Why I hate roofing!

Back in 1993-23 yrs ago- I installed 35 sq of Prestique Plus and 5 sq of torch down on a house with ridge vents and z-ridge. This was a premium job back then with a 40 yr guarantee. The house had been built in '85 with standard 3-tab and insurance paid for part of this roof. All of the neighbors raved about this roof and the house was the best looking in the entire area. The pitiful thing is that I only got 1 referral but lost the job because I could not get to it soon enough for the anxious homeowner. Since then, I have installed 2 solatubes at different times and had only one problem with a deck nail that had "magically" backed out. The house is still the best looking house in the area.

Last week, the lady of the house called and said the insurance company said they needed a new roof and to get 3 bids. They already had been paid on their claim. I asked who told her to get 3 bids because that is not what is done. Immediately I felt antagonism from her. I said that I needed to look at the roof. I made an appointment and called before I left. I talked to the man of the house and he said all he really wanted was a price because I already knew the house. I said I needed to see the roof and he reluctantly agreed. Normally, I would write these people off as idiots and a waste of time, but on this roof, I had to see for myself what was going on.

I get on the roof and inspected it. There is absolutely no hail damage. Normally, z-ridge will get beat to death by even small hail, but I saw very little damage. I asked to see the adjuster's exactimate. They did not want me to see it. They only wanted a price. They finally showed me the one page that had the roofing totals. The adjuster had totaled the roof, estimated the age at 8 years, and depreciated the payout. Of course, their policy granted recoverable depreciation, but these people did not know that. (The fact is, very few people can decipher those damn exactimates.) He wanted a price, so I said $12,000, just like the adjuster said in the exactimate. (Oh, by the way, the adjuster left off about $4,000 because he adjusted for light weight laminates and didn't pay for the flat roof.) The man said he was only going to pay $9,000 for the roof. If I couldn't do that, he had someone else. I said material alone was going to be at least $6,000. We went back and forth and the guy finally kicked me off his property.

Now there had been catastrophic hail about 6 miles north of this house but they only got hit with a little of it. The storm chasers are everywhere. It is pretty clear that a storm chaser told him he had hail damage and an insurance adjuster paid the claim making several mistakes. It is also pretty clear that he is trying to save his deductible and he had no interest in taking advantage of my help.

I hate storm chasers, insurance companies, insurance adjusters, and stupid people.

That's rough man. He's lucky you did it, or else he'd have a high chance of having to re-roof or spend a bunch on repairs.

When I hear of hail near here I cringe, luckily we haven't had much since 2012. If I had seen this post before 2009, I wouldn't be able to relate. It was all service before that, people actually paid for their roof's out of their own pocket and made sure to get a good one.

Now it's all "can you save my deductible" and "can you inspect my roof for hail cuz I need a new one" and "I have 2 shingles off, can we turn it into insurance"

Actually guys, we hate none of those things. We can't "hate" roofers, cause we are one! The same goes for Storm chasers, insurance companies and insurance adjusters. What we "hate" is people cheating and scamming the system, because that is "us". A lot of the time, it is how the policy is written and nothing else. You are correct in thinking that a lot more people are taking advantage of the way the system is set up now. Not only for home repairs, but for "income" "School" "Groceries", "Medical" ....... Everything. It is all a sign of how perverted things have become. The bankers, the lawyers, and the politicians, are scamming the system and us and running nus into the ground. Just when the people that actually do all the work will say no and stop it is a good question.

As long as we have a continuous supply of cheap labor (politicians call them "guest workers") from corrupt third world countries, nothing will change. I am not saying the USA is not corrupt, I am just saying some countries are more corrupt than others, and that it is corruption that is at the root of all third world countries' woes.

The typical "roofer" in N. Texas is an opportunistic salesman canvassing neighborhoods for storm jobs and offers "free" roofs who subs to a coyote for $40/sq who will round up day-labor quality applicators to slap on a roof in a day. They can cover deductibles because they simple don't do anything to assure the workmanship will uphold the warranty. It is simply rip-off and slap-on. The homeowner does not know what hit them.

The insurance companies, in an attempt to reduce claims, raise deductibles. Of course, the dumb roofers just get crappier and crappier and are only after a quick and easy buck.

We just do good work and the hell with everyone else.

Let me be the first to second that. There are professionals and then there are hacks. And, finally, there are people (nominally) in the business who are utterly ignorant. I've decided that the main question I need to ask is, "Do I care?" The answer always seems to come up, "Yes, I do." So I do work for people who care, do it because I care, and the workmanship expresses and manifests care. If the customer or the specs drop to a lower plane, and I find as a result that I don't or can't care, I don't stay involved. That makes it easy for me to avoid getting my bowels in an uproar.

