There’s only eight hours in a day!
There has been many changes in the plumbing maintenance industry over the past few years ranging from plastic pipes, push fit pipes, flexi connections, new style mixing valves, the list goes on. While these products are designed to save us time (and time is money) the end result when using these products is that they simply reduce the hours spent on site and reduce the chargeable hours on the job. This means you are travelling more and more between jobs, wasting time that you cannot charge for. To combat this problem, plumbers charge a service call, which is designed to make up for lost time spent travelling between jobs. This works fine in theory, but it very rarely covers you for the lost time because the service call charged is generally a lower fee than your hourly rate. See an example below.
Spending eight hours on site
1 x service call $ 50.00
8 x hours @ $ 80.00 per hour $ 640.00
Total $ 690.00
Carry out four x 1 hour jobs with service calls charged
4 x service calls @ $ 50.00 ea $ 200.00
4 x hours @ 80.00 per hour $ 320.00
Total $ 540.00
Even though the above demonstration is an example only, you can see that running around for $80.00 per hour plus a service call is not as beneficial as remaining on site for a longer period.
Let me now give you an example of a plumbing maintenance business, that also runs around between jobs that actually makes very good money. I am talking about the newly revolutionised water jetting and CCTV camera blocked drain industry. In the years gone by these tools have been extremely expensive and have incurred very high maintenance costs. Due to the growth in the industry, these products have become more and more cost effective and have become very reliable.
Blocked drain water jetting rates, range between $ 240 - $ 350 for the first hour, then between $ 100 - $ 250 per hour thereafter. The charge out rates for a CCTV inspection also returns the same rate as a water jetter job. If you use your CCTV camera while on site, when jetting, a discount is generally given. An average charge while on site is $ 150. See below an example of a four blocked drains a day, when selling the camera on 50% of jobs. In this example I will be using the lowest average charge as mentioned above.
Water jetting jobs x 4 @ $ 240.00 per job $ 960.00
CCTV Jobs x 2 @ $ 150.00 per job $ 300.00
Total $ 1,260.00
I have also made no mention of the two dig ups that you have quoted, due to using the CCTV camera on two occasions. The above demonstrations is merely an example but you can see when adding a water jetter and a CCTV camera combination to your list of tools, your options of making more money in an 8 hour day is greatly increased.
For the best possible industry advice, I recommend you call ASSASSIN Jetters. They are a company that designs and builds a wide range water Jetters for the plumbing industry. This company was founded by a maintenance plumbing company with a passion for the water jetting industry. ASSASSIN Jetters not only knows how to build a strong reliable and affective water jetter, they also know how to use one. Due to their vast onsite history with using this equipment they also know every trick in the book when it comes to marketing, on job camera sales, and quoting dig ups. I strongly recommend, if you are considering entering into the water jetting/CCTV industry, you give ASSASSIN Jetters a call on 1300 855 145 today.
If you would like to know any more information, please call me at any time.
Kind regards
Anthony I’Anson
A.M.P.S Plumbing 0401033700
