I've been doing adc for a few years now but I'm always looking for ways to comeplete jobs more quickly. The less time spent at a job and less trips to the job mean more money for me. How do some of you go about accomplishing this. For example, you get a call that is 60 miles round trip for raccoons in the attic. How would you attack this job while minimizing the number of trips?

That is really not as bad a question as I had at first thought. We would probably not do any return trip jobs that far away anymore, but there was a time when we did.

Best answer: And I have done this on many occasions; I find the hole ( With raccoons there is usually one ) and make a positive set. Then I go into the attic, armed with chloroform. If I miss her with the chloroform ( I usually don't ) she gets caught in the positive set or I throw her in a cage and check for babies. If babies are present, I remove them as well and close the hole.

Now you have a service call, removing usually six raccoons and a closure. If you charged accordingly, you should have made as much as a good lawsuit attorney and even if you didn't, you should still make as much as the attorney's client.

P.S. If any of our employees set less than three traps at any job that was thirty miles away, he would be in for a good butt kicking!

In the case above, how do you apply the chloroform while in an attic. That seems like a good article to me.

You may be right Jim. I'm sure there are a lot of guys in this business that don't realize that they are allowed to use chloroform and pass up on what I consider the best thing invented since customers. Maybe an article would be timely.

Paul remember what happened the last time you did a chloroform article? Make sure the disclaimer is bigger than the article. But I would like to hear how you apply it to a coon in the attic situation, I use it but don't have near the success you seem too.

charge on a time and materials basis
drive time included

Paul, I tried to send you a pm. Says you are over your limit.

Paul,
I would also be interested to hear how you chloroform raccoons in an attic. Also I am new to ADC where you purchase your chloroform?

if you want to make more, charge more. In this industry you will never stop learning money saving techniques that put more on your bottom line per job. Im not cutting corners or quality, but saving materials from one job and trying to use them on the next. My biggest money saving oppurtunity is food. Instead of grabbing something for lunch fast food, pack a lunch. Buy drinks in bulk to save. good luck.

Jordan, I'm a little confused. I assume you are talking about throwing away used materials, right? On the bright side, 12 packs of Coke were 5 for $11 this week at Target.

Yeah, maybe it's time to revisit the chloroform issue again. I sorta remember the brouhaha that ensued the last time; I don't think that'll happen again.
Good advice, Jordan; you'll usually eat a healthier lunch thataway.

Am doing a typical skunk job where we are up to number six, in ten days. There is 18 inches of snow with more coming, and night temperature is around zero. Sometimes they just stay inside. We have three traps out but only have caught one at a time. I have a feeling the males may be arriving one at a time to the location, being drawn by the female in heat scent. We caught one female, so her scent must linger, or else there is a second female. That is how things can drag out, on some jobs that can't be rushed. Most of the jobs my trucks go to are within 30 miles. Beyond this I have an arrangement with my competitors. Maybe you could get together with your competitors to work out something mutually beneficial. Doing things season to season for many seasons, you do learn time/money saving short cuts. Sometimes the lesson is forgotten due to the time that passes between similar incidents. My roots are in fur trapping, but my mind is far from being 'like a steel trap.' If you have a good memory, take care of your brain. Or, develop an effective note keeping system.

Phil is right about the brain. I fell two stories, landed on my head, and you can see the results on here nearly every day.

I'm not sure what you mean by "complete jobs more quickly."

Are you referring to getting the job done from the time it is sold, the number of trips you have to make, how fast an animals is captured, how quickly repairs are performed, or something else? The next question is why do you think you need to be getting done faster?

Speed isn't everything, especially with a service based company. Next time you eat at a fast food place, look at how your meal looks. Are all the ingredients placed nice and neat or does it have a look like it was literally thrown together? Would the meal have the same appeal and "value" if it costs $50 instead of $5?

There is a fixed time for everything that cannot be changed. Drive time to the client will always have a minimum time value with an unknown maximum time value based on vehicle problems, traffic, detours, and weather to name a few. Performing an inspection, getting a trap and/or ladder from the truck, making the set, monitoring the trap will always take time.

You can perform tasks that help minimize the time on-site such as organizing your truck, prebaiting traps, positing ladders to make removal easier and faster, putting tools back where you got them from, making a route you stick to every evening or early morning, etc., but you still have a minimum amount of time you'll spend for each job. And don't forget that this is a service business so talking with the client is part of the service.

If the concern is lost jobs, look at expanding your work hours, scheduling differences, or even hiring an employee.

are you charging by the job or animal?

WCT:

I am an experienced professional operator. Of course I want to complete the job properly and with the right materials. But because I am a professional-doing this to make money- im always looking for ways to be more efficient. If people here can share what they do, perhaps I can finish a job that is 30 miles away with one less trip. that is all i was looking for.

