Are you in a market where lumber suppliers will actually quote you a lumber package from a set of prints, and do it in just a few days? And beyond that, if you included a little spec information, they will quote you all the doors, windows, wood siding and trim, roofing, and anything else they handle? In my little market, which is admittedly small, but not so small, because there are four competing lumber retailers vying for the contractor business, none of them will do that for me. What is wrong here?
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That's pretty weird. My area yard's estimators practically fight each other for take offs, but then they get a commission on sales.
I've always lived in smaller communities but I've heard about lumber yards that will do your takeoffs for you.
Big question for me is - Would I trust someone else to do something that important for me?
not likely
Excellence is its own reward!
That's pretty SOP here. The way the major servicer of local builders deals it, the builder specs everything they deem important up front, the yard employee generates the take off list, and there's employees whose job it is to do nothing more than service a handful of builders. They get to know the guy(s) and preferences - this one, when he has a mantle, wants these materials, for instance. They get to know you and how you want things done, so on the first house, maybe there's a lot of phone calling back and forth early on, but it's like any relationship, get to know each others and a lot of things answer themselves. And I'm sure there's incentive for sales. But it's not just the yards. Shingle suppliers do that, as does a big window & door outfit. Give the plans, they'll show what fits, what fits the budget, order it, deliver it. Name the day and time.
If I were building homes (I'm not) and they were all similar in design and features, going that route wouldn't hurt my head too much. If I were remodeling existing homes (I do) I wouldn't for an instant expect lumberyard joe to be able to look at the prints and be able to accurately tell me everything that's going to be there. For that, I think eyeballs on site is required.
"The child is grown / The dream is gone / And I have become / Comfortably numb " lyrics by Roger Waters
I must be spoiled. My yard will not only look at my drawings and spit out a BM and cost, they'll help me revise any problem areas before final decisions are made. Every guy behind the counter there has 5 or more years doing exactly what I do; most of them quit the banging end of the business because they had too much trouble finding enough good people to work for them. (I do get tempted from time to time....)
All the yards in this area have price-list printouts or floppies they'll give you to enter into your own billing database. I run a cheap, off-the-shelf invoicing program and this is useful when comes the time to 'write out' the bill. In the old days, a big job would take me almost a day just to invoice at the end. Now I type in the same codes as the yards use, and the same lumber spec or whatever pops up in front of my nose, already adjusted for my markup. Sure saves on pencils.Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
They all offer but I don't use it.
Nothing wrong with calling in and telling your guy to get out his note pad.....this'll be a long one.
Even though I tell my guy that....he still insists on plugging it all in the computer so I have a number right after I say.....That it? That's plenty!
Jeff
Buck Construction Pittsburgh,PA
Fine Carpentery.....While U Waite
If I wanted competing quotes, I would make up my own take-offs because I would have more confidence in them and to give me more time to spot trouble spots. I am surprised that you are having trouble getting anyone to give you a take-off, especially for the window and door packages. In the past more than one supplier has offered to do this for us. Are you located in the Adirondacks? We are nearby. It's possible that the suppliers have changed their policies in the past few years. I find that it helps if you find one person at the supplier who you can go to for this kind of service and only to talk with that person. This relationship can work well for both of you.
Actually, yes, they will take a drawing package and deliver back a window and door quote. All of them. But when it comes to lumber, sheathing, roofing, etc., we are all on our own here, as far as I know.
Before I retired and turned into a one-house-per-year home builder, I had a good job with a big national exterior door manufacturer, and got to travel out in the field with the sales reps quite a bit. Our customers were the big wholesalers with door shops that built the prehung units that the lumberyards buy and sell to us. So, I got to see from the top-level backoffice side, what goes on at lumberyards. You can't name a market I have not been in. Except for the high peaks area of the Adirondacks, where I live now. I guess it is such a little backwater, that full-service concepts have not made it here yet.
In many areas, I was impressed with the level to which lumber retailers bent over backwards to hold builders' hands and service them. Pick up the plans, no drop-off required, figure the whole job, break it down into delivery releases the way you like them, give you job-account billing, and more. You become an organizer, a packager, a scheduler, and they relieve you of the material logistics side of the business.
I thought maybe a little piece of that would be in play here, but it is not. The largest lumber outfit here, at least the one with the largest inside staff, may give you a lumber package quote, but you will wait weeks for it, because they send the drawings out of state to a takeoff service. At one of the others here, a favorite for some of the bigger builders, all the orders are written by the yard's owner, or his sister the co-owner, or the one outside salesman.
It is no big deal for me that I cannot get lumber quotes, actually. Doing one house at a time, coming up with the lumber takeoff only takes me a few hours, and it a very small part of the costing and budgeting process. What shocked me here, in terms of service, was this. Even after doing the detailed lumber package takeoff, when reduced to about four pages of spreadsheet, and including nails, staples, joist hangers, drip edge, yadda yadda yadda, it STILL takes them a week or more to get back with a quote, and then it is not a complete quote, fully extended and totaled, just a sequence of unit prices.
The problem is you them to do your take offs and doing that type of work is expensive.
What you want to do is drop the plans off and ask for the material to be delivered. Then they will do the take offs and deliver the material.
I have not asked the price of materials for the past 10 years. I just drop off my take offs and ask for delivery on a certain schedule. But then I don't return bad lumber either,
Years ago, the building supply offered to price the material from a set of plans. The price was great so we bid the job, signed the contract and wondered where the plywood was after the material was delivered.
After a great deal of negotiating, we, the supplier, and the owner each ate a 3rd of the cost. No turkey for Christmas that year.
Turtleneck
the only miracles I've ever produced are waiting for me at home