Storm Chasers

dougger222

I can thank 10 years of new construction for work from this storm. Getting two calls a day from homeowners who's I roofed over the years. When the homeowners call the builder they give them my name and number and tell them to call Doug after the adjuster has made there payment. I go to the job diagram it and compare the measurements and numbers to what the adjuster comes up with. Measured three in the Rosemount area off Cedar Ave today and all the neighors want bids too. A couple people at the builders office have told me they've given my name to over a dozen homeowners. The job I bid today from a refferal (builders husbands good friend) was that of an Amercan Family agent in Apple Valley. He told me he's giving my name and number out already. His house a 28sq 5/12 gable roof is good for $7,800.

Thinking these recent storms will generate work for the next couple years.

Going down to Northfield tommorrow to job number 1.

Getting lots of calls from the South Metro Yellow Book too. When I mention the biulders I roof for that usually seals the deal for the South Metro work.

dougger222

New Prague and some areas of Prior Lake also have decent hail damage as well as Anoka and again the North West area of the Twin Cities.

A roof I did in Rogers a couple weeks ago got hail damage the day after we roofed it!

MJW

Yep, just went through this the last few years. Everyone, and I mean everyone wants bids. Bids bids bids...... They all get their insurance settlements and then they look for the cheapest bid, so they can pocket the rest of the money. Beware....

dougger222

Most insurance companies don't pay full depreciation value until a invoice is sent for a contracted price.

If I don't see the insurance paperwork on a insurance job I walk away. Too busy to waste time with the lowest bid mentality some homeowners have.

When the homeowners want me to roof there house and they don't want to release the paperwork I tell them I'll probably bid higher than the insurance company will pay, that usually works!!! Not trying to rip off the insurance company just want to get paid top wages for top quality materials and labor.

BTW, all my tear offs get Landmark's as base shingles.

Teetorbilt

From what I see here, most of you are missing the upgrade sale.

I'm not a roofer but here we get insurance discounts for certain types of roofing. I got 10% by going to a metal roof to meet the Miami/Dade High Velocity Wind Code. It amounted to a few extra nails in the sheathing and a few extra screws in the roofing. It should pay for itself in 5 yrs. Less if ins. costs go up.

This is just logical. Sell it!

__________________
You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

minnesotaroofin

What kind of shingles do you guys use? i use GAF and none of my 5 year old or newer roofs have damage to the field shingles i have a couple that just the ridge has had some bruising but that is about it. I have noticed most of the certainteed shingles between 5 and 10 years are already cracking like stress cracking. I have had kinda bad luck with certainteed shingles maybee done 12 jobs in 10 years at least half of those have already got stress cracks in them. Certainteed takes responsibility for them but very little as their prorating system is about 10 percent of materials only at 10 years. which average claim is between 6 - $800.00. Guess all those certainteed homeowners are lucky they got hail claim they would be out of luck in the next few years. I will get a picture this monday i have a certainteed xt 25 year shingle 8 years old on a garage roof i did up for inspection. shingles are trashed and they did not even get any hail this go around this one is in eagan - i have 3 others to look at developement in 98 we did not do these but i will get picts as well Bloomington.

Teetor i thiink the asphalt shingles have a better impact rating than most steel on the market today - Wind does not play much of a part in MN.

For MJW and Dougger i know i asked one other time what the names of your companies were just wondering if you were afraid to answer or what?


http://Minnesotaroofing.com

minnesotaroofin

BTW i broke down and bought xactimate for a year for $1500.00. If i use it correctly i come out about 15 - 20% higher than my going rate and insurance companies pay because it is exact same pricing they use just have to make sure everything is itemized from Ice and water to drip edge to ridge cap , vent valleys, etc. pretty much paid for itself first job i used it on. May be your benifit - One more tip for you is if you do 3 separate items like roof , siding , gutters you can get up to 20% for Profit and overhead. They also use 20% waste on a hip where standard should be no more than 15%. Just a few tips. I have sold about 22 roofs in 2 weeks my crews can do those in about the same time so i am not saying the work is not there now just remember what i said by the end of next year it will be slow real slow so save your pennies.

joasis

I never ask what the insurance payoff is, and I don't care. I give a bid, and the bid is the bid, period. One thing I have noticed about storm chasers is their willingness to work the insurance companies, or vice versa. I do not do comp roofs, only metal, and I am not flexible in my price...I don't care about bids from other contractors, nor do I care what the insurance check will be.

