On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 18:56:43 -0700, "Lane"
lane_nospam@copperaccents_dot_com wrote:

I think the major reason people chuck stuff is that we take for granted
that
everyone can fix stuff. My brother is helpless when it comes to any type
of
repair. If he were to take his 8 year old lawnmower somewhere (if he could
find a place that repairs to begin with) by the time he paid for parts and
labor, (and waited 2-3 weeks) he would have 75% of a new one paid for. So
guys like us snag them by the curb, clean the carb, toss in a plug and
change the oil. We sell it for $20-$30. and would already be using his
$119.00 brand new murray lawnmower from walmart.
I picked up a lawnmower yesterday that was blowing oil. Turns out it had
too
much oil in it so it was spewing oil out of the exhaust valve. I cleaned
her
up, changed the oil and the plug, now it runs like a top.
That's a lawnmower, try to find anyone willing to try to fix half the
stuff
out there. It may be shot... or it may be a fuse or loose wire.

walt



The truth of the matter is that a shop with a labor rate of $50/hr can't do
what you and I do. The economics of it isn't there for any potential profit.
If you tried to run a business doing what you are doing, you probably
wouldn't be able to make a go of it either.

That's for sure. A long time ago mowers was my main business. Back
when I started out my fixit shop I did a lot of mowers and managed to
make a living as a bachelor. I still do mowers though it's definitely
the low priority part of my business. The fact is about 3/4 of the
time it's possible to make some money on a mower. The problem is that
the other 25% cause such a loss that they eat into the profits of the
good ones real fast.

It's even harder now days since the new mowers are definitely not
built to be worked on. It takes way to much time to get the pretty
plastic decoration pieces off and the carbs are built so cheap that
they're getting hard to do anything with.


Wayne Cook
Shamrock, TX
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/waynecook