Client reached out to wash these plastic things for his chicken farm. Said there’s 2000 of them and they need to be washed on both sides… wondering how to go about washing them and also what to charge. I was thinking just lay them flat and spray house wash but then I have to flip and spray again and then do the same to rinse it seems like it would take forever… located in New England, thanks in advance.
Not bad if you make $10k in 2 weeks 
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10k geez I was thinking $1 per unit… you’re serious?
How many minutes does it take you to do one?
Multiply that by 2000.
What do you want/need to make an hour to be profitable? How badly do you want to do this job? If you don’t, make it more expensive. You’re dealing with zombie apocalypse chicken poop viruses and germs so that’s a hazmat issue I’m sure.
There’s now 3 things I know of for sure in this crazy world.
- I will die.
- Taxes
- Ain’t no way I’m doing 2000 of those at a buck a piece
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I aim for $300/hour… but 20k sounds absolutely bananas to me, even half that at $150/hour and 10k seems way too high… maybe I’m just not used to these higher priced commercial jobs.
If it was you, would you be double like $2 a piece or more like $4-5?
I had a job last year that was similar. They were plastic pallets and there were 40,000 of them. I washed for two days and realized how much labor and time it took to lay em out, flip them, stack them etc and I told them I’d have to charge way more or I was out. End of the story, there are 40,000 pallets that still need washed. I think I was at about $1-2/each, I can’t remember.
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engine cherry picker, hook, both sides done in a flash. and I mean not far off the ground, just.mimimal effort to lift on and off. then a cart to stack and move them if needed, to wherever.
Tell him you’ll wash 10 of them for free. Time it, figure out what you’re going to do with all the runoff and safety equipment, you don’t want to be exposed to all of that , and how long it takes you. All the crap isn’t going to just fall off. It’s going to be some really nasty work. Done enough vinyl fencing at farms to know that bird poop can be a pita sometimes so you’re going to have to use pressure on a lot of them. Figure out logistics of where you’re going to segregate, haul and put the clean ones Decide how much you really want job and then multiply by 200. Win-win for everyone. Personally think you’ll be leaning towards that $10k figure.
Be aware that doing 10 is going to seem fairly easy, but think what it’s going to be like doing it for hours and hours slogging around in muddy chicken crap. Don’t know what size machine you have, but bigger not necessarily better. A 4gpm 4000 machine is perfect for this type work.
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They brought them there and stacked them, they could unstack them too. Just saying some business like the idea of providing labor vs additional cash. I usually give them choices, most of the time they have their employees do something I won’t (or would charge exorbitantly for). I finally have most people removing the stuff from their decks when I lay out how much it will cost to move everything off and then back on. They see the math, because I lay it out - x number of hours at $ an hour = $$$$
I’d be thinking assembly line vs washing, efficiency is the key to productivity. Productivity will raise profit margins. I won’t charge you for that nugget.
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