If a HO goes with my metal roof, they get a 25% discount on their HO's insurance with a signed off install....and that willpay for the higher metal roof cost in 5 to 10 years. The people who don't have the extra cash for the upgrade will go with the lowest bid on comps, and do it again in 5 - 8 years (average in Oklahoma) and pay increasing premiums.

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Grumpy

Storm chasers are willing to be flexible with the insurance companies because they know no matter what the insurance company offers they can cut corners and make a profit. That's why these outfits that deal direct with the insurance company are nothing more than scurges. Sometimes the home owners have no idea what they are getting in terms of quality of material, scope of work, etc...

dougger222

Doug's Roofing Inc. Maplewood, MN 55109 20350390, roofing license.

I'm small and run as an owner operator doing 2-3 tear offs a week. All my work excpect a couple jobs a year come from word of mouth.

Going to Lakeville tommorrow to do a hail job, finished the Northfield job today, 3 hours short day two guys.

If your going to Northfield pull a permit before you start the job! The inspector was on the job yesterday before we starting ripping. The address on the permit was wrong so he called to verify on the spot. He asked were I was going to run the Winterguard and half way into it he patted me on the back and said good man and walked back to his truck. I told him I was wasn't a storm chaser and wasn't putting a sign in the yard. The boom truck was unloading at a parking lot yesterday and an inspector asked what address the materials was going to! The first inspector said two roofs have already been redone and the Winterguard inspector said he's heard of 3-4 roofs that had to be redone already.

I also sub work from Superior Construction Services out of Maple Grove but have a ton of my own stuff again so I'll sub a couple a month to keep the relationship going. Do all the roofs for one of the five estimators and the owners friend's homes. I'm told I'm the only other roofing contractor to sub work in the past 15 years other than the owners personal friend who runs a few crews of Mexicans.

MJW

MJW Construction Inc.

I have never seen a Landmark crack. Yes the XT's will and the New Horizons will, they are junk. The next worst is the Timberlines and GAF 3 tabs. We don't even sell them to customers. Everyone knows the Landmark name, but they aren't very good at all. If you haven't seen a cracked GAF roof, you haven't seen enough houses yet. Certainteed has a much better warranty from the few claims I have seen.

We are doing a few roofs just to keep cash flow. I would rather go into remodeling and siding more because there is alot more money and less competition from the pimps of the roofing industry.

dougger222

Roofing Pimps!!! The ones that pull into the dump with big duallies with two wheel drive lowered with little rims and tires with big Mexican flags in the back window! See them all the time at Dem-Con were I dump in Shakopee. Even the roofing salesman storm chasers trucks are sometimes found totally decked out.

I like Landmarks as my choice shingle to offer to my customers. Never sell a lesser shingle than a Landmark on any roof I do, except the now rare and few new custruction homes. Now a Master Certified Certainteed Installer but haven't offered any extra warranties to any homeowners.

3rd generation roofer with a few hundred years experiance between brothers, cousins, uncles, brothers, and father. There are three cousins between the agest of 17-26 that are showing good signs. When the whole family gathers a lot of roofing talk occurs.

For some reason we all decide to roof at some point. My father after 33 years as a full time roofer decided less than two years ago to get into general construction or handy man services. Nearing 50 every other weekend for a 10 hour day he can tear off or shingle with the best of them! I consider having him on my jobs is pulling out the big guns!!!

He may be quitting his job for his builder/remodeler as lead man and his thoughts are to get back into roofing when the town he's lived in for 19 years has pretty much every house having hail damage. Between my father and my brother who both run for builders in New Prague have close to $300K in guarenteed work. Marv Deutsch owner of Deutsch Construction has his hand in most of the town so there will be a lot of work through him alone. Going from a modest $40-60K a year each it will be a big adjustment. I'll make out good on the homes being paid a percentage of the job to pull the permit and deliver the dump trailers. After two years of telling both of them to obtain a general contractors license there going to really wish they'd listened!!!

minnesotaroofin

Ok the only real bash i have on Landmarks is one job i did this spring all shingles were stuck together in the new plactic wrap - sent 2 loads of 25 sq back to ABC. yes 50 sq total - called United they sent 25 sq out same problem - then went to Western same deal thats 100 sq total from 3 different suppliers that were stuck every supplier i know even roof Depot Allied and the ones i mentioned had to have Certainteed restock them. we ended up using Westerns shingles but lost over half of every bundle triing to hand separate them. My first thought was the suppliers stacked them too high but later found out Certainteed bundled and stacked them too quickly. (Certainteed did reimberse me for extra labor and extra materials Credit to my account not like check in hand. So i did another landmark job last month when the credit finally showed up after 3 months of complaining)

The horizon line completely sucks - XT30's Last about 15 - Can't even get a Certainteed rep to look at a job for me or talk to a homeowner to promote their product.

