What is in your opinion the difference between a professional and a nonprofessional roofer?

This is a great question submitted to me.

Is it appearance, organization and operation, customer service, identity, etc.?

Very true. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from one of the best old-timers I ever met was "you're only as good as your last job." Professionalism (as we've discussed...not exactly the same as professional) is a matter of conscience and some of us obviously shoot for 100 per cent despite our very human natures, and we not only have to contend with fluctuations in moral fortitude but extreme heat, wind, cold, pain, injury, hunger, thirst, fear, anger, frustration, and fatigue and anyone who has done roofing for a long, long time has experienced just how loud those things can scream. No pain, no gain. It's a marvel for sure. Almost four decades ago I had a very talented young guy working for me. He usually kept up a running banter filled with humor and good will but one particular very hot day he seemed kind of dark and brooding. I asked him what was up. "Don't you like roofing?" He sent me a look and with his peerless quickness of wit he shot back, "It's like standing on a ladder with one foot while beating on your fingers with a hammer and someone shoves a flame up your a$$. Do you like it?" rotfl.

There are a lot of people who play professional sports but they may not have a long career because they aren't as good as a lot of the others at what they do. So there is not only belonging to the professional group but there is also different levels of professionalism.

And going beyond that there are many different areas of expertise required to run a sucessful Roofing company. The higher the quality in each and every single area, the more "professional" the company is overall. Total perfection being the goal understanding that it can never be achieved 100 percent due to Human Nature. ;)

Since I brought up "just plain wrong", I looked at a roof several weeks back. Previously, there was a leak around the chimney and the leak was showing up several feet down a vaulted ceiling. A supposed "professional roofer" had sold the homeowner on putting down ice and water shield over the area of the leak. Made the homeowner feel good, but because of my experience, I knew it was just a waste of money because I knew the leak originated at the chimney and the ice and water shield added nothing.

Now, a leak showed up on the other side. I put on a chimney cap and fixed the flashing. Now everything is fixed and no more leaks. That's professional.

I looked at a roof today. At least 3 squares of shingles blew off in the last storm. An amateur would say, "those sure were some high winds". The insurance adjuster says, "it matters not why the shingles blew off. Since there was a storm, insurance pays." But since I am a professional roofer, I say, "that is what you get when you hire UNprofessional roofers. Those shingles were nailed high and the pressure was so high on that gun, the nails were barely holding the shingles in place."

Perhaps only a professional roofer can determine the difference between pro and non-pro; and, in regards to value, the difference between economizing and just plain wrong.

A professional always does or advices what's the best for the customer .

You can't talk about money without talking about value. I can pay you money to do my roof but the value might not be the roof you install. It might not even have anything to do with the quality of the roof you install. The value might simply be in making my roof problem "go away" even if it's only for just long enough to get a loan on a piece of property I'm trying to buy or to refinance. I could provide a real estate broker with a bogus roof inspection and the value is that I make the deal happen, but there's no intrinsic value in the report and getting paid for it does not make me a professional. Pay is a good indicator, but that's all.

A professional is someone who practices a profession. A profession is an occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification. An occupation is a job or profession. A vocation is a person's employment or main occupation, especially regarded as particularly worthy and requiring great dedication. Occupation, vocation, profession all hovering around together in a little cloud that we try in our way to condense into a useful meaning. An attorney working pro bono for no pay is still a professional. A professional is capable of being unprofessional. A non-professional is capable of being professional. Might require a good bit of luck, but it's possible; I've seen it. Training, even if it's just a little research, dedication, and value. I think if we focus on value we're doing the best we can to be professional.

A professional is someone who gets paid to do the job.

I try to raise my business to a standard of excellance. I want my company to be the one everyone uses in my area to measure successful roofers by, not just professional.

Probably easier to define the difference between a professional roofer and a hack than a professional roofer from a non-professional roofer.

You would have to think that the non-professional was at one time a professional and something made him go to the other side.

That "something" could be financial where he took the money and ran.

Maybe missed something on a quote and took a shortcut to prevent a loss at the expense of the client.

Skirting regulations and pocketing the money saved.

Bidding work to only establish perceived cash flow to stay financially alive for another month.

Agreed. When I use the term "the industry" I usually mean two things and people sometimes get confused by that. On the one hand, I mean The Industry (manuf., ICBO, testing labs, trade orgs, applicators, all rolled into one "official" sometimes specific and sometimes vague entity) but I also mean Everything-that-people-are-doing-in-the-day to day-business-of-putting-on-roofs. Same difference between saying "in sports..." or saying, The Sports Industry.

I've always been a bit of a team player and a bit of a rebel and don't want to rid myself of either side. One of the things I liked most about Dick Fricklas was that he was right in the dead center of The Industry but never batted an eye when it came to questioning the reality of positions The Industry would take.

Problem with The Industry is that it tries to extract Policy from a matrix of mistakes and gets itself into tight spots with one-size-fits-all proclamations. Everybody gets in line and stops thinking and takes refuge in policy. Drives me nuts quite often. A lot of the best decisions come down to a certain "feel" and policy people are terrified of that. C'est la vie.

I like to keep track of what The Industry is coming up with because it represents a broader data base than what I can generate entirely on my own, but I am always prepared to deviate from Industry Policy when I have certain knowledge from personal hands-on experience that the policy is either biased, wrong, or that I can do better.

People will always move towards establishing policy. But then they change it. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes just because they think they can and think they can get away with it. Go ahead and use those Oatey jacks with the neoprene collars that UV degrade in ten to fifteen years. It's an industry "standard" now. Not on my watch. Go ahead and put on a "lifetime" tile roof over one layer of 30# felt. Not on my watch. Go ahead and force a piece of metal nosing on a humpy fascia board that has no sheathing end-grain exposed. Mind-numbing dumb. The list is quite long actually.

You're right. It's funny though...my mind coupled it with unprofessional rather than nonprofessional so it took me down a different path. I had a gc friend who once defined professional as someone who does more than an amateur but less than he's capable of. That struck me as odd but the more I thought about it the more it rang kind of true. A "professional" doesn't usually gild the lily. Sometimes I do gild lilies just to keep from getting bored with the routine specs or to see just how well I can do, but I have it in me to cut the corners that don't hurt anything with the best of them.

A professional knows industry materials, standards, and practices well enough to see a full range of options on each project, has a reasonable idea about the time, effort, and expense entailed by each of them, has seen and made enough mistakes to provide informed opinions concerning the consequences of decisions made and actions taken, knows the difference between his responsibilities and other people's, and takes full responsibility for his.

Well Vickie, you asked what is a professional "Roofer". Of course there will be many replies commenting on many different areas of the roofing "Business", all of which are legitimate and have plenty to do with the overall scope of things.

But a professional "Roofer" doesn't have to own a business. Like some of the others have already stated, he or she is the person who is an expert in the roofing trade, has many years of experience, pride and integrity in their work and will do the right thing even when nobody's looking and no one else but them would ever know the difference! ;)

A professional is an expert at what s/he professes to be and is worthy to be paid for it. So a professional roofer is an expert at roofing and worthy of being paid for it. That does not mean s/he is necessarily an expert business person or an expert sales person or an expert anything else.