Cheaper pole that does the job?

[WW2015]

Hi guys,

Bit of background for you. I'm a window cleaner and my wife runs a commercial cleaning company that operates on building sites.

They have window cleaning vans to clean the windows and use gardiner slx poles.

The poles get beat up and broken in ways I've never managed in 10 years working and replacing them is costing a lot of money. Their window cleaners have been told be to careful; it's made no difference and finding staff to replace them is difficult.

Are there quality poles out there that you have used at a lower price point? Doesn't have to be the top of the range; we are just fed up of shelling out at this point!

 

[Part Timer]

Depends on how high you go, if only up to 3 floors then the CLX27 is fairly indestructible

 

[kevinc250]

years ago i used to subby for a guy, he had every moto service station along the a1 corridor, most private schools in the north and much much more including harvey niks,mc laren and harrods, this is so you can see the scale of where he was, his team used brodex atlas poles which were mostly glass fibre and very hard wearing, i worked with his kit at york uni cleaning their windows,and after i said to him can i use my own poles on the next job, he uumm and aahh, well anyway the next job was a school and using an slx i did more in a day than he and his worker,-he then placed an order with alex who must have wet himself,for weeks after i was offered allsorts of "gifts" hosting the name of gardiners from him trying to get rid of the tat.
now thats one side of the storey,if i was employed i guess on a minimum wage i wouldn't give a brass monkey for the kit-do the bear minimum and try to break poles just to have some down time. i've seen it done with the bus shelter lads, breaking kit so they can sit there and still get paid whilst waiting for a repair person to come out, or losing a pole on site-it does happen but, its worth £50 down the pub.i know i've been offered them.
what i would do though, is to offer a bonus on each job, for a job well done, with no mistakes or breakages and within time alloted.
make sure these guys know how to maintain the poles and every other item of kit and much much more important,
make them feel valued,encourage the guys to work as a team, reward them and maybe if they are local, take them for a beer on a friday after work. just my thoughts but that's how i'd be an employer.

 

[spruce]

Years back we saw an employed window cleaner just throw his hose reel out of the van's back doors onto the road. It was one of those petal reels. I did wonder at the time of he was high on something.

More recently we saw another employed window cleaner with a fixed hose reel drag his hose along the road to the next house further up the street.

It's not only in our business we get disgruntled employees abusing equipment to get some down time as per @kevinc250 response.

 

[THL4KEL]

Be better to run things like how mechanics do. Staff purchase their own tools as far as the pole is concerned...

 

[spruce]

Be better to run things like how mechanics do. Staff purchase their own tools as far as the pole is concerned...

This is a good thought, but I wonder how much more difficult it would be to get staff with that requirement.

 

[THL4KEL]

This is a good thought, but I wonder how much more difficult it would be to get staff with that requirement.

Maybe if performance was linked to their pay. The more they cleaned without complaints the more they make so owning an SLX would be in their interest or Xtreme if they're serious about making as much cash as possible without the aches and pains associated with the cheaper poles.

 

[Pjj]

Be better to run things like how mechanics do. Staff purchase their own tools as far as the pole is concerned...

That’s an interesting point never thought of that