Tires Customer had a kitchen knife hidden in his grass, cut two tires

[radios1]

I would think that having your tires cut by an unsafe condition would be the same as having your foot cut, which could have happened, and would have been lawsuit time. I've read about homeowners being sued by a criminal being injured that came onto their property to steal!!.

 

[fried1765]

Sounds like a claim against his home owner insurance.

The OP is in Costa Rica.
"Homeowner insurance"?

 

[fried1765]

So you under cut all the competing bidders, use equipment with faulty tires and some how a "hazard" in work environment is customers fault.... Sound like poor business model..... Dig deep in pockets and put new tires on front, if any change left over buy a 6 pack and sit on porch and dream of better day tomorrow...

I been working my five acres for almost 10 years now, and still find stuff left behind by previous owners.... "Stuff" happens....

Dale

I had a couple model T axles just barely poking out of the ground...I think my dad buried them.
A few minutes with my TLB solved that problem.

 

[newbury]

You need to walk the job first and if it's

full of metal trash

bid the job accordingly and tell them they will have to pay for damage.

 

[bigtiller]

Don't do anything negative, stay positive and it may be rewarding. He might have a lot of friends and word of mouth can be a good thing.....or not.

After 24 years of tilling gardens for beer money I expected something like this to happen, and sometimes it did. Several times over the years I had to come home and do repairs. Doing that gave me time to cool down so I could go back to tilling in a good mood, and it sometimes paid off handsomely.

 

[Industrial Toys]

If you are in that business, it's your risk. Visually check any areas prior to work. For something weird hidden in the grass or dirt, well, sheit just happens sometimes. Part of being in business and why one should not screw themselves (and everyone else in that business) doing work too cheap. Allow for contingency. Better your tires than someone stepping on it. A decent customer would offer to pay for damages (If they can). Good way to find out the charactor of a given customer for future reference.

I remember my first snow blowing job for a neighbour many years ago with a brand new 6' lucknow blower. Picked up a stone and busted a chain. No big deal, but felt like it at the time. My first lesson that it isn't just about having equipment and making some money.

 

[crashz]

Yep - doing work for money - its on you. A thorough inspection of the site might have told you of the problem ahead of time. Then you could have priced in the "risk". Your mechanic has a good point.

Going forward, maybe you can do a few things differently:
- Use the backhoe to move soil in areas of tire killers
- Have your tires filled with foam.
- Have a laborer collect the objects

So who picked up this stuff in the end? Your client? I find it worth my time to get out of the machine and clean up areas before and after the work as needed. Helps to protect your machine and yourself and leaves the job looking neat. Customers respond well to that.

Of course, sometime you can't see the problem until you are already in it. Last year I ran into a barbed wire fence that was unstrung and laying in the field. It tangled in my brush cutter and was a royal pain to cut out. But I stopped, cut it out, picked up all the old wire, and disposed of it myself. I billed my hourly rate for the whole time.

Another job had a bunch of wind blown trees and branches down in the field. I was not asked to move them, but the extra time to clean them up and place into the woods was not long (1 hr or so) and allowed me to complete the project with nice clean lines and no areas missed. Makes a big difference to good customers.

 

[Industrial Toys]

It's actually amazing how many guys that work on machines would never leave their machine, touch the dirt, bend down or grab a shovel if they absolutely didn't have too.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I was working a job one time where we had a few pieces of equipment parked for a few nights. After the first night a nearby homeowner said our trucks threw a rock and busted out his windshield and wanted $300. I was pretty sure our equipment had nothing to do with his broken windshield, and it was already broken, and the guy wanted me to pay for it instead. So you know what I did?

I reached in my pocket and paid him $300.

When you are a business owner, ANTICIPATING future expenses is as much of a business model as demanding something is "right". If I had not paid the guy, every windshield in my equipment would have been busted out, and the cost to haul the equipment somewhere else instead of by that guys house would have been costly. It was cheaper to just pay the guy $300 in the end.

$300 bucks was cheap considering my options.

The same lesson applies here. Why would you get belligerent with a customer who is paying you? What is a few hundred bucks in tires? You already said that they were worn out, which is business speak for "you got your money already out of the tires", why would you anger a customer over something that has already been paid for? To me that defies sound business practice.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I would think that having your tires cut by an unsafe condition would be the same as having your foot cut, which could have happened, and would have been lawsuit time. I've read about homeowners being sued by a criminal being injured that came onto their property to steal!!.

Be that as it may, do you really want your name as a contractor tarnished because you are squabbling over a few hundred bucks in tires?

How many landowners will want YOU working on their land because you have the reputation of going after their insurance company because of one bad incident?

How many jobs are you going to lose because you get the reputation by word of mouth that you whine over every little circumstance? One lost job and you might have made enough money to buy 10 sets of tires.

When you are a contractor, you have to look at the big picture. A few hundred bucks in replacing worn-out knifed tires means little. Be thankful some vandals did not knife your brand new tires on purpose. Or had your loader's hydraulic tank sugared by vandals. Or...

Sliced tires by hidden debris in the dirt does not even register on my concern scale. Two tires in the same day...yeah that is a bad day, and we all have had those days, but thankfully those days are not everyday, otherwise we never would stay in business.