2nd rate materials!

With the economy the way it is around here some of our competitors are getting their shinlges from these second rate material places. From what i understand this is material that did not pass inspection and may fail at half the normal life. These guys are saving about 20-30 bucks a square and with the material prices for first class shingles where they are its hard to compete with that by the numbers. All you can do is inform the homeowner of the situation but many of them are too naive to believe what you are telling them. These guys are not putting any extra money in their pockets by saving on the materials. Instead they are using the second rate stuff to give a much cheaper bid since evidently they lack sales ability. lol I don't feel threatened at all by these momo's. However, its a real pain in the arse explaining to the h/o over and over again about what they are doing. Their strategy works with the cheapo's but not the others. The cheapo's are not my target customer anyway but anytime i can get an extra job it adds to the bottom line. Oh well i guess they gotta eat too. lol>>>

Certainteed used to send it's seconds to the landfill. Now they recycle all there waste from the factory skipping the middle man. The landfill also recycles shingles now.

Have you ever seen a roof that was done with seconds about 8 years after the fact? I've seen several and none looked too hot. Some were in need of replacement at this point. On average i would say you can cut the warranty in half. So it wont affect the installer down the road but your sticking the homeowner with an 8-12 yr. roof when they are being told 20-30 plus!

Seconds are not sold in brands where I come from. They are sold in wrappers turned inside out if they are wrapped at all and bought by certain locations that only carry seconds or close-out or distressed. The manufacturers won't sell them to the regular roofing wholesale houses. In some instances the old 3-tabs were sold as starter shingles but I don't know if anyone is still making 3-tabs anymore around here. There were a couple of places around LA that sold them cash only to folks re-roofing their garages.

Back in the day when I worked at a roofing plant (30 years ago) most of the seconds were from changing the colors run. The granules needed to get cleared out of the hoppers, etc.>>>

Ole Willie, what is the brand of these so called seconds. From what I understand none of the major brands sell seconds, and have not for many years. I would be interested if this are billy bob brand on one of the majors.>>>

Here in SoCal there are lots of roofing manufacturers so there are a lot of "seconds" sold in the market. In concrete or clay tile if they are defective they are crushed and recycled but if it's just a color problem they are sold and it's not a bad deal for anyone. I once had a homeowner call a tile plant and ask what day we manufactured the 'seconds'. I had to explain we didn't produce them on purpose.>>>

OLE Willie Said: Yep, Ive seen a few roofs that were installed with the crappy felt. Every morning while its still cool the roofs have buckles in them from the felt wrinkling up. Then by mid day they smooth out and the process is repeated every day. lol

And in three years the roof fails. :S>>>

Yep, I've seen a few roofs that were installed with the crappy felt. Every morning while its still cool the roofs have buckles in them from the felt wrinkling up. Then by mid day they smooth out and the process is repeated every day. lol>>>

In the early 80's I used to buy my battens from a competitor that cut his own. This guy also bought railcar loads of #2 felt. He allowed you to pick through it and charged about a third of what the going 30 lb. price was. There were lots of rolls of 90 lb. roll roofing that the granules stopped after 5' or so. These rolls were an upgrade on standard 30 lb. The 30 lb rolls would have a short section where the asphalt would suddenly stop and the felt turned white, and then started again, in about 4'. Cutting these sections out made it as good as any other 30 lb., other than they didn't have lap stripes. But there were lots of rolls I wanted nothing to do with that his crews probably used.>>>

Well its not a major problem only a minor one for me as all of the guys doing this are located in the cheaper areas. While my prime market area is the upper scale areas in and around the office. But like i was saying anytime we add a job from any other area it helps out the bottom line. The percentage chance of getting a job in those off areas is way lower than our prime area to begin with. Now these guys using seconds makes it even lower than that due to the cheap prices they are quoting. Im thinking maybe the solution is to drop the off areas and just not serve them unless its a referral of course. Not sure what i will do just yet but i've been thinking of dropping these areas anyway for a long time now. :S>>>

There are first and then there are seconds in the material world of shingles. First are those that are underwriter labeled and approved for sale. The seconds are those that are either damaged, not properly granulated or not of sufficient batch weight or wrong colored and thus

They, the seconds, are not even supposed to be marketed and sold to roofers and home owners. Most of the time they are either taken to the landfill or back hauled down to Mexico or another Third World nation.

The solution is quite simple. Get the word out that if the shingle label does not have the UL label denoting at least a Class C fire rating than they can not be applied on homes. Plus the fact that the insurance companies will not legally insure a home that has these shingles on the homes roof.

Most states have a prohibition written into the state building code against installation of these shingles.>>>

:laugh:>>>

Where can I get those shingles? :laugh:>>>