All these things and more are why I just got out of the roof replacement business altogether and decided to specialize in repairs. It doesn't pay as well and it's harder but at least it's something you have to actually be a good roofer to do. Pricing is not anywhere near as competitive as roof replacements and Exactimate don't know squat about how to bid repairs because the programmers of the darn thing don't either. When potential clients ask me if they should call the insurance I just say, Nope because they only pay for storm related damage, not poor workmanship and even if it is storm related, you have to foot the bill for the first thousand. lol

Chuck: I've considered going to just repairs and small jobs once my Dad calls it quits(never.) It's usually on the days where a few guys have any given problem. We have a lot better crew than we did 10-12 years ago, but it's still enough to drive a guy crazy on occasion.

And we make great money on repair work but I'd imagine that the homeowner might complain about the bill more when they know that your basically a sole proprietor.

Last winter I went without any employees for the first time. I kept extremely busy, but I wasn't happy with the bottom line. Just getting my hourly rate for only me ($70) plus a little for profit/overhead doesn't' work for only me, but I have so many repeat customers that don't ask for a price in advance that I feel a need to give them the same price formula they have gotten in the past.

I now have two roofers and me working and a two month backlog, which is about all people will wait for a repair. I have upped the profit/overhead considerably for new customers and still get most of the jobs I bid, but still feel I need to stick to the old price structure for repeats.

It seems to be working, my bottom line after expenses jumped $16,000 last month. I used to see numbers like that when I had 7-10 roofers working for me, But now I'm doing it with a lot less liability.

Certainly the problem of limited manhours is the overhead...it gives you a beating.

I'm back in the field with my longtime employee, Rodney. Just me and him. We partnered up. Created an LLC. Trying to pay the bills and create a good living on 2500 billable production/ repair manhours....only one answer...raise our rates!

If we hit Woodys rate of $70, it'd be $175,000 gross. Overhead of about $70000, leaves $105,000 net. Split in half....not good. $100/ hr= $250k gross, 180k net. split in half....Much better

We'd like to bring in a 3rd partner....This would give me more time to sell, bring billable hrs. up to 3500-4000. Which would reduce overhead from about $30 per manhour to about $20. Would give us some breathing room

I can't believe you guys actually want to make money when you work; doesn't everyone just give it away? You make money by giving it away and screwing the Mexicans that do the work for you. Quality is non existent then, but hell, the home owners only care about the cost. Haven't you learned anything from reading this forum?

How are you guys finding all of these "repairs" and then getting repeat customers? The typical repair call around here turns out to be a total disaster which calls for a total roof replacement. And if you are actually repairing the roof, why are you getting call backs?

The picture here shows my last repair for a leak around the skylight. The roof was only about 10 years old but the last 4 roof jobs never were done right. I tore off the shingles and 4 layers of felt and ended up redecking most of the area. Finally, ended up roofing the entire house. Insurance only paid for half the job with no money for redeck.

Natty, I nick named my work area "cheapo land" because when it comes to replacing roofs here that's all the homeowners want. They falsely assume that every company and every thing about the quotes is the same and the only difference is the price. While most of them are highly intelligent people, they are extremely ignorant when it comes to roofing.

In a way they are right because there is a 90% chance they will get a crew of hispanics no matter which company they hire. Sometimes it will even be the same crew that is "subbing" from several different companies at the same time. And of course the "sub" pay is extremely low so the foreigners just want to do a speedy job in order to make any money. This leads to a host of repair work in the future when these roofs fail. Usually around the detail areas but sometimes simply from being improperly nailed. Then there is the routine maintenance around the 8-10 yr mark.

I find new clients on the internet and get lots of repeat clients and referrals. Doing lots of small jobs and doing them professionally builds a large customer base in a hurry. The reason they call back and hire for more work several times is because they either have older roofs nearing replacement time or they have much newer roofs that were poorly installed.

When I first started specializing in repairs I would look the whole roof over for other issues besides what they called about but 9 times out of 10 when I would mention something else that needs to be done, they seemed to just think I was trying to run up the bill. So I quit doing that and started only attending to the immediate problem at hand which they had called about. Other things reveal themselves later and they call back and hire again.

I don't search for repairs but we get a lot of them and I just use them to fill the schedule, and they carry me through winter very well. Chimney's & skylights being the most common. Blow-off's are repeat business. Converting low pitch shingled roofs to a low slope application, usually about 1-3 squares. Oh whats that, didn't caulk the storm collar? All stuff I could handle by myself, but it's probably best that I stop thinking like that and keep training my guys to do work as I would.

Question: how do you meet warranty requirements for the shingles when roofing over those wide boards? In my neck of the woods those shingles will buckle due to combination of movement of the wide boards and the sealing glue strip on the shingle.