Globe shingles

Hi all, I'm new to the thread here. I'm looking for some information on Globe shingles. I’m looking for information about what happened, why the shingles failed, and some documentation that it was an industry wide failure, etc. I am meeting with a client whom we worked for back in 1997. Unfortunately we installed Globe shingles on their roof, which in turn failed. They replaced the Globe shingles after 12 years on one section of the building using a contractor other than ourselves. Things went horribly with the other contractor. It's now time to replace the shingles on the rest of the building. I submitted a bid, and received a call stating they feel we are the most reputable contractors in the area, and would like us to do the project. However, they would like me to meet with the board of directors to explain why the shingles did not make it a full 25 years. The meeting is on the 31st, and I would like to be armed with as much information as possible.

I am SURE that they know and knew how to make good organic shingles. they just couldn't make enough money doing it right and also, if they made them too good, they didn't have to replace them and that cut down business! I have been at the plants and talked to the techs and watched their QC methods. I would equate a lot of it to be similiar to the way the airlines now book their flights. They are always full and they charge a different price for each seat. The shingle companies re rolling the dice as to how long the shingles will last and how much it will cost them to fix the bad ones. If it costs less than what they make selling them, it is a "good" business decision.

Organic shingle failure is/ was an industry wide problem. Everyone but GAF & O/C had failures from the mid 90's on, at min. Some go further back. CT's lawsuit goes back to 1987 products I believe.

GAF & O/C organics did not fail because......they weren't making them !!!!!!!! :laugh:

Anyway I have never gotten a complete answer as to why EVeRYONE's organic products failed. Bits & pieces, maybe this, maybe that.

1 "They ran the lines too fast to save a buck so the saturant grade asphalt was never porperly applied...." 2 "Recycled paper for the mat"... 3 "cheap asphalt".... 4 "They cheapened the asphalt".....

etc etc. Ultimately perhaps fiberglass proved to be a cheaper product to make and #1 might be true.....

I dunno. Like tinner sez, the longer the warranty, the sooner they will fail.

I just put in a solar vent on my 13 yr old laminate fiberglass roof. Yup. Shingles literally falling apart in my hands. Good thing they are lifetime now. Uh Huh.

When I started my business 21 yrs. ago, we tore off shingles that were 20-30 yrs. old. Except for maybe the black ones....17-18 yrs old w/ that color perhaps..... Last 4 t-offs: 1 yr old, 6 yrs old, 8 yrs old and 13 yrs. old.

True 2 were hail damaged, but one of those 2 has leaked and rotted a ton of wood. $Thousands in add'l. repairs here.

4 t-offs previous to that were about 15 yrs on avg.: 3 of which I DID!!!! 2 of those were Globe's and 2 CT's.

"On a footnote, I have been at this long enough to remember GAF, Certainteed, Fry, Johns-Manville, Bird and Sons, and Celotex all being good companies" Yeah. There was a time I could confidently tell a client the 15 year shingles were good for 17-10 easy, and some folks got 23-25 years from them.

Now, you can almost confidently tell your clients their new 30-50 year should easily last 17-24 years. I wouldn't expect any more from them.

Globe shingles were great in the 60's and 70's. We put on thousands of squares of them. The company was sold about 5 times in 15 years and every time they ramped up production and cheapened the shingles. they got worse and worse and finally we stopped using them. I threw the rep out of my office. 5 years later they went bankrupt. There are still some globe roofs on around here that we installed 25 to 30 years ago. Nothing in bewtweeen though. When they went bad, they failed horribly. Good luck with that one. The company is out of business so there is no one to sue.

On a footnote, I have been at this long enough to remember GAF, Certainteed, Fry, Johns-Manville, Bird and Sons, and Celotex all being good companies and all making absolute crap too. It goes in cycles. The problem is that you don't know they are making crap until they have been doing it for a few years and the roofs start to fail. They know HOW to make shingles that will last, but if they do and no one else does, they are at a competitive dis-advantage. Short term thinking.