Parking Garage Guys check in..... When did you

Parking Garage Guys check in.... What year was it when you was able to clean 4 or more garages of 300,000+ sq ft consecutively per year without a break in yearly service?

I was on another forum and ended up calling this guy who was just wrong, in my opinion, about parking garage cleaning 101. He stated that he cleaned parking garages for the last 13-14 years. Came to be that he did cleaned 1 garage 13 years ago and one or so every 2 to 3 years after that. Though he did work on some garages, this is not what I call an expert in the field. It's like me saying that I am an expert in the Coil Cleaning field. I could never compete with the Master of Coils.... Your friend and mine

:bow-down::bow-down::bow-down::bow-down::bow-down::bow-down::bow-down: .... T O N Y ! ! ! :love2::lovies::kiss3:​

So I would like to know how many of us who do Parking Structures, actual clean 4 or more ( 300,000 sq ft each cleaning, not a parcel cleaning of a floor or a section ) per year consecutively for the last X amount of years? Anybody....
to be honest I would like to see you survive in this market without changing your pricing, I am not trying to pick a fight but how much competition do you honestly have?
 
The most i ever got for P/G cleaning was .07 a sq ft. Most are .04/.05
 
We don't have the equipment to do it in a timely manner. I've heard .04 to .06 around here. But the guys that do it don't have to use Left Coast ectoplasm filters.

I too saw the Goldstone wand part, gotta be a special method to that.

Yeah we are waiting.
 
to be honest I would like to see you survive in this market without changing your pricing, I am not trying to pick a fight but how much competition do you honestly have?

I currently have 7 competitors in my immediate area who are permitted to clean Parking Garages as of 6/2009.

When a Parking Garage bid comes out, we see as much as 14 contractors bidding on the contract of which 7, and sometimes more, who do not have a permit, but are willing to go through the process of getting one if they win the bid.

I have only lost 3, maybe 4 bids that I can remember in the 20 years. The reason I lost them was because I bid to high. 3 years later after their contract was expired, 2 of the 3 signed with me at a 30% increase over my competitors, due to people slipping in their garages and them getting sued.

According the permits / notifications issued for garage cleaning, we currently clean 80% of the garages in N. California.

So to answer your question, YES I have competitors.

Am I worried, NO. I have bid against multi million dollar companies and won every time since we built our equipment. And since we have paid cash for all of our equipment, we do not have any payments or expenses other than regular maintenance and fuel with no over head.

I do not sell my services on the price issue. ( That's a losing battle for us) In fact, I tell my clients up front that if they want me to bid, they should know we are one of the highest priced garage cleaning service in California. If price is a deal buster, that they should not ask us to bid. I always take that issue off the table BEFORE anyone bids.

Last year, our company bid at the City of W^%^^&. Started out with 5 contractors. One contractor was a multi million dollar company who has the contract for all the hazmat spills on the California highways. They had 36+ semi trucks in their fleet and pressure washers ranging from hot to the cold 10,000 psi. @ 10 GPM's. This company dose over 18 million in sales revenue. They also pressure wash.

We still won the bid for $43,600. The lowest bid was $17,982. We won the bid based on spec's of the contract that the engineers wrote. They also had a few of us do a sample whereas 8 city official's looked at the quality of work. We won the contract based on these results and not on the price thing. This was the first test sample we did in over 16 years.

Now we are seeing bids saying that the boilers need to be 800,000 BTU's or higher with 5.6 GPM's or higher to bid on a contract. This will eliminate allot of our competitors.

We are currently booked solid through March 2010. If you want to know about the lowest pricing of the group, call me and I will tell you.

The above pricing statement of $43,600 can be looked up on the Internet since it was a City contract.
 
I think that you are right Greg. Most on the boards deal with property managers who get tons of bids from pressure washers both local and out of state to bid on their properties. I think this is a mix blessing for those who need volume to survive and a negative for those who want to raise the pricing so that they can spend more time with their families.

I do have a niche in the field and I don't have property managers who are just looking for the best deal, only looking at the bottom 4 bids and then picking from them to see who has the best service of those bottom 4.

We are a specialized cleaning service. Fortunately, we do not deal with property managers because of one simple fact....They simple are not invited to the table during the bidding and the award process.

We only deal with the client, no middle man.
 
Jim I agree your in a specialized field but 7 competitors isn't alot. I think most of us on these boards would kill to only compete against 7 companies.

I think i have 8 in my neighborhood!!:shocked2:
 
I have 4 that are legal and 50 mexicans with cold units and a zero tip
 
we are one of the highest priced garage cleaning service in California.

Please dont use that line when asked to bid the garage in Maryland. They know they called the best, lets just just leave it at that, :)




I have 4 that are legal and 50 mexicans with cold units and a zero tip

Jim uses a zero tip for garage cleaning.
 
If it is, I would be happy to have the Southern Poverty Washer show up and get it out of hock. I have been thinking about a new rig anyways. I can't let someone that pretends to be something he is not ruin the reputation of our industry..
 
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