Too Many RCS Members Have All The Answers?

That was tongue-in-cheek, btw. Mostly.

Could it be that we are all too old, grizzled, set in our ways to seriously consider roofing issues/ideas beyond our own POV?

It's interesting how someone asks a roofing question and it often gets very little response. Often 0 response! But talk about guns and the topics warrants 5 pages.

lol.  A stealth roofer truck.  Black with a lot of strange angles and surfaces to fool radar into thinking it's a flock of birds.  Kind of cross between a standard truck and a batmobile.  Can do.

Hello Egg,

I would get at least one set of  keys made. Maybe even a truck parked down the street somewhere.

I have always watched and admired the guys who were working way past retirement.  I used to be the second guy at the supply house. The first guy worked up till he died at 84. He did  not install till the end, but he sold every job. Got the guys started and brought materials to the job. Also had rental properties which is what kill him. The guy who cut his grass was late to the one property. So he loaded his lawn mower and went to mow the grass. He fell unloading the lawn mower off his truck. Broke his hip.  They sent him to therapy. He just decide that was it. Did not do any and died 2 days later.

I am not roofing everyday.  Buying rental properties and getting them ready to rent. I have only bought vacant properties so far. Did a couple of roofs last year. At 62 my wife still wants to know why I am sitting around. Don't you have any work to do. LOL

Coming up on seventy and still wearing tools.  It's the only part of the job I really like.  There are stronger roofing companies out there, by far, but nobody else can field a tradesman at the point of contact with as much love of the craft and as much experience.  Since I have this edge and have never been greedy, it means that I can have just about any job I set my sights on.

My daughters have told me if I don't quit after this year they're taking my keys away.  They have me asking myself this question: Should I keep doing this just because I still can?  I've been blessed with miraculous stamina.  But numbers don't lie.  How many years are there left and how many of those with good health?  Are there other activities where my time could be spent more productively?  What's in the bucket list?  Good questions for which I have only incomplete answers.

This year is already booked.  I've got a lot of thinking to do and not a lot of time to do it in.  Maybe I should have some spare keys made?  Maybe I should consult the oracle?  Which one?  I was reading the Odyssey and the Iliad for the first time recently, the battle for Troy.  "The pitiless bronze."  "He fell with a thud and his armor rattled upon him."  Some things never change.

At the ripe old age of 64, I'm figuring out how much I don't know . . .

When I was younger, this is how it went whenever I found myself with some free time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT_uJrCeg3w

But now it's more like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TmgaOzps2M

:dry:

Have a good day folks, gotta get outta here and go fix a tree limb damaged roof for a nice elderly gentleman. Unfortunately he stumbled across an idiot before he found me that smeared a whole 5 gallon bucket of black roof tar all over the spot where the tree limb fell ( Including all over the broken off limb that's still sticking out of the roof ) and it is still leaking into his home.

What Joy! :blink:

My hats off to guys like you Twill. Also MikeNZ, Tinner and others. At 49, I already feel it after a hard days work and need two days to fully recover. One day if it wasn't that hard of a job or if it wasn't too hot.

Amen to the " I'm all I've got" part. My wife gave birth to two wonderful daughters of ours and neither one has ever seen the top of a roof up close. Sometimes I wish we would of had a couple of sons as well but then again I don't think I would want to pass this trade down the chain any further. There are a lot of ways to make money that are much easier but roofing is all I've ever known. :dry:

I need my recovery time too. When I get recovered, I stretch and swim, in the summer time. Not a lot, at 58 I try to stay ahead of the curve, but can't risk injury....I'm all I've got!

Had a relatively easy day on Friday trimming windows and some minor repair work. But it was on south side, we were set up on asphalt driveway. Not terribly hot, but I was worn out Friday night. Went to swimming pool to get re-freshed after work....water was too warm and and I was too tired for it to make a difference.

How old are you Chuck?

I don't do any other type of exercise. The way I'm able to handle it is by only working on roofs part time. There is a lot of kill time in running the leads, picking up all the supplies, etc. Whenever I find myself with free time, I do something relaxing rather than physical.

I can do just about anything still with pretty good efficiency until the temperature's rise above 85 degree's. Then I'm not much better than the wino under the bridge. I try to counter the heat by arriving on the bigger jobs within 30 minutes after sunrise and usually get them done by lunch time and take off for the rest of the day but every once in a while I get stuck in the heat trying to wrap one up. Spent 9 hours today ( 6 am to 3 pm ) on a large repair in 93 degree heat. The heat index was 104 and I'm pretty sure it was pushing 120 something on the roof. Right now, I feel like a dried up Prune but hey, I've got a pretty nice farmers tan!:laugh:

This video sums it up pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igZweLr604Y&list=RDigZweLr604Y

Chuck: I hope you're keeping yourself fit and trim. I'm back in the field and ....loving it! 58 yrs. old, best shape since IDK when! I need to push through to age 67, 1000-1400 hrs. on the job per year until then. If I can make it to 70-1/2, even better.