GAF reps buy me lunch anytime - promote their products to my customers. Return my calls within an hour even weekends. And the warranty claims i have had with GAF take about 2 weeks and not 6 months and pay every dollar i ask for.

As far as that being said what do you guys think about IKO?

I have just been unlucky with Certainteed their Landmark is a good shingle overall - Comparable to The Timberline i Would say no difference in material /installation/ longetivity.

minnesotaroofin

Roofing for all of us Should be good till next summer possibly fall - I am hoping to get into more of the remodeling - Kitchens - baths - decks - windows etc. We do some now but would like to be a little better set up for when the roofing dies out.

Doug What does Dem con charge to dump? Last i checked they were pretty high. I usually go to Veit off of 280 and Minnehaha. we have a 16 yard box dump they charge us $144.00 for dump.

MJW

The landmark problem had nothing to do with the stacking. I pointed out their problem from the beginning when they went to the widetrack and placing them face to face and back to back. Anyways there is now a third strip on the back of the shingle that helps them not stick together so bad. They still stick a little, but nothing like they used to. Timberlines do come aprt easier and cut easier, but they don't compare to the Landmark in either quality or warranty. This is just my experience. We had a bad batch of Landmarks once. Certainteed paid every dime. We did a job with cracked Timberlines on a 6-plex. Each owner had to front $1,000 and this took over 6 months to get GAF to do that. I have seen many Timberlines crack, but never on a Landmark. From my experiences and viewpoint, which would you sell??? I haven't seen a good GAF product yet, but that's me.

minnesotaroofin

Well if you honestly have better experiences with Certainteed i would do the same.

Try A google search for: gaf shingle defects - no results first 3 pages except how good their warranty is.

Try a Google search for: certainteed shingle defects -- 2 class action lawsuits first page

Try a google search for: Shingle defects - almost entire first page refers to certainteed.

Then tell me you unbiased opinion on Certainteed - What customer in their right mind with the information given would trust certainteed over GAF?

I only know of one class action taken against GAF and they paid up almost imediately - While Certainteed has several currently and refuses to take responsibility for their product in such cases

MJW

[QUOTE=minnesotaroofin;131640]
Then tell me you unbiased opinion on Certainteed - What customer in their right mind with the information given would trust certainteed over GAF?
/QUOTE]

Customers do because of our experience in roofing. Times change and different areas of the country differ. You can't go that broad as to google something for MN. Come on, think about it.

I understand what you are saying, but I wouldn't use GAF on my roof and also don't want to fight for a warranty claim for all my customers when they turn to junk in 5-10 years. It's a high dollar commercial company that spends way too much on advertising rather than R&D. You know how it is, the more a company advertises, the less work they must have or it is nothing but quantity not quality.

MJW

As for Pimps dougger. I mean the suits that bid an entire town and pimp it out to the mexicans like they are whores. It's barely legal if you can call it that.

dougger222

You could have called my brother in a law a roofing pimp when he sold roofs for a storm chaser. 10 years as a used car salesman and he's now a mortgage broker. He sold roofs for two summers and had mex crews do the work and he showed up to work every day in a suit!

Dem Con is the cheapest dump in the Metro area that I know of. When my 14 yard dump trailer was 2ft overloaded it was $80. I dumped a load today from a 30sq house and it was $48 but the same load another day can be as low as $34. The 20+ trips to the dump so far this year the trailer has paid for itself. I sold an old 12 yard dump trailer that needed so much work for $500 to a guy in Arkansas and now I wished I would have kept it and fixed it up. A few times this years I've used the 20ft tilt bed trailer with four foot side walls with a log chain wrapped around it. For $5 extra the machines at the dump drag it out.

Thinking about getting a F550 with a fifth wheel style 20 yard dump trailer with the tandem dually axles. Only downside is when the road restrictions are on it will be too heavy for some roads.

Paid $6K for the 14 yard PJ brand new three years ago. Now the same trailer would be an easy $7K.

dougger222

$5-6 a yard is what Dem Con charges but for that price there can be no paper or cardboard just shingles and felt. They now opened up the new pit were you get weighed but can dump more things. The only time I'll dump in it is when the old part gets full. At that point the cost will go up.

I was also getting stuck together Landmarks but since they added the second plastic layer on the back sides the problem has gone away. Another cause to stuck together shingles is from sitting at the yard for too long.

Landmarks are great shingles, all I lay but who knows how long they'll last since they've only been out for 10-15 years. For a few years Certainteed made English Landmarks, four bundles per sq.