[julianbiggs]

If  you add up all the hours you do commercial work for and then divide it by the total income what hourly rate does that give you including any travelling time??

Mine is £24.10 per hour including travelling time.

That's nearly £10.00 more per hour than my domestic stuff. Beauty of the commercial work is that it is all under canopy so doesn't matter if it's chucking it down and although i'm a traditional wc'er, none of it involves ladders. Dowside is if the company goes belly up then you can lose the work instantly.

[Trevor Knight]

Commercial has many pro's and con's to it.

Pro's

Regular work
Financially viable
Can be cleaned in wet weather

Con's

Easily lost (undercutting, financial cut backs)
Invoices can take a long time for payment.
Not a great deal of loyalty (mainly the bigger contracts)
Regular reviews (invitation for tenders)

Commercial is good to have, hard to keep hold of and not the be all and end all of window cleaning.

Best of luck,

Trev

[danny mckim]

£24 hour x 40 hours? Cant be bad!

[neil100]

I went to see a chap yesterday who runs a cleaning company. They have been going about 4 years but they are expanding rapidly. He has teams of canvassers that are picking up contracts through out the north of England.

He aims to be National within three years time.

I wanted to get some commercial work off him, He asked me how much I was looking to earn per hour, £40.00 I replied. " you wont get that for commercial work round here" he said. " WHY NOT " I asked.

" Because a local W/ C Firm are really cheap. They pay their W/ cleaners £6.00 an hour and operate on small profit margin. They have a lot of contracts and its created a cut throat market for commercial contracts"

I earn an average of £30.00 an hour for domestic work so wonder if its worth going for contract work.

He said if I get a Cherry pickers licence I would be able to do builders cleans and thats where the money is at the momment for commecial work. He uses another wcleaner who has the licence and is currently giving him £120.000 a year in contract work. But that turnover will rise dramaticly next year as he will be targetting w/cleaning contracts, the ones he gets at the momment are just thrown in with is other cleaning work.

Is it worth going for commercial work when domestic work pays so well. My freind as a domestic round, he did a mad 10 hours last week as fast as he could go and he earned £500, thats an average of £50.00 an hour, from the back of an Astra estate car with an 18' pole and a 125ltr tank.

Domestic seams good to me.

Nel.

[Archy136]

I have a £1000 worth of commercial a month and I get £50ph not including travelling but its all within 15mins of my home. It costs me £4000 but I think it was worth it as long as I keep most of it for a few years

[Trevor Knight]

Like I said:

Commercial is good to have, hard to keep hold of and not the be all and end all of window cleaning.

Best of luck,

Trev

[KJG]

Commercial has many pro's and con's to it.

Pro's

Regular work
Financially viable
Can be cleaned in wet weather

Con's

Easily lost (undercutting, financial cut backs)
Invoices can take a long time for payment.
Not a great deal of loyalty (mainly the bigger contracts)
Regular reviews (invitation for tenders)

Commercial is good to have, hard to keep hold of and not the be all and end all of window cleaning.

Best of luck,

Trev

Yep, exactly what you said. Loyalty is the biggest change I've noticed over the years. Started in the mid 80's with the new 'Filofax' management types. The firm I started with had loads of 70 - 80 year old contracts cancelled in an instant with a twang of 'Gavin's' red braces.