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Comment by PunchyHamster | Hacker News Reader

Given the article states

> He’s under the hood all day. The phone rings, he can’t answer, the customer hangs up and calls someone else

the mechanic is already very busy in the first place so unless he plans on expanding shop the whole thing is a waste of time

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This is such an important point. My plumber that we always call is extremely busy and usually doesn't have availability for at least a week. He is a one man shop and prefers it that way. You call his phone, leave a voicemail and he calls you back whenever he is able to. I asked him if he wants to get more business by automating his incoming calls and he said "not really, I am already very busy and have enough business. I don't need these tools".

So we cannot always assume that the business owner (especially the solo mom and pops) wants more business. Good ones are already very busy.

This seems to be true with every trade shop in my area. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping, appliance repair, and so on: Nobody picks up the phone, and when you do get someone, they don't seem to be very interested in your job unless it sounds like big money to them. Everyone already apparently has as much work as they want, and if you're a small fish you're out of luck.

Electrician here. I had zero unemployment time between my current job and the last. Sent ~5 applications, had two interviews. Current employer called me in the afternoon offering me a job, after interviewing the same morning.

Y'all are in the wrong business :D

Median electrician in the USA makes ~$60k:

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electric...

Median software devs make over double that, ~$130k:

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

The only way to make good money in the trades is to own a business, something not everyone can do (let alone be successful at).

Danish electrician average is ~80k. Danish software developer is ~100k, but with much higher variance.

However there's also quite a lot of difference in training between Danish and American electricians. I specialised in telecom - part of my curriculum was configuring Cisco routers. The subject of my oral exam was TCP/IP. I love the variety. Yesterday I was chasing down a rogue DHCP server on a network. Today I was mounting a drainage pump controller.

But as they say, do what makes you happy. I would rather be happy at 60k than miserable at 130k.

  <img src="woodyharrelsonwipingtearswithmoney.gif">

Yea.. When people say "you can make great money in the trades" what they usually mean is that you can make great money by owning a trade business and/or hiring tradesmen. Which is kind of different than being a tradesman.

True but electricians have a real system without bullshit, we wire something up and it just works, it keeps working too! You press the button, the light goes on, you press it again and it goes off! Except from audio all of the automatons come with the right plugs.

You would think after 50 years software devs build something similar but besides the <input type="submit"> button absolutely nothing works like that. Switching on the lights by clicking on a button using the mouse would already be a serious enterprise level undertaking. Then when you think you are done someone in Russia and someone in China are also able to control your lights.

There are no labels on our buttons, the dimensions are in exact mm. If you ask a software dev they will tell you mm have something to do with printing. On a screen a button can have any size, no one knows really how big it turns out regardless which of the 50 different units you use. pt rm rem px % vw etc etc

Sounds pretty unscientific? Can you at least tell me when it is finished and how much it will cost? Did I say something wrong?

Long story short, 130k isn't enough.

There's this giant no-man's land of more work for less profit they have to cross between "reliably profitable business run by its founders" to "reliably profitable business with a half a dozen or more employees". A helper you can keep tabs on but can work without often pencils out. A crew of 2, 3, 4, that's often less profitable per hour of the owner's labor (with a way higher labor minimum) than just working yourself or with a helper. Only when you have things humming along do you actually make more money than if you were working on those task yourself.

You almost certainly have to take out huge loans against the business to get across that gulf (your employees need those capital investments that you use to do your work). When you consider the long term outlook and the age of most business owners making such a decision it's no surprise that many choose to simply stay small rather than take on a huge amount of work and stress to maybe make more money years in the future.

Basically there's a ton of work for no reward between "I own my job" and "I own a business"

That's wild. Plumbing especially seems like a field where if you need a plumber you need them right now, not a week from now.

I guess as a plumber having enough of the type of jobs that can wait a week that you can turn away the urgent calls might be one of those feature-not-a-bug type situations.

It depends. If you need a faucet changed out with this new fancy one, or if you want to replace a toilet with a new one using less GPF, or any other kind of update/remodel.

