For the first time.....

I pulled a Seigars move. Dropped two vans on a residential. And boy am I glad I did. I was planning on getting off early for the holiday weekend. So I decided to take both our vans to the first house and then split from there. It was an empty 3000 sq ft home, customer of our for the last three years. Military moving to Fla. Anyway I walk up and she tells me she wanted the tile done too. Wasn't planning in that. With two vans it a sure bet we can drop kick this place. Total 2000 sq ft of carpet and about 300 sq ft of tile. Finished it in little over two hours.

Anyways, thought that was kinda cool. Wonder what my customer was thinking. Lol

It's been a physical transition to running two vans. When we ran one, you always had a helper, and we would alternate homes running the wand. Now, running two, it's a solo game. Sometimes it's rough on the body. You just gotta think and work smart. Always vary something in and keep the trips to the van down.

Wait till you get in your 50s.

Just a little tips, in your case of carpets and tile, I personally prefer running one van with a tech, pull 2 sets of pressure hoses, one hooked to hydro force and one to wand, I would pre spray the carpets and my tech would wand, as I spray I also keep an eye on the tech's hoses, if it start getting piled up, instead of him stopping to pull the hoses back, I do it for him, then when I'm done spraying the carpets, I would disconnect one set of pressure hoses and reel them up and grab pump up sprayer for tile & grout pre spray, start treating tiles and scrub them 40 - 50 sq ft at a time, the tech would steam the tiles after I'm done with 40 - 50 ft sections, then he would go back to wanding the carpets while I'm scrubbing the next section of tile.
That way we save a LOT of gas from running 2 vans and 2 truck mounts, and I can guarantee you, we'll get them done in about the same time as you did with 2 vans and 2 tms.
If you don't have 2 solution outlets from your machine, you can get adaptor from ebay, 1 qc to 2 qcs.

Good tip DP.
Let's see a picture of your double line Adapter setup.

Thank you Joe, my machine comes with 2 qcs already, so I'm not using adaptor but here's a link to one on ebay :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Truckmount-Y-Hose-Splitters-for-2-Vacuum-Hose-and-1-4-Solution-line-/111265620667?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19e7f2a2bb

DP,
I already make several versions of the 'adapter' you refer to.
Please refer people to me instead.
Your link also recommends a vac hose Y connector be used as a splitter. Old school, misleading information.
I say misleading because I couldn't buy the solution hose splitter by itself.  It wouldn't seem to let me.
It made me buy the vac hose splitter too.
Either the seller is ignorant to the fact that we as an industry learned to flip the Y or his Greed prevents him from letting his buyer in on this fact.
Either way, it's misleading information.
At least you, DP, a real cleaner didn't make the same mistake  of recommending splitting a single vac line in two for purpose of dual-wanding. Or did you?
You recommended that link! Hopefully, your search for a link was in haste and not something you would actually recommend to another real cleaner.


Along the same lines...
A cleaner just bot my Cool Y off the real cleaner store for exactly that purpose.
Even though the store is replete with pictures of the Y only being used in the 4-to-the-door configuration, never as a splitter, I wonder how many others are misinformed with its use?
As hard as I try to get involved with helping inform cleaners, still they make STOOPID decisions, usually to avoid having to deal with me.   
I'd have never known unless he'd called later about something completely different - that of possibly buying a wand off the store he needed to know more about. 
He politely informed what bad advise it was to use the Y for splitting vac hose. What advise?
He bot it without ever consulting me. When I turned his head around, he got offended and hung up.
I don't get involved in store sales, at least initially.  It's usually after-the-fact... ignorant cleaners - trying to avoid having to admit their stupidity - who use the store. It's always after-the-fact.  (Just saw a RC - from here - buy a jet kit that will be wrong for his wand. Unbelievably stoopit. One call to me would have avoided this soon-to-be costly mistakly. Oh well, Live & learn).

