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Freelance Equipment Repair?

check

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2012
Messages
800
Location
in the mail
I take back anything positive I said about craigs list... Just found out that the bustards started charging a $5 fee for all service related ads, as of march 15, this year!
That's a bargain compared to what newspapers charged us before Craigslist came along.
 

gtermini

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 29, 2015
Messages
198
Location
Amity, OR
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I think they should charge for all the ads. Even if it was 49 or 99 cents. Just something to make posting an ad take a little more effort and commitment to weed out all the garbage that people put up now. Charging for private party car ads has mostly cleaned up that section by pushing all the dreamers and arsehats with a thousand "keywords" at the bottom of the ad over to facebook.

I've sold two rigs since the fee instigation, and both times I've figured it was money well spent. $5 on a thousand or more is nothing. Classified newspaper ads are $50-75 in the big paper and don't have pictures or a search function.
 

DIYDAVE

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Messages
2,416
Location
MD
I agree on the fact that the newspapers charge too much for ads in a reader base, that is rapidly disappearing... Craigs list is a part of fleabay, which is an all too powerful monopoly. I would be in favor of busting up the divisions of fleabay, facebook, youtube, all concentrate power in too few hands...;)
 

92U 3406

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2017
Messages
3,148
Location
Western Canuckistan
Occupation
Wrench Bender
My $0.02 is get some experience first. Heavy equipment is dangerous stuff. Sure common sense is great and all but it isn't a replacement for experience.

Working in a shop for a couple years with guys who've been in the industry 20+ years who can mentor you is invaluable. Learn from them, rather than making costly mistakes that have to come out of your own pocket book.

Speaking for myself only here:
I've been doing this full time since 2009 and I feel my skill level is finally to where I'd be comfortable jumping out on my own. Mind you I did handicap myself for a year or 2 by working mining shutdowns for $$$ over experience.
 

DozerTech78

Active Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2017
Messages
25
Location
Indiana
Occupation
Heavy Equipment Tech
Not to hijack this thread, but Ive also thought a lot about this, im at a dealer now but think about venturing out into a field truck of my own (doing away with work politics and what not :mad:). The only thing that scares me is all the tooling that is needed for newer equipment, dealer subscriptions to software and service information. Im good with electrical but when youre diagnosing a Tier 4 final engine, it seems like you would need a little more "backup" to rely on. And often times the customer software we are able to get is different than the "dealer" versions. I can pick through fault codes confidently but to do some of these tests and calibrations required, it could be a slippery slope
 

kjkoch

Active Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2012
Messages
41
Location
Texas
Just try to stay debt free. You will be lucky to collect 80% of what you bill and some of them will waste a lot of your time that you can't bill for. If you can survive long enough to figure out who to avoid it gets better.
 

Mike L

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
1,922
Location
Texas
Occupation
Self employed field mechanic
Dozer tech, you don’t necessarily have to have all the same software that you have at the stealership. I just started out on my own a few months ago after leaving a dealer due to politics and bs. I have Cummins insite but haven’t used it much. There is so much work out there that doesn’t require a computer. This week alone I installed an engine in a compost screen, fixed a dozer transmission leak, took apart a final drive and ordered parts, replaced an injector and ran an overhead, plus this time of year I do plenty of a/c work. I try to bill out 40-50 hrs a week which means I probably work 50-60 hrs a week which is plenty. It’s nice to have factory support but it’s not necessary. I’ve been looking at some diagnostic tools but haven’t pulled the trigger on anything yet.
 

barrelroll

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 16, 2016
Messages
90
Location
Alaska
Occupation
Mill Mechanic
No clue where this went but here's my experience. There's a huge demand for industrial equipment repair in addition to machine tools. This might be slightly easier to break into than heavy equipment repair.

I worked for a shop with hydraulics and punematics in the title. The fact was we'd work on just about anything. The bread and butter was 15-60HP rotary screw and 5-15HP piston air compressors which lead to a lot of other work of by the way while you are here can you look at this as well. We worked on compressors everywhere but lots of car dealerships & repair shops, a national tire chain, and a fair amount of factories.

He had service agreements set up with most customers where we'd service their compressors every 3-6 months which was enough in it's self to keep 2-3 guys busy. While we were servicing a compressor if something was broken we usually had the parts on the truck to fix most basic things and run their backup system to insure it would work when they needed it. Compressors are usually kept in a corner and get 0 attention till they stop working but when they do they cripple a business. A lot of times we'd show up for a broken compressor and then get them agree to letting us service their compressor to prevent down time. He had 1-2 diesel compressor on hand for emergencies and then some rental machines as well to save the day. He could usually have someone there pretty quick when a shop was down. it was amazing the amount of shops who did 0 maintenance before something broke and we started servicing their equipment. I'm guessing if you stopped by 200 shops with air compressors you'd have a decent amount of work.

We then worked through miner fixing things like loading docks, cardboard balers, and clothes carousels in the back of big box stores they are a middle man between big box stores and contractors, I think there's several other companies out there that do the same thing.

We also worked on things like diesel compressors, tree trucks, all the equipment at a plant that made plastic ponds, rebuilt hydraulic cylinders for a bunch of heavy equipment, car lifts and other automotive shop equipment, and were the people to call when the OEM didn't want to support old obsolete junk. Most of our work was word of mouth though he did have a basic website but it doesn't come up on the first page when searching air compressor repair Denver.
 
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