HAULIER and CARRIER T HE figures given in the table accompanying
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the previous article and repeated this week are important in connection with one of the most essential matters relating to .furniture removing.
The beginning of any contract is the estimate. Some= times-or so my furniture-removal friends tell mean established customer will ask for the work to be done without demanding a quotation. That happens when the customer has such faith in the furniture remover that he is confident the charge will be fair and reasonable.
The remover himself, however, should be careful, even in a case of this sort, for sometimes it is preferable that an estimate should be given, if only for the reason that, as a general rule, the statement of the conditions under which the work is to be carried out is embodied in the form of quotation. Mutual confidence is, therefore, essential if the work is to be undertaken without the contractor having previously rendered an estimate.
Usually Essential to Inspect Premises.
Rarely is it safe to quote without visiting the site and ,inspecting the premises and goods. The only exceptions are those occasions when the furniture remover is already acquainted with the type of house and the class of goods.
Such inspection is necessary in order to ascertain whether there is anything in the arrangement of the staircases, the width of the doors, or the angularity of narrow passages, to make their negotiation with comparatively large and heavy pieces of furniture a matter of difficulty and, therefore, involving loss of time. It may be that the windows have to be used for the removal of certain items, and arrangements must be made accordingly, adding both to the cost and the time involved in loading.
n46 There is also the matter of approach to the house itself to be considered. Not every front door stands by the pavement. Sometimes it may take as long, or even longer, to get pieces of furniture from the house to the street as it does to carry them into and out of the building itself.
This need for inspection applies to both termini of the journey. Sometimes, perhaps, when the distance to one of the premises is great, and when it is possible to obtain some reliable information concerning the building, that inspection is waived.
There are also many little points to be discussed with the customer, such as the extent of preparation which he or she is to make for the arrival of the van; whether the householder is to see to the packing and the removal of gas and electric-light fittings and other similar matters, or whether all this is to be carried out by the furniture-removing men. The question of moving any store of coal or coke should be raised at the same time.
'Many Factors to be Remembered.
There is indeed a large variety of matters to be kept in mind bY the furniture remover when he is about to prepare an estimate. All of them have a bearing on the price he will charge, because they determine the time that will have to be spent in carrying out the contract.
It is also customary to make some provision in the estimate against unexpected interferences with the work. For instance, between preparing the estimate and doing the job, the local gas or water company might have decided to dig a trench across the space where it was intended to park the van.
All the foregoing precautions and a good many other conditions were set out at length in those articles to which reference has already been made, which appeared in February of last year. Readers who are new to the
furniture-removing business would -be well advised to refer to those .articles once again. Given a proper understanding of the conditions, the principal factor in making an estimate is the time involved in loading and unloading, the mileage to be covered and, of course, the time spent in travelling.
The accompanying table shows the actual cost per mile and per hour of operating furniture vehicles. In applying these figures to any particular job, the total time must be taken. as a basis of calculation, and to that figure must be added the cost of the mileage covered.
Let us assume the use of an ordinary 4-ton furniture van, concerning which the cost is given as 29d. per hour and 41d. per mile. If the time occupied be eight hours and the distance covered be 12 miles (that eight hours being the time from leaving the garage until returning at night), the cost is eight times 29d., which is 19s. 4d., plus 12 times 4id. (4s. 6d.), making a total of 1,1 3s. 10d.
That Is the bare cost of operating the vehicle, less the wages of the driver, for which no allowance has been made. There is no provision for any sort of establishment charge or for profit. It will be appreciated, therefore, that, whilst this is an important Item in the estimate, it is only a small part of the total.
It is now possible for readers to appreciate that I cannot, as has been suggested by some inquirers, deal with the vehicle cost alone and leave the reader himself to handle the rest of the estimate.
The next big item is wages. The number of men engaged on any particular job may he from two to five, or even more. If the foregoing job had been completed in eight hours only by employing five men, the question might arise: would it not be better to employ fewer men, even at the expense of keeping the vehicle employed over a longer period? That sort of problem must be considered by the remover.
Unfortunately, the contractor cannot invariably rely upon his vehicles being fully engaged throughout the week. This circumstance to some extent falsifies the figures given in the accompanying table for cost per hour, because they are calculated on the assumption that it is used for 48 hours per week. Referring again to the 4-tonner, the total of the standing charges set out is 1,367d. per week and that is approximately equivalent to 29d. per hour for a 48-hour week.
If, however, in any particular week the vehicle is unused for a whole day, say, eight hours, its actual cost for the period during which it is employed is 341d. per hour, which would add 3s. 10d. to the foregoing estimate of cost, making it 11 7s. 8d.
Keeping Vehicles Fully Employed.
As each furniture remover is in competition with others, some of whom may be able to find work for their vehicles all the week round, he is not likely to meet with much success if he attempts to saddle a particular job with the cost of idle days. A way to overcome the difficulty would be to take an average, over a period, of the number of hours worked per week and to base estimates of cost on that figure. The proper thing to do is to find some means for keeping the vehicle employed every day of the week. That may seem an impossible counsel of perfeetion, but, unfortunately, in these days of keen competition, there is no alternative.
The expense of keeping a vehicle or vehicles idle is not the only unfortunate condition which the furniture remover has to bear in mind. There is, in addition, the provision for wages of the workers and, although some of them are employed at day-to-day rates, it is not a good policy and neither is it fair to treat all employees in that way.
In a subsequent article I will take a typical example of a week's work as related to me by a furniture remover and show how the costs should be calculated. Several valuable tables will be included to show the cost of a week's work with various types of furniture removal vehicle. S.T.R.