What do you guys do for a living?

[BeaverEater]

You must be fortunate enough to live somewhere that illegal labor hasn't destroyed the pay scale. I used to be half of a remodeling buisness with my father. Within a period of 5 years our "hourly" equivalent went from well over $20 an hour to down around 10-15 IF we were lucky. It actually got to the point where mexicans would bid the job cheaper than we could get materials.

...nothing against mexicans, just stating a fact.

its not the illegal labor thats killing us here, but a lot of contractors have crews that bid stuff so low that they can barely survive. We specialize in remodeling in higher end homes and we already have a great client base that realizes that you get what you pay for. Building new houses is also far worse than remodeling as far as profits goes. I work for a family company too and have only been working there for about a year. But the company does a house about every 4-5 years.

[gmp211]

I wait for my birthday and Christmas for a living

[bornl33t]

its not the illegal labor thats killing us here, but a lot of contractors have crews that bid stuff so low that they can barely survive. We specialize in remodeling in higher end homes and we already have a great client base that realizes that you get what you pay for. Building new houses is also far worse than remodeling as far as profits goes. I work for a family company too and have only been working there for about a year. But the company does a house about every 4-5 years.

one of the strategies going around here is to under bid the competition then over charge the client. At the end of the job the client get a bill for 2 times the next highest bid with the reason "unforeseen expenses". I can't figure out how they stay in business.

I love the cnc framer... never knew that was a job? We just go out and frame it.

Full time forklift driver, part time contractor. In theory my crew and I can build a house without outside help, but there are some things you just have to have a licence to do.

Are any other contractors having problems finding "reasonable" prices land? I seems in this area land prices jumped about 40-50% over the last year. Between that and the abundance of town homes business is SLOW.

[going_home]

Used

going home I need landscape timbers whats you per foot?

All we have is used of course.
But last I heard we were having the devil of a time getting them for stock.
But see I sell commercial accounts, builders , and they dont buy that kind of stuff.
Thats on the retail end and I dont really do that.
Its the big stuff I make the money on, like 20000.00 sets of trusses and such.
And arent you like in Michigan or somewhere way up there ?
I'm in Florida. The shipping cost would kill you.

[slade]

Right now I'm making pumps, for nuclear reactors and such.
In 2 weeks I'll be back in school working on my aeroE degree and working as a sound technician.
Oh...I run a painmtball field in the summer too




Really? Cool. You wouldn't happen to remember being on a call where someone got an ice skate embedded in their leg would you? That was a crazy night

are you going to RIT?

I work in IT like abunch of the others, exept I work for Raytheon, good pay , I makethe images for computers across Raytheon. I also help manage the Systems Management Servers for my site. Also let me say, please be nice to your IT department, They like nice people, not people who yell.

I am also a student.

hey, you said it was an internship. generally internships dont pay all that well...


I assemble, customize, and test CNC machines.

[Bear_Claw]

Diesel Heavy truck mehanic.

Work for Ryder truck leasing and rental.

Basically i fix trucks for two VERY BIG companys we work on Linamar (HUGE machinery manufacturer) and Sleemans brewery.

One of the Sleemans rigs i fix as well as the trailer parked in front of the brewery were i do some road work at least twice a week. On a side note Sleemans was just bought out by some japanese beer company It was once my prefered canadian beer

[BeaverEater]

Every company that usually has a contract to bid underbids it. From small to huge government contracts a lot of companies bid real low that overcharge later. I mean with remodeling there is usually unforeseen expenses, but oh well.

[gimp]

Nuclear Shift Test Engineer for the DOD/Navy. I test reactors in submarines.

[billybob_81067]

My dad and I have 500 acres of farmland, only about 350 are in use because of the lack of water. It's all in hay and we small square bale almost all of it to sell as horse hay. The rest is round baled and we'll either sell it as cow hay or feed it to our own cattle. So we basically sell hay and cattle. I sell some crap on e-bay now and then, and make some metal sculptures for sale. Oh and I make gated pipe plug stops for my uncle who owns a pvc pipe business. Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting too.

[Jim888]

Dairy R&D tech...I make new flavors of ice cream yogurts and stuff...yes I sit in my lab and eat Ice cream all day....I have to play Paintball on the weekends to keep the pounds off...I also do EMT work on the side

[teufelhunden]

Accounting major, supervisor at Starbucks around 25 hours a week [during school, full time during summer/breaks]

[jenarelJAM]

Professional Student for twelve years now...

[TheAngryDrunkenRussian]

All we have is used of course.
But last I heard we were having the devil of a time getting them for stock.
But see I sell commercial accounts, builders , and they dont buy that kind of stuff.
Thats on the retail end and I dont really do that.
Its the big stuff I make the money on, like 20000.00 sets of trusses and such.
And arent you like in Michigan or somewhere way up there ?
I'm in Florida. The shipping cost would kill you.

Yeah sry got excited I got a nice size job coming up that requires about 200 sq ft. Shipping well it depends on what type of material that they want me to put in. FL to WI is kind of far but on the other hand I've had 100 yards of ceder Mulch dropped of from north dakota and 200 yards of hemlock mulch shipped from Iron Mountian MI.

[bentothejam1n]

Accounting major, supervisor at Starbucks around 25 hours a week [during school, full time during summer/breaks]

is there any way i can buy a starbucks shirt???

[teufelhunden]

Not from us.

However, most of our promo t-shirts end up on eBay in some form or another. I just did "Starbucks shirt" [http://search.ebay.com/search/search...arbucks+shirt] and saw our promo tshirts from last summer, christmas, the spring brewing event, and this summer all within the first couple of pages. Even saw a few smaller market ones on there; including a t-shirt that someone in my district listed [from a regional softball game that was held like last week]