Points of all this:
1. we're in a trade that requires some (honest) interaction between supplier and cleaner.
2. internet based store transactions are short on this interaction.
3. if you find a supplier who offers free technical support, please take full advantage of the offer.
4. Never refer these non interaction means of purchase unless you know it will result in the correct result, a satisified customer; not a mislead customer, sold to simply for the sake of a sale.


I have fired most suppliers for ALL the above reasons..
I call it Supplier Greed. It's only the customer's fault to the point that he refuses honest help when it is offered.


Bottomline: call Joe, 253 653-7209.
All this could have been avoided by calling me with your orders.
 
In terms you guys could appreciate:
What if I had told any of you to buy my Y for the purpose of splitting your single vac lead inside so as to dual wand? You'd be livid when you realized this advise cut your vacuum in half, causing you two over-wet sofas. You'd have every right to be upset with me.  Either my greed or my ignorance would have been the reason ... either way, I misled you. 
What if I set up a store suggesting this same thing? Outright deception is what that would be called.  Then to have a RC refer other RCs to such deception... despicable.
 
Or this...
you show up to clean, your ad says 'discount for vacuuming'.
You walk in to see a 6-year old pushing the vacuum cleaner. Upon inspection, you see the vacuum cleaner bag is cram-packed full, the belt underneath is gone and the BB's and marbles he's supposed to picking up from behind the sofa are now being scattered throughout the Livingroom & dining room. But that doesn't stop Mrs Mom from rushing in to greet you, exclaiming "we did the vacuuming for you...   ok?"
As furious as you are for her not having talked to you about to how to properly vacuum carpet, it's too late to call her stupid.  Your Greed has firmly bitten your own ass.

Joe, when I searched on ebay last night, that was the only listing I could find, I'm not a big fan of dual wanding even though my machine can handle it, I would never recommend dual wanding to ANY machine that has only 1 vac port in front of their machine, so the answer to your question is no I would not recommend the Y :-)
I didn't know you have the adapter, you should post the link here to make it easier for people to click and buy :-)

Here are just a few of this past weeks jobs....been really kicking our butts...and next week just as much!

















Here is a log from my pedometer of how many miles of carpet cleaning I did this week.  Calorie counting is just for the walking, nothing really to do with the other work out to your body cleaning.  We are whooped out and have just as big of week next week!  On Monday, I put on 13.2 miles cleaning carpets (over 23,000 steps!)








Mark Saiger
www.saiger.com

It was over 80 townhome units....have 7 left for this coming Tuesday afternoon as there were people in those units earlier than they were supposed to be.

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

Mark, you have to be the only cleaner I've known that tracks his steps with a pedometer.......and I love it!  

I think I am going to start tracking that out of curiosity.

You know what crazy is that he burned 700 calories that one day, but I bet he burned twice that doing the other tasks,

Only tracking steps because the phone did it automatically... Lol.

And I'm still overweight... Lol

Lots of steps to go!

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

My wife had one of those body bugs. It keeps track of how many calories you burn by body temp and perspiration. I wore to work one day for fun. 3500 calories was my 24 hour total. I ate a few more chicken wings that night to celebrate.

Oh and back on subject... ideally if your going to prespray and clean, you should install a dedicated prespray hook up. Basically just run it right off the pump. It wont take any heat from the guy cleaning and you wont notice any pressure loss. If you use last step chemical injection you also wont be using up any rinse. As an added bonus u also wont have to turn the heat down to prespray since that line wont ever be above 180 degrees. I also use this line for application of stain guard. I just carry a separate inline sprayer full. Much faster than a pump sprayer.

Mark Saiger wrote:Only tracking steps because the phone did it automatically... Lol.

And I'm still overweight... Lol

Lots of steps to go!

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

Is that a iPhone app you're using??

Davey Cracker wrote:

Mark Saiger wrote:Only tracking steps because the phone did it automatically... Lol.

And I'm still overweight... Lol

Lots of steps to go!

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

Is that a iPhone app you're using??