The intention was to do more service work, but the roof replacements keep coming. I price them about $20 less per hour, but when we can book 60 hrs. + per week @ $80 ($4800+) vs. 20 or so hrs @ $100 ($2000), the replacements take precedence. Since it's a partnership, there are 2 of us, I don't think we can depend on the repairs. They tend to dry up when the weather dries up also

And......we get tired, honestly. Don't really want to put in the extra hours after 30 hours per week on the roof. It's a balancing act, but we are learning.

Being up north, I am looking to fill the schedule from December to March. I'd gladly discount that time for inside work. We booked quite a few hours last winter @ $65.....bathroom remodel and and several other items. It's total PIA work, 1 or 2 of these jobs per winter would be welcomed.

Get Lefty's book for a start and an inspiration! And I'd throw in.... STRETCH ! man STRETCH! Stay limber and flexible.

What do you do for your physical health, besides work Chuck?

My dad and I started a roof repair franchise back in the 90's called Roof Patch Masters. Sunk a ton of money into it, sold just 3 franchises. A flop!

http://www.roofpatchmasters.com/

Tim, I kind of got forced into the repair thing or at least that's the way I feel about it. Eventually, it came down to one of two choices for me. Join the vast majority and build a door to door hail damage sales team and deal with insurance companies constantly or just do repairs and almost never have to deal with them. So many things changed over the years with residential replacement work that i didn't like and all that made me decide to just specialize in repair work. Making the decision alone was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do but making the actual change would prove to be much harder than that and take several years to achieve with good success. But that's probably because I had the full service business dissolved and just started over from scratch after 27 years. I had the old company for 13 years. Subcontracted for 7 years and worked on my Dad's crew and others for another 7 years.

You mentioned some of the positives but of course, like anything else, there are also some negatives. The main one being having to work harder physically for less money overall. That one wasn't a problem for me as I have worked on roofs since I was knee high to a grasshoppers elbow. But I'm also aware that I would be a very lucky man if I stayed physically able to continue this for a lifetime. Hopefully the referrals and repeat business will continue to grow to a point that I will be able to hire an apprentice or keep a couple of employees busy in the future and be able to pay them good due to the saved revenue in advertising and marketing. Don't get me wrong, I have some good lead generation techniques to acquire new business, I just haven't had to use any of them for a while. They are on stand by for the time being because I don't want to sell more work than I could handle. I prefer to have only a small backlog in order to provide good service and retain my sanity. :laugh:

Chuck Said: I used to post roofing topics and pics on here all the time but I got a lot of negative feedback. Maybe I need some thicker skin. Im not sure. All I know for sure is Ive been a roofer for a lifetime and learned from another good roofer that happened to be my mothers husband.

I think there are several different ways to do a lot of different things. That doesnt have to mean that any of them are necessarily wrong but of course everyone is naturally gonna favor their own preferred methods. Also standard practices are different in different areas of the Country and the World.

For whatever reason, there is a four year cycle of rainy/stormy years in my area of the Universe. It has happened that way without fail since I first started here in 1993 and this year is the fourth year again and it has rained and stormed like Noahs Flood just about all year so far.

In the last 5 years I have personally performed roughly One Thousand Roof Repairs. After all this rain, I had ONE warranty issue that turned out to be a broken seal job at a chimney corner on a rubber roof I did 4 1/2 years ago. And that has been it. My standard practices may not be the exact same as some other peoples but My customers and I are good with that! In fact, Ive become so busy with referrals and repeat clients that I have not had to do any advertising of any kind at all in quite some time now. Also, most of the other roofing companies in the area know that I specialize in repair work ( something many of them dont care much about) and they just tell everyone that calls them about such that You need to call Chuck. ;)

If I had it to do over again I'd just do repairs. Better margins, easier to sell, less investment, less liability, fewer or no employees.

I used to think I knew everything. Not so sure anymore. They keep on changing the questions.

I used to post roofing topics and pics on here all the time but I got a lot of negative feedback. Maybe I need some thicker skin. I'm not sure. All I know for sure is I've been a roofer for a lifetime and learned from another good roofer that happened to be my mother's husband.

I think there are several different ways to do a lot of different things. That doesn't have to mean that any of them are necessarily wrong but of course everyone is naturally gonna favor their own preferred methods. Also standard practices are different in different areas of the Country and the World.

For whatever reason, there is a four year cycle of rainy/stormy years in my area of the Universe. It has happened that way without fail since I first started here in 1993 and this year is the fourth year again and it has rained and stormed like Noah's Flood just about all year so far.

In the last 5 years I have personally performed roughly One Thousand Roof Repairs. After all this rain, I had ONE warranty issue that turned out to be a broken seal job at a chimney corner on a rubber roof I did 4 1/2 years ago. And that has been it. My standard practices may not be the exact same as some other peoples but My customers and I are good with that! In fact, I've become so busy with referrals and repeat clients that I have not had to do any advertising of any kind at all in quite some time now. Also, most of the other roofing companies in the area know that I specialize in repair work ( something many of them don't care much about) and they just tell everyone that calls them about such that "You need to call Chuck". ;)

"You can beat me and you can kill me, just don't bore me." ---Gunny Highway, Heartbreak Ridge