Hail-chase'n vermin

Nothing's changed - Been away from the Colorado Front Range for 7-8 yrs. Just moved-back. Hail storm in the neighborhood. Pseudo-roofers from out of the wood-work, stalking the neighborhood. These opportunistic/unscrupulous vultures have invaded our neighborhood.

I've thrown up my hands - The insurance adjusters are right along with them, (in more ways than one, I assume). I've had to calm down several elderly homeowners who have been accosted by these vultures - Telling them their roofs have been destroyed, when in reality some have absolutely no damage at all.

Just got back from a remodel estimate - Owner says insurance adjuster totaled his roof. Nothing really wrong with it. Pres TL's - I found one, (ONE!), hardly detectable hit.

It's fricken disgusting.....The fraud/unscrupulous behavior is worse than ever.

Natty - I'm right there with ya.....

Natty: I can only imagine how you get along. It seems like repairs would be your bread and butter, but every market is different.

Once in a while when employees get me stressed or my work comp audit comes back outrageous, or anything else get's me stressed and I start thinking about what else I would do with my life. I think I could always sell roofs for somebody else and bring home ~10%. Then I realize I'd have to knock on doors and look people in the eye and try to utter the words "This is a 30 year roof"

I challenge any one to defend the practices of these storm troll racketeers. They have absolutely ruined roofing in North Texas. Even the local companies are door knockers just to keep in business. They are nothing but money grubbing carpetbaggers who return nothing of value. These subs absolutely refuse to nail a shingle correctly. I am tired of repairing their crap work. Even the Latinos who were once the subs are now knocking doors and making slaves out of their country men.

About 10 years ago I was just going to quit roofing and never look back. I don't know why I am still here. I get just enough work to survive. But the last straw may have been when my own sister and her Idiot husband fell for the wiles of one of these storm trolls. To hell with them all.

You got that right natty. We are indeed a dying breed. Almost lost another one today. Myself. Got stuck out in 98 degree heat til 2 pm trying to finish one up. Finally had to abandon ship with no more than a couple hours left before it would of been done.

Actually though, there is still a pretty high demand for skilled craftsmen. The only thing different nowadays is they don't want one until there are problems from hiring the lowest price to do the install. At that point many of them bite the bullet right away. They often tell me quote " We figured it was time to call a Professional ".

Vaaa, that sounds like Gypsies. I once roofed several houses in a neighborhood with nothing but Gypsies living there. Huge, nice brick homes. You would only see women and children because all the men were out traveling around scamming folks.

The skilled craftsman is on the endangered species list particularly in the roofing trade. You have roofers and then you have opportunistic businesses. The latter is the storm troll. Why learn a trade when you can scare homeowners, exploit 3rd world refugees, and milk the cash cow called insurance. They get away with it because no one knows what the hell they are doing and all of the defects are latent.

It is the corporatization of America. They know how to make money and little else. Hit and Run. It is the home owner that gets screwed in the end, but many of them deserved it because they at least had their deductible covered. Ha!

It's been 6-8 years now since we had a little hail hit this area. ( we had a few small scattered hail storms during that time frame ). I chose not to participate in the door knocking, suck up to the adjuster way of business. Just about every home owner here had over a dozen different peeps knocking on their doors. Some claims are still getting paid for whatever reason. The mindset of all the homeowners is why pay for a new roof because so many of my friends, family and neighbors got one paid for by insurance so why can't I?

I knew that I would not be able to stay in business as things were before the door knockers moved in unless I changed over to their strategy. It just isn't in my blood so instead I did some major downsizing eventually eliminating replacing roofs at all. Doing nothing but repairs. They can hardly compete with me on repairs just like I could hardly compete with them without door knocking for whole roofs.

I do more physical work and make less money than before but I still hold my own pretty well. I've been pretty busy from the start and it's increasing even more lately because enough time has passed now where their roof jobs are failing and hardly none of them are around anymore to honor any warranties. If that's something they would of done anyways.