Actually an Android app for me. Not sure if apple has it.

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

Mark, if you don't mind me asking, how many jobs on average do you do per van per day sir ? And what's the name of that app you have ?

The app is on my Samsung phones called S Health. Have had a while and it just became more obvious with its notifications... Lol. All of a sudden music would be blarring at 10,000 steps. Kind of a what the heck moment

For jobs, we do some pretty big jobs in a day, so kind of varies but can be anywhere from 6-10 houses/places a day or more. Tuesday we have 12 set ups for the day. We average between $1,000 to $3,000 a day.... In the winter more on the lower side. Per van is a bit different as as we will have both vans together on a lot of jobs.

Mark Saiger wrote:The app is on my Samsung phones called S Health. Have had a while and it just became more obvious with its notifications... Lol. All of a sudden music would be blarring at 10,000 steps. Kind of a what the heck moment

For jobs, we do some pretty big jobs in a day, so kind of varies but can be anywhere from 6-10 houses/places a day or more. Tuesday we have 12 set ups for the day. We average between $1,000 to $3,000 a day.... In the winter more on the lower side. Per van is a bit different as as we will have both vans together on a lot of jobs.

Thanks Mark for the infos   

Ok so dp your only doing 3 to 5 per day with 2 people per van?
Fuzz suckered and mark, are you running 2 guys per van?
Mark those 12 jobs is with 2 vans with 2 guys per van?
Thanks dudes!

We are 2 vans at each job site and three of us total on the job site. 2 people on one van and myself on another.

Coming up in a week, our youngest guy who has been with us for over 4 years is leaving us. So it's going to be 2 vans with one person on each van at this time. We will probably have both vans at the jobs, unless really small, or we can split up.

On Tuesday, we will be splitting up the vans for a little while, but the last 7 places, we will be all together and rocking them out.

3 people and 2 vans can be a real sweet spot we are finding.

Check out my youtube channel and you will see a lot of ways we are doing this.

See some of the earlier videos and you will see how we do things.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi9UefjEixJPGgxWPTnEUhg

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

I run myself and an assistant. We can cram out 5 to 8 houses a day depending on size.

Wow, you guys are really doing it by volume, good for you being able to maintain getting that many jobs booked, on a consistent bases!  

But there's more then one way to skin a cat.   

You can add me to the list, on the opposite side of the spectrum.
I never have done a lot of volume and as I get older I really don't care too.

I'd much rather do 1-2 jobs a day, most days and keep my job average as high as possible. Saves a lot of time, fuel and work rather than running from one to the next as fast as I can. Not to mention, very little spent not having to get so many job to make money, or the time it takes on the phone to schedule them............it's what works for me, but requires asking, suggesting, and of course the "S" word...........Sales!!! lol
Which I know a lot of co./guys try to avoid, and why many jobs are needed for those to remain busy and profitable.......as I said above, diff ways to skin a cat.   

Actually we would prefer to do less jobs in a day, but people do not like to wait around here. We are booked out like this about 2 week's and that's all the most they will seem to wait. We even lose a few because we cannot squeeze them in. We are also the most expensive per Sq foot in our area, but just happen to be the most popular... Luckily

We just had to make it work and this seemed to do it the best. Adding another van or more people would not work as we would not be able to support 3 vans and extra people all year long. Workers compensation is bit too spendy here too. We are always look at ways to change and are going to see if we can handle it with one less person so to up our profit margins.

Hope everyone is busy too

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com

It is all just a numbers game and based on what your goals are. The more employees you have, the busier you need to be regardless of ticket value. If they aren't working, you are losing money and often in big chunks.

Being small-time, I don't need volume nor do I really want it. Like Davey. I shoot for high tickets and low volume, but that is all the time I have available anyway...3 residential a day is my max, with 2 being most common.

I am trying to wrap my head around the dual vans at the same house, but it eludes me at the moment. It just seems like one would just be getting in the way unless it was a huge house.

I guess I need to go back and view the videos....