I Was a Contractor For 10 Years— Here’s What I Learned
By Khoi Nguyen, Head of Marketing | Brad Rollo, Co-Founder/CEO
It’s been a while since I wrote a post but figured it was time to share why if I was still a contractor I’d be our best customer.
As a contractor, I got those small or medium sized orders that you need right away or the job is at a standstill in 2 ways.
The first was I spent my time getting them.
For each project I had running, I was at a supplier almost every day.
One day I looked at my dwindling free time and how I ran my business and quickly realized I could no longer do it this way.
For each trip, I made I lost at least an hour of time that was better spent on my business.
Once I came to this realization, I started sending one of our labourers.
What I found was that they would be gone for at least an hour and half.
They’d make a fair number of mistakes and have to go back.
The biggest thing I found was that our build team had an uncanny instinct for realizing he was on his way back and text him to stop at Timmie’s (or Dunkin Donuts) for coffees.
Normally this wouldn’t be so bad but the site teams as soon as they sent the text figured that he must already be around the corner with the coffees so would stop and wait.
We would lose an incredible amount of time waiting for this delivery.
Upon seeing the real cost of getting materials this way, I sat my team down over lunch and had them do some math for me.
Here is what we covered:
We had 12 on the team at the time.
I asked each of them to take 5 minutes lost per day and multiply it by 5 days a week.
The answer they got (eventually) was 25.
Then I had them multiply the 25 minutes per week lost by 50 weeks a year (we took Christmas off).
The answer was 1250 minutes a year or 20.8 hours.
Then I asked them to multiply an average salary of $20/hour by the 20.8 hours.
They got $416/year.
Finally, I asked them to multiply that $416 lost per year by 12 (the size of our team). The answer is $4,992.00.
That is how much money we lost each year if we only lost 5 minutes a day.
You know what this analysis made me do?
It made me pray we only lost 5 a day per employee.
Just a quick aside.
GoFor could do 143 deliveries (with a pickup or cargo van) or 3 per week for the year at that cost.
GoFor would pay for itself by saving you this time lost among your team.
This is before factoring in the actual costs of sending the employee and the lost productivity, wages, mistakes and potential liabilities.
What’s Your Experience With Getting Materials?
A project estimate of your materials is a good way to reduce the number of trips to your supplier.
However times get urgent, meeting deadlines are crucial and there’s nothing worse than forgetting or running short on materials and having to bail your job site— so tell me about your delivery runs, including what’s worked, what you’d do differently, and how your costs stack up with mine in the comments section below!
I can be reached at brad.rollo@gofor.io for more info on our on-demand delivery platform and our GoFor Partner Program.
