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

 

[kevinc250]

it is an intresting point and i'll get back on to the "topic" in a moment, there is a commercial/domestic wc firm near me, all the guys are fooked what with back pains and arms the usual we all get but they do have it all badly, i know one guy, quite young in his thirties who the doctor just told him to find another job (he's been w/c since leaving school) or he will be a wreck by the time he's 50 or so.
its been brought on by cheap or "cost effective" heavy glass fibre poles ionics and brodex ones where 35 foot poles does every job whether ground floor or higher reach work, the owner just sees it as cheap poles that will last a year or so-if it lasts longer then, its a bonus. its whatever is on sale when the buying time comes around.
the owner has recently dropped what domestic work he had as some of his staff have left-he can't find staff to fill that role for what he will be paying and, lets face it if you are employed for such a hard working job (unless its very very good money) you may be better off working for say, aldi who pay above the normal basic rate.
going back to the original post the op says that they provide slx's which, are pretty hard to destruct, well it is if you have worked hard and paid for them yourself and you see value in them, i still see that they are the perfect poles for me and will continue buying them as and when i need to.
its his wifes business and, i seem to read it as he's been asked to see what is happening?,
if you flip this all up, you have a problem as in the staff break poles but, what is the cause?-poles don't break on their own.
i'm probably not explaining it all that well but, when you have a problem such as this something, has to have made it all happen-the cause, could it be the staff feeling disgruntled or feeling lack of worth?,maybe its a bad supervisor wanting browney points? or just simply the staff taking the p**s, it happens and i have been in that position myself when i worked for companies who were less than ideal to work for, you did the bare minimum and nothing more/you had no pride in your work and just saw it as money at the end of the week-end of you were just a machine, i'm sure many of us can relate to that when we were once employed.

 

[P4dstar]

Just change the way you update things. I've recently bought god knows how many poles. When they arrived the chaps all thought they were getting new poles. I got all of our poles together and tidied up the old ones. Threw bits away and made working poles out of the parts. Then I was left with one partial pole with broken bits. I took those parts (section 1&2) from a brand new pole. I'll now order those as standalone replacement parts. The end result was two poles needed to be replaced completely, I have the brand new poles. Now when parts break I'll take them from a brand new pole and order the parts to keep that as a brand new pole. If they get beyond economical repair I will swap in a new pole. In all likelihood I would have the brand new pole and give away my well cared for used pole. If I came off the tools I would expect a team leader to have the same courtesy to the equipment as myself and could do what I have described above.

In short, stop replacing the poles, start replacing parts of the pole. My guys were a bit p155ed that they didn't get new poles but I don't care. Treat them well and you can have brand new kit.

 

[P4dstar]

This isn't the first time someone has floated the idea of staff buying their own tools like a plumber or mechanic. The first person I remember doing this was Green Pro. There is one problem people miss on this point. A mechanic buys tools from say snap on and builds a toolbox which he can then use at home to make a bit of money on the side. Most of the toolbox they amass comes with a lifetime warranty. The expectation is they will last a long time. In start contrast a carbon fibre window cleaning pole has a limited lifespan. It also has little to no chance of making the owner money doing the odd job on the side.