Ideal conditions for operating a contracting business would be to always be in the black with a certain amount of operating capitol.  i.e. no need for credit.  That rarely happens.

One use of credit can be exemplified by an experience I had early on in my business venture.  I had installed two manufactured home pedestals for the families of two brothers on the same piece of property.  I did the job in the summer and the families moved in soon after.

That winter it was cold and windy and their furnaces quit; both of them at the same time.  That was an oddity.  When I checked them out, I found that the main breaker on both pedestals had gone bad.  That compounded the oddity.

I went to my supplier to get replacement breakers and they had none on hand.  The lead time to acquire them would be one week.  Well!  A week without power would freeze up both homes.  Then there would be plumbing to fix also.  The supplier did have two new pedestals on hand so I purchased them, on credit.  I also ordered the new breakers.

I took the pedestals to the job site, removed the bad breakers from the existing pedestals and replaced them with the new ones in the new pedestals.  The power was back on.

I took the faulty breakers back to the dealer for credit, and one week later when I picked up the new breakers I put them with the new pedestals.  Now I just had to use the new pedestals on jobs.  That wasn’t going to happen in the winter, but I eventually sold both of them.

I couldn’t have done that without credit.

Borrowing is a different matter.

It can be disastrous.  For instance, one time I was working on a job in downtown Spokane and I needed an extension ladder.  Being new to owning my own business, an extension ladder was not something I had purchased yet.

One of my friends was working nearby so I made a short trip to ask if I could borrow one of his extension ladders.  Success!  At the end of the day, since I wasn’t quite done, I put the ladder on the top of the flat roof of the building, out of sight, and went home.  The next day person or persons unknown had “borrowed” the ladder themselves.  I never saw it again.  Now my business had to buy a ladder; one that I wouldn’t have.

I guess I was a little slow in learning a lesson about “borrowed” ladders.  Later on I left a $300.00 ladder on the job overnight.  It too was “borrowed” by the time I returned.

I wound up buying three ladders and owning one.

One time a fellow electrician was telling me about a situation where he felt unjustly treated.

He had been sent to dig a ditch with a ditching machine and install underground wiring along a future fence line.  He was given the exact line of the fence, the wire size, etc.

It was summer time when he did the ditch ditching, wire installation, and ditch-burying.  It was fall when the fence was installed.

One of the steel fence posts was driven through the wire buried the summer before.

The Union ruling on such occurrences was that: If you make a mistake and it is definitely your mistake, you must make it right.  When correcting the mistake, it must be done during normal working hours.

By the time the mistake was established as his mistake, it was winter.  He said that the week before Christmas he had to shell out the extra money to fix the mistake from his own pocket.

His real complaint about the whole situation was that, as he put it; “I was distracted for one moment while I was riding the ditcher.  It was obvious that there was only one portion of the electrical line that was out of line with the rest of the installation.  Why would someone drive a steel fence post in that one spot?”

I was sympathetic, but there was nothing I could do to help.  I did take a lesson from it.

Don’t presume that anyone else will be thoughtful about what they do on your job.  Think ahead and try to prevent other people from damaging your work.

I have seen many cases where ground rods, which are 8 or 10 feet long, have been driven through gas lines, water lines, sewer lines and electrical lines.

Each of those instances carries its own type of disaster.  However the biggest problem with ground rods is solid rock.  There are ways around a solid rock conundrum.  Driving a ground rod at an angle will often times allow it to slip by an underground obstruction.  You can also lay a ground rod in a ditch if it is of the proper depth.  Some inspectors have objected to that in the past, but it is allowed by code.

I had one job on the side of a mountain one time where driving a ground rod was problematic.  There was no rock involved, it was solid sand.  And I do mean SOLID sand.  You could dig a ditch easy enough and the sides would hold up straight.  However there was something in the makeup of the sand that after a short distance, it was impracticable to drive a ground rod.

What I came up with for a solution on that job is probably classed as proprietary information.

That was his name.

When we left Montana, I left a lot of good friends behind.  One fellow I got well acquainted with was John Sherry.

He had been a cowboy at one time.  When I use the word “cowboy”, I mean a real, honest to goodness, cow workin’ man.  Back in the days when they had trails instead of roads and horses instead of cars.

In those days everyone watched out for their neighbors, and was friendly and helpful.

John told me one day he was riding to town (on his horse, of course) and stopped in to check on a bachelor friend of his that lived in a small cabin.  John asked him if he needed anything in town.

“Yes, would you mail a letter for me to Sears Roebuck?”

John got to town and was ready to mail the letter when he noticed it was unsealed.  He checked inside.  The letter contained a $5.00 bill and a note.  The note read; “Send me one pair of boots.”

No size, no color, no style.  And no return address.

John rode back to the bachelor’s cabin and told him what he needed and got the order straightened out.  Then John went back to town and mailed the letter for him.

I assume he got his pair of boots.

One day John went to help a neighbor do some butchering.  They butchered a cow.

The cow’s owner said; “Save the tail, we’ll have oxtail soup.”

John said; “Yes!  Save the tail.”

The owner said; “Save the liver.  We’ll have liver and onions.”

John said; “Yes!  Save the liver.”

The owner said; “Save the heart.”

John said; “Yes! Save the heart.”

The owner said; “Save the head.  We’ll make head cheese.”

John said; “Yes!  Save the head.”

They went to clean the head for head cheese and the owner said; “Save the eyeballs.”

John said; “Save the eyeballs?!?!”

“Yes, boiled eyeballs are good.”

Not to be outdone, John said; “O.K.  You eat one and I’ll eat the other.”

The guy boiled the eyeballs, set a couple of plates, and brought one eyeball each over to the table.

John told me later; “You know Adrian – that eyeball rolled over and looked at me and I just couldn’t eat it.”

They didn’t waste the head.  There was still the tongue and brains.

In modern day slaughter houses, when they butcher a pig, they say; “Use everything but the squeal.”

At fast food places they say; “Parts is parts.”