Yesterday, I worked on a roof that was replaced 5 yrs ago by a hail chasing outfit and it was the 7th time the guy has had me over there replacing shingles in the last 2 years on a steep roof where all the nails were put in above the nail line missing the shingle below and imbedded into the shingle as well from too much air pressure. Every summer when the shingles become soft from heating up so much, they begin pulling away from what few nails are still holding and slipping off the roof in patches here and there.

I could go on and on but I'm sure you guys are already familiar with the scenario. Then there are all the leak repairs from where the stormers almost never replace any flashing detail because insurance won't pay for it or whatever reason. Maybe no one on their "sub crews" knows how to do it. Who knows? They put on "Lifetime Roofs" and re-use flashing that's 20 years old with maybe 5 yrs left until it fails.

With the influx of illegal alien "sub crews" over the last 20 years combined with the exactimate programming and changes made by the insurance companies anyone with even 1/10 of a brain can instantly become a roofing contractor. It's so easy even a cave man can do it.

I take pride in knowing that you have to be a true real live roofer with multiple skills and years of experience to successfully do what I do today and thrive in the long run. A skilled craftsman so to speak. One who solves the problems rather than creating them. Peace Out! ;)

I'm on a 5.5 hrs train ride back from Chicago where I was in the belly of the beast. It was a seminar on how to overcome unreasonable adjusters, and I actually learned a lot. But I also disagree with what it manifests.

I might have been the only guy there out of 200+ that doesn't use subs, only legitimate employees for installers. I heard so many people talking about going door to door blah blah blah. I can understand if there is true hail damage, but much of it is BS

I went to learn how to get the adjusters to pay my price, which is reasonable, but I didn't know how to speak their language. I feel more confident doing that now. I also happen to have learned how to justify more roofs getting sold.

We are booked through October with my 7 employees, and me and Dad. Word of mouth is our bread and butter not storms. In 09 a big hail storm and super derecho (term that was coined for that storm, 109 mph inline winds) really introduced us to the storm life. I could make a ton more profit with way less headache with the carriers now, just because I understand the process more and how to argue my valid points. We nearly went out of business afterwards, but I cut back where I had to, lowered prices on easy full roofs and raised prices on repair work. Repair work became a lot of our income. Now we are thumping and replacing a bunch of roofs installed after that storm.

I've been contemplating going the subcontracting route and setting up my lead guy with a license but I just can't see it happening. We do pretty well and our WC rate is about to finally drop back down to 46% haha hopefully much less That's what makes subb'n temtping. Plus some days we will knockout 35sq off and on in 6 hrs and other hot days like yesterday they didn't get 22sq 4/12 done in 8 hours. Or the 9sq vertical seam porch that took twice as long as I expected. The reliability and solid cost factor is what attracts me to the sub game, but I just can't see it being fair to all 3 parties. Myself, the sub, or the homeowner is likely to get the shaft, probably the latter.

It's temtping to hire a salesman another crew or two, advertise a bit more and f@@@ing blow this state up because I'm certain we could. Live better with less day to day headaches. But at what cost, a guy has to sleep at night. Especially when it's pouring down rain.

Seen-it-all; Very valid point. I made that observation many years ago when we first moved to a hail-susceptible area - A legit residential outfit doesn't have much of a chance in hail market.

Didn't affect us much, as we primarily did commercial/gov't & new construction. However, now that we've down-sized tremendously & do do residential, as well as the fact it's happened in our neighborhood, we're experiencing it first-hand.

It's sickening; Insurance adjusters, (many along with their cohort roofers), are "totaling" perfectly sound roofs. It puts homeowners in a precarious position of sorts. I've told people to go ahead & contact their insurance company to come out & evaluate as a CYA measure - That we'd be happy to provide a quote, if it's determined their roof needs replacing. I will not partake in the disgusting/opportunistic, manufactured crisis/hysteria antics of these vultures.

Thankful I've never had to live that nightmare. The small town I grew up in (pop. 5000) had a hailstorm hit in the mid eighties that destroyed about 80% of the roofs. It also destroyed two established roofing companies in the process over the next couple of years as most of their work vanished.