Posted by paula on April 12, 2003 at 24:45:48:
Hi Doc, I appreciate all your advice on dealing with set up contractors,and if i wasn’t one myself it would have perhaps been even more helpful, but if youve read my previous posts you’d be surprised to know that my huband and I are in the set up business. Licensed, bonded and insured in the state of florida. We own a toter, we weld tounges, and we lag the double wides together, rack 'em, sack em and package 'em. Then down the road we go. See, the laws in Florida for all this is very complicated and makes these things very expensive. We are the #1 hurricane capital of the world. Mobile homes + hurricanes = disaster. That’s why when someone off the street needs a move and set up we have to charge high in order to cover all our costs and still make a profit. That $5500.00 is surely not what we pay…heck…to move and set up one of our homes for us, by us, costs us approx. 1/2 that, not including permits. $5500.00 is the going rate here and even if you show the abilitlity to NEGOTIATE with us, sure, we’ll work with you, but realistically we would only be able to come down to maybe $4800.00.Bottom line. We deal with all kinds of people…wheeler dealers, cons,pros and hard working people too.But still…no matter who we deal with…our costs stay the same and our time is very valuable. In your area, do you have to get a bobcat to put the anchors in or can you simply use an anchor machine?Or are anchors not even required? That can make all the differnece in the price right there alone. Very time consuming and costly.If you know anything about Florida we have a lot of Coral rock to drill through here. And by the way, the ones that come to us to set up thier homes who are honset and humble and act like they really need our help…those are the ones we’ll go out of our way to help even more, any way we can. The ones that come to us acting as if they could give a rats butt if we ever get to them, those are the ones that we would rather not even deal with. People don’t seem to understand just what goes into setting up a home, especially with Florida codes. SO remember people, if your dealing with a set up company, especially in Florida, remeber to treat them with utmost respect.Without us, your homes couldnt even be… If you only knew what goes on behind the scenes and what is actually involved, then you’d know wer’e worth the weight in gold. By the way doc,no offense, you think like a mobile home dealer, if the set up company gets hungry enough, they’ll do it for my price, or if they have to make a payment on that toter, the’ll come down, but you’ll be surprised that some of contractors that have been smelling the glue for way too long by putting in your sewers have woken up and realized that WE will start selling as well and we wont need your pennies to scrape by anymore because we will be making your dollars…and we have the edge. Us contractors that have been setting up these homes and giving deals for years,wont be in need to be giving those deals anymore because the dollars that you’ve made in the past while giving us pennies, now can be our dollars too. If you can’t beat 'em…join 'em. Again, thanks for all the advice. Best wishes…Paula