Yea it is really bad. I compare the shape of my stuff that is 99% run by me only compared to my brothers who has around 15 employees, it's night and day. One complained about running skidsteer without door glass or rear glass, but funny enough added 2 more skidsteers and neither lasted the summer without broken glass either. You'd think when you have to run one in the rain and have a garbage bag on your legs you'd think "maybe I should be more careful and not break the glass next time" but nope. One of them borrowed mine and it took TEN minutes to shatter the front window, yes TEN minutes to break a $400 door. They also borrowed my skid steer forks, managed to bend them up too somehow. I don't understand it and don't have the patience for it. I would either fire virtually all of them, or i'd be in jail, there is no way I could put up with the stupidity. I mean if they were making me an insane amount of money maybe just maybe, but that's not possible with how hard on stuff so many are and slow.
We were talking about it the other day and he mentioned how he is likely planning to downside to around 5-8 guys, said he's not making anymore money with 16 guys it's just more stress, and can keep the better guys and fire the rest, and bonus sell equipment when it's high. If you break it down to per hour invested, we make about the same money and I don't have the stress of any employees. There is perks of employees like if something has to be done on a saturday you can send someone where I have to do it myself, but there's also a lot of stress and if jobs aren't paying or whatnot you can lose a lot of money quick with that kind of money going out.