Grimedog,
I also took a look at your site and your coupons.
What I see is a picture of a house that we would charge nearly $600.00 to wash, that includes walks and driveway... but I look further and see the coupon for any house wash being $89.00.
While I'm not trying to discourage you, I'm willing to bet at that price for the house in the picture, your endeavor will be short-lived. $89.00 per hour is more of where you want to be, not $89.00 per house. Our equipment doesn't leave the yard for less than $150.00. The difference is that we have 2 pressure washers, heat, soft water, workers compensation, 2 mil. liability insurance, payroll, premium chemicals, etc. etc.
If you want to make a living in this business you have to compare yourself to other service businesses. Each service business has a rate they charge which is all above $50.00 per hour, unless it's a business that will be here today and gone tomorrow. Most pressure washing companies don't last 2 years. The majority barely make it through the summer and then the winter kills them.
Quitting your job and getting into this business like I've seen on your website with the pricing, you may just want to pull the plug early or do enough research on service businesses to start out on the right track. Haven't you ever heard the old cliche "if you fail to plan, plan to fail". Well there's a lot of truth to that statement and it will bite you in the ass eventually.
There's good money to be made in this business and the rewards are great to but it all starts with planning and knowing what your costs are going to be and how much you are going to charge for your service and how you are going to draw the customers in. Anyone I talk to these days that has any sense at all or any of the managers of larger companies never take the cheapest bid. They rarely take the highest bid either. As a rule of thumb, the lowest bid gets tossed in file 13 from my experience without even being considered. Then they look and the rest of the estimates.
It's funny, I had a company send me a letter that kind of subs out house washing. Somewhere around here I have the flyer but it was 2 pages long and I'm sure others have gotten the same thing. Anyway, their program was something like 1500 - 2000 square foot homes, they pay the contractor $80.00 per house. 2000 - and above, $150.00 per house. I'll have too look for it and post it on here. I believe they also required insurance. ---- What a joke! Needless to say, it just isn't feasible.
Welcome to this site and you'll find a lot of good people here and you'll get alot of answers here also. Some of those answers you'll like and others you wont like but take it all in and learn from all of it and you'll manage. Myself, I'm not going beat around the bush, I don't have time to.
Good luck in your new business venture and I hope things work out for you. If you need any assistance, don't hesitate to speak you mind on this board.
