare workers... crackheads and drunks
oh and about Labor Ready... they rent from me... told me on the front end who would be hang'n around and the type people they attract... it's in a small shopping center so i try to keep it in check... NO drink'n or hang'n out outside the office... no drug deals or dealers in the park'n lot (they wait for the guys to return from jobs and get paid) no pay phones outside the building (inside only) no work'n on cars in my lot, i have plenty of trash cans (most will use em if they are close) and i have a rear secure parking lot for their guys cars that are on jobs... they are requested not to leave their cars out front and they can't live or camp on my lot.... all these rules come from experience ... oh yeah cameras in the lot with signs let'n em know they are there is my next move... I'm not be'n hard on these guys ...but for the grace of god goes I.... it's the few (5%) bad ones they attract that cause 100% of the problems... Their managers for the most part are retired or ex military and are a class act. Labor Ready is NYSE listed and a well run company
I have a couple of college kids I know and trust and use on occasion for grunt work. I don't keep payroll on them, but had THEM sign on with a temp place out here. Costs me 50% markup for taxes, workers comp, etc., but when I need them, I request them specifically.
I do have to carry a 2 week reserve payroll with the temp place but it's worked well for me and I know who I'm getting.
In the past, when I've needed some help on short notice, and just taken whoever was available, I've gotten some real doozies!