You use the expression lad a lot if you employ lads you will have this sort of problem, you need reliable men most lads will have been out on the beer all weekend , I have no idea what you are offering pay wise but suspect this could also be a reason why theses ones are so unreliable, I have 5 full time staff and 4 others that I can call on to help out and I never get this situation, but they are paid well and are men not lads the modern day younger generally doesn’t understand the ethos of work .
Do your guys do about 40 houses a day each?
If it’s estate houses one after the other then up to 48-55 but some are fronts only , some days it’s considerably less if big manor houses some days it’s commercial only .
I'm just doing the numbers. We've just over 4,000 customers, 8 full time vans and with extras (gutters etc.). We are 8 weekly. I'm just impressed that you can get 5 full time staff to manage in effect 9000 customers if they were 8 weekly. I reckon I'd need 15 vans to cover our work if it was all 4 weekly. We do travel mind - around 30 miles in each direction, but still. Your guys must all be supermen. I'm sure you said you never get cancels either so they must be amazing staff. I'm jealous.
We do commercial work up to 300 miles from home , that’s only a few days every 6-8 weeks ,but 99% of our domestic is within 2 miles of my home , so it’s literally a 5 muinit drive , all my guys are very motivated and hard workers I have had some right time wasters over the years but we are a small team that get on well , they know if they crack on they will get a decent bonus at the end of the month , I do pay a much higher rate than most would don’t want to say on hear how much but they couldn’t earn what they do doing anything else , there are 6 workers on the tools as I go out every day as well , we do a lot of 3 bed semis which we can knock out very quickly, they are also very close together so no travel time . We vary rarely get cancellations unless there is a genuine reason , I have a very strict regime won’t take messers either as customers or staff 😂😂. I am in the process of selling off a load of work at the moment as we have to much