When you say speed isnt everything, im not sure I agree. responding to and remediating a clients issue, properly and quickly is what we should all be striving for. the longer a job takes, the more trips it takes, the more money I lose and the more frustrated a customer can become. If I complete a job with quality service in the fewest trips possible, its win win

cj, I think the problem is the variety of jobs. ( Especially the ones deemed important by the operator ) WCT and a lot of others on this forum make a lot of money from bats and rightly so. I, personally have people for that. ( Don't get me wrong, I can find a bat in a house as fast as anyone two thirds my age, okay, half my age, would you believe one third my age? )

Anyway, I believe I know what you are talking about and this probably pertains to a lot of people besides you; You've got a job that is quite a drive, so in order to make money, you can't have a half a dozen trips. Squirrels are by far the biggest problem. I have personally caught more than twenty gray squirrels in one house and all of them were adults and belonged to the same family. ( How do I know? If I would have set cages outside the house, the numbers may have climbed to a hundred and twenty plus )

Anyway, as usual, I am straying from the subject. If you are talking about raccoons, and I'm guessing you are, here is what I know: No less than three traps. One in the attic, one on the roof, and one hidden behind a hedge and hard to get at. If that doesn't work immediately ( especially the hard to get at one ) it is Conibear time. Oh yeah, bait. A lot of baits sold be people on this site work very well. Good Luck and next time get a job across the street; We did!

Set up charge plus per skunk charge. We tell them up front if a non-target is going to be charged for. It depends on the situation. We charge per job on bats, barriers, clean-outs, demolitions, etc.

thanks paul, appreciate the input. at what point do you guys seal points of egress? when you seal, do you have a system for assuring there are no animals left in the attic space? or do you leave traps in the space as insurance? i guess this is my main question. at what point do you determine the animals are gone and finish exclusion. some instances I cannot use or do not have excluders.

while on the subject of exclusion, not to digress too much, can some of you provide pictures of common squirrel/coon roofline repairs? also, how do some of you repair openings where soffits meet a roofline? that area that is almost impossible to get a drill into to drive a screw

What Phil said X2.

cj, if you catch a lactating female, you have to account for the babies, then close. Closures vary, sheet metal, the same stuff your cages are made of, etc. As to your last sentence, I don't think we've run across anything that our concrete drills can't handle.

this is the type of area/angle im talking about that is difficult to repair. i just took this photo offline to demonstrate:





Without taking off the gutter and replacing the fascia and soffit, how would you repair a hole where the soffit meets the shingle?

The angle usually prevents me from using a drill to drive screws if i wanted to use flashing. and bending flashing to fit perfectly in that area can be difficult

It looks like galvanized flashing, bent and pushed to fit and then a piece of white aluminum flashing on top to make the whole thing look good, but I may be wrong.

CJ,

All I was trying to do was qualify your question to help get answers. If you took offense to anything I posted I apologize as that was never the intent.

I agree with your comment that the more trips you make the less money you keep, in most situations. My point concerning speed is about doing sloppy work that needs redone which means more trips. I can pick on myself and say that there is more than one job I wish I would have done differently because I went too fast or should have stopped because of being tired.

To answer your question on being more efficient, it will depend on what you're hired for. When I teach bat exclusion work, it is common for me to say that my system requires an average of 15 - 20 hours time invested (start to finish) for a 1200 sq ft ranch. There are others that can do it faster and we can argue for hours just on the pros and cons of using foam, cheap caulk, and application methods.

For me, it is never about how long the project takes as I'm getting paid for my time (and personally I'd rather work for 10 clients at $10,000 each than 1000 clients at $100 each). What matters is not having to go back. If that criteria is met, then I've done an efficient job.

Time saving steps for bat and bird jobs include having the correct equipment, knowing how to use that equipment, easy access to the necessary materials on-site and taking the time to do it right.

For exclusion barriers, we prefer to dig about 4 - 6 inches down instead of the 10 - 12 others do but we also like to go out 18 - 24 inches so I can't say that there is any difference in digging time unless it is dealing with concrete or tree roots.

For animal trapping, if possible catch the animal during your first visit as Paul has mentioned. One trip stops within your scheduled job time will always net you more than setting traps and having to monitor them. You have to be careful though as going over the allocated time frame can end up costing you money instead of making it. If you need to set equipment, consider using electronic monitoring equipment like TrapSmart, TrapAlert, or cellular game trail cameras. These can make you more efficient as they are always on the jobsite monitoring the situation and freeing you up to do other things if nothing is going on.

In regard to knowing when the animal is gone, start with the client and determine if they know what they have. In my service area, a call for a single coon does not tolerate multiple traps where they may have to pay for other animals than the one they are complaining about. In other service areas, that type of service is expected.

In these situations, I set a maximum of two traps. One is a positive set over the entrance point with the other usually close to the first with the door facing the opposite direction (coon in chimneys were the exception but we no longer do those). Once the animal is captured, the entrance is sealed. For clients with an unknown amount of animals, I do as many positive sets as possible with two additional traps. I usually go 3 days of empty traps after the last catch as the all clear sign to take down the traps and do repairs. Let me add that here in Ohio, we're able to have the client check traps and report in which really helps. Otherwise, I'd go with one of the products already mentioned to monitor the site.

For dormer and ledge sections where you can't get a drill in you have several choices. First, you can try a 90 degree drill or flexible cable to gain access and make the repairs if everything is still there. Second, you can use building materials like aluminum or wood and using a sealant, glue the material in place. Third, you can open everything up and redo it after making additional anchor points that you can reach. Fourth, make a solid plate that is slid into place with the anchors positioned farther away to hold it up. Fifth, you can build out the area to a place where you can use a drill.

As each situation is different with building structure and materials there are lots more than just these five I've listed.

Looking at the picture you may be able to fix that just by applying backer rod and/or sealant to the area. You can also bend flashing and using the sealant "glue" it in place. And as Paul stated, you can run a larger piece of white trim coil out to where you can easily attach it with the screws into the wooden soffit or fascia and trim.

Thank you wct. Your advice is very good and very appreciated. Thank you for the input.