Not every job a plumber does is an emergency situation. I used a plumber to help me setup a backyard project to set up a portable propane tankless gas water heater. I took a look at buying at the parts and pieces I would need, but they needed special tools that would only be used once if I were to buy them. Instead, I had the plumber do it for me with all of the necessary parts/pieces on the truck plus the tools to do it. It cost me less than it would have to buy everything. Now, I just need a cold water feed, and I have a portable hot/cold running system.

Exactly. For example, we replaced a couple of toilets and wasn't that urgent. So we called him and he gave us an appointment after a week.

You can break it down by, new construction, planned renovations/improvements, and emergency repairs.

Not everyone works all three or wants to do more than one of these groups. There’s different levels of demand, pay, competition at each.

There's emergency plumber companies out there you could call

> you need them right now

You can shut the entire network off, shower/poop at neighbours places or work, laundry at the local self-laundry shop and brush you teeth with a bootle of water. Inconvenient sure, but it would as much problematic to be denied electricity for a long time: lights off, fridge off, no heating, boiler off… there’s alternatives but the usual way for us is to share a long electric cord by an open window… so obligatory work-and-stay-at-home if you’re lucky to have an appropriate activity.

Emerg. solution.

Get a 5 gallon bucket with lid. Put garbage bag inside. Put toilet seat from broken toilet on it.

Use it, remove refuse if needed, put lid on.

I love it! My main (and only) device is a dry toilet so a plastic bag shortage would be a bigger problem. I guess we’ll emerge with origami.

https://www.kildwick.com/en/fancyloo-divert

Now that is an expensive poop bucket!

I love the design of it though, I'd never even though about diverting flow toilets, but this design is so simple and elegant.

My after-thought odour diversion isn’t that simple and elegant though. I recommend the fan-included (cheaper) kit : https://www.kildwick.com/en/easyloo-diy-kit-fan-12v

I think that’s wrong for a couple reasons. I think author doesn’t fully understand the problem or doesn’t explain it well leading to this assumption.

He wouldn’t care to get these extra jobs if he’s full, so why do this to begin with. He could however hire another mechanic if he books more jobs and grow his business to one of shop owner instead of mechanic (no idea if this is his motivation or not).

It’s likely he’s not actually under the hood all day but If phone rings twice a day and it just happens to be he’s under the hood at those times, he misses the call and it’s like he’s under the hood all day. It doesn’t mean he has no capacity, it just means he’s missing some calls throughout the day.

Perhaps it's a timing issue? Perhaps he would have time for more work but the calls cluster when he's busy?

That’s what I was trying to say. Inbound calls always seem to come at inconvenient times.

I tried getting some work quotes not long ago and was surprised by how many local shops still don't have: (1) website that takes info and emails/calls back, (2) voicemail, or (3) having one or both of those and didn't call back all week. I suspected they had all the business they can handle. I did get a call back later in the week from one that said as much.

Why would a car repair shop need a website for? All I care about is the phone number, with the hope that someone will pick it up. IDK about the world, but in Poland every single mechanic I know has no downtime at all. The better ones have queues measured in weeks or months for simple repairs. They don't care about extra business, the business will find them anyway.

I've made that website! Just put the name and a big fat print phone number in the middle of the page.

There use to be a windows shop around here that had a game on the website where you have to throw stones at windows. Limited time per house, limited stones, more points for big windows, run away when you hear police sirens.

Hard to estimate how much extra work they got out of it but I imagine it > 0.

This particular case was for body work. Being able to upload photos makes for better estimates.

You can use web form to streamline the reservations or fill in drop outs.

It is not always about getting more customers.

Why don't the mechanics increase their price?

That generates more supply (mechanics) not less demand (volume of broken cars). Sometimes having excess demand is ideal to keep the market balanced in your favor.

Increasing price would just move up the demand curve (less people willing to spend the increased amount on fixing their broken car) and the mechanic would earn more.

ofc overtime it's likely more mechanics enter the market to compete, but that wouldn't be instant. and when it does happen the table stakes would be that everyone's phone call get's answered

idk I feel like i'm missing something basic here

They do.

I paid quite a lot for hauling and fixing alternator.

Same with basic house maintenance prices are through the roof.

Could he not just increase the price until the number of calls matches the time he has?

I know it's not that simple, but my gut says theres value to at least hearing out the people taking action to call you. Especially if that's automated and low cost to you.

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