This morning I will give you a bit of my history with this company.
I have known the owner for over 30 years. When I first started working for them doing repairs the company was just a small asphalt contractor. They got into the dirt side of their business about 10 years ago. I only did technical and difficult work for them off and on as they have always had someone to do the rest.....it was perfect for me since I have around 40 different contractors I do work for. It was one of the situations where I may not do anything for them for months, or I'd be there for a few days or weeks at a time.
About 2 years ago all of that stopped abruptly. The general Super told me I was too expensive.....fine, no problem. But here is what really happened. A week before he told me that, I had a relatively heated discussion with him on equipment repairs over the phone. Management had been bitching about the bills from the equipment dealers, and had evidently made comments about my own bills to them. In the discussion I had made several comments that he was one of the big problems because he would call up the dealers for repair work if I couldn't get right on something. One example was a leaking duo cone seal on a Bomag mixer/recycler drum. I told him I could do the work at a fraction of the cost the dealer could (I had just done the exact same job for a county here) and because he couldn't wait 3 days for me to get to it he sent it out. The machine was there for 2 months and the cost was over $30K. I had even showed HNC how to do the job before this and he didn't want to tackle it. So......I made the comment to him that "He had NO business making ANY calls on equipment repairs at all." He had zero experience with any of it. He fires back at me "I am responsible for all of it!"......in which I replied....."and there in lies the problem!" After that......the work dried up. He was fired back in August and the new Super is a former job super that I have always got along with. He is also a operator so he has some clue of what a lot of things take to get done.
So fast forward to 10 days ago. Even though some things have definitely changed I'm not sure how long this will last. I can help get them caught up on the major stuff over the next 2-3 weeks, but after that I have no idea. Their goal is still to get the most for the least. On the Bomag, HNC was getting ready to send it to the dealer for a head gasket job it didn't need (missed diagnosis from the dealer tech) I spent $1500.00 and its fixed and running on a job. I figure I saved them $4000.00 on un needed repair work at a minimum. I don't know what they had spent on it before I started.
The 700K I figure they had already spent $3K+ before I even looked at it. They were getting ready to send it to the dealer for another head gasket job it didn't need, probably saved them $5K there. Due to the fact that I'm having to go behind 2 different techs to figure out what all this machine needs I already have a $4500.00 labor bill that will climb a bit more once due to troubleshooting the fan system and having to replace a fan pump. For the amount of troubleshooting and repair work already done , and the savings of not wasting money on un need repairs......its a dam bargain to me. It will be in better shape and dependable once I am finished.
So will management go back to "I'm too expensive" again? Who knows? I will be pushing HNC a bit harder to let me help with the more technical and difficult repairs, but he could feel threatened by this and start giving me the ole "We can take care of that ourselves" routine. It's difficult for me to sit on the sidelines and watch this crap. My instinct is to jump in and flood myself, get stuff done, and move on to the next one. One big hurdle for me is this......If it goes back to the way it was and I am out of the picture again, should I just let it happen and say nothing? Or should I tell them how stupid this whole thing is, and by doing so, throwing HNC and possibly TNH under the bus? I've known the owner for so long that part of me feels like I should clue him in. On the other hand the other part of me says LET IT BE because you "Reep what you Sow."
This isn't going to be easy.