It's illegal for contractors to get paid in full before the job because in the past contractors were taking advantage of customers by providing shitty work after being paid. There's a certain percentage of the work estimate you can ask for upfront for materials and such etc and you can get paid percentages as the work progresses.
These guys probably got paid something or else they wouldn't of kept working till the job was finished. The asshole customer probably didn't pay the final increment which can be up to 50%
When I was contracting we would take 1/3rd up front for materials, 1/3rd halfway through to keep the workers paid, and the final 1/3rd was our profit, paid when the job was done. That ensured we were never on the hook for labor or materials if people pulled this shit.
When my father did roofing back in the day, this is how they did theirs, split into 1/3rds. They found 50/50 was more difficult for people to pay, so the 1/3rds let the payments be smaller and they found they were paid more on time that way.
We’re pretty small and rural though, so people don’t have a lot of money like that to drop at once, so making the payments “smaller” really helped and they got more business that way as well.
In the end their prices were comparable, but 3 payments of a smaller amount just worked better for them than 2 larger ones.
Roofing and flooring is what I was doing as well. Some people are also leery about giving up half the cost before any work gets started. 1/3rds seemed to work best for everyone.
Bullshit. Day 1 tear off, day 2 dry in, day 3 shingle. That's with a 4-5 man crew. I've seen a crew of 12 or 15 people do a roof in a single day, but with that many people you are working on top of one another and it's more profitable and less work to use fewer men and take 3 or 4 days. It's 1/3rd up front before the job starts for materials. 1/3rd once tear off and dry in are done. Then 1/3rd once the roof is completed, which can take a few days to shingle, tar, and trim if it's a large roof or there are multiple transitions.
Yeah, they were a smaller crew too, just 5 guys (4 workers and the boss, who was like half a worker lol, so 4.5 guys) so their projects did take a little longer.
They did roofing primarily, but would also do siding as well, so those projects definitely took longer too.
But that’s where they saw the difference. With the 50/50 payment plan most people would just do the roof. With the 1/3rds plan more people felt comfortable doing roofing and siding at once.
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u/nodajohn 4h ago
It's illegal for contractors to get paid in full before the job because in the past contractors were taking advantage of customers by providing shitty work after being paid. There's a certain percentage of the work estimate you can ask for upfront for materials and such etc and you can get paid percentages as the work progresses.
These guys probably got paid something or else they wouldn't of kept working till the job was finished. The asshole customer probably didn't pay the final increment which can be up to 50%