Turned down a NASTY job...

A

AllWashedUp07

New member
Hey all, I don't post here enough but I do visit the sit all the time and respect everyone's opinion here. So here is the situation, I have a trucking company that I have been doing work for almost every week for the past 4 years. I do anything for them from the owner's high end car details, polishing 43' tankers, to inside out of tractors for resale. We have a great relationship and mutual respect for each other.

Last Friday they asked me to look at a tractor that belonged to one of their client, it seems that the driver had a situation where he couldn't get to a rest stop in time, he somehow managed to get crap all over the upholstery of both seats. The service manager told me he wouldn't be upset with me if I said no, but he asked me if I wanted to clean it. I checked it out, from a distance, and after a little thought I turned it down.

I told him that my main concern was the health risk to me and my guys, I just didn't feel comfortable doing it so I sure as hell wasn't going to ask one of my guys to try it. I have had this feeling for the whole weekend that I let these guys down, even though they said they understood completely I can't get this nagging feeling out of my head.

I guess I am wondering what you guys would have done in this situation.

Thanks
 
Ben@Autopia said:
Send in the hazmat team for this one. :sick1:
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Yup, I actually told him they may be better off replacing the seats, expensive but probably the right thing to do. I know if I was a driver I wouldn't want to drive that truck knowing what happened, no matter how good the seats looked.
 
i'd have passed as well....heck, I have passed on jobs easier than that!!!! It has to be worth it for you to do the work...charge 1000 bucks, detail everything else, replace the seats instead of cleaning them, and you still make money on the job.



you did the right thing!
 
I draw the line at bodily fluids or milk. Absolutely cannot clean milk stains, the smell gets to me so bad I am guaranteed to hurl.
 
Scottwax said:
I draw the line at bodily fluids or milk. Absolutely cannot clean milk stains, the smell gets to me so bad I am guaranteed to hurl.
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That is so funny... I did hurl once from a milk stain!!!... NEVER AGAIN!!!
 
Scottwax said:
I draw the line at bodily fluids or milk. Absolutely cannot clean milk stains, the smell gets to me so bad I am guaranteed to hurl.
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I did a spilled milk job last year, the poor lady just bought the car less than a week prior and was a wreck about it, luckily it wasn't a lot, one of those small containers. It was pretty nasty but I extracted it and soaked it with Meguires odor eliminator and it never came back. She was ecstatic.



The worst job I think I did was on a truck that was used to suck the oil out of fryer pits at restaurants to use as bio fuel the whole interior of the truck was coated in fryer oil. That one took 2 of us all day, almost a gallon of OPC 3 refills on my vapor steamer, and 2 t shirts.
 
Way back when I learned a very polite way to refuse a job. Price it so high that you'd be crazy not to do it for that price. In this case, if they somehow went for the insane price, I'd fine a local company that specialized in cleaning bio-waste, have them do the initial clean up and then do the detail, and add a huge markup of course.
 
If you're not equipped to clean that type of job, then I wouldn't worry about it. Rather to have turned it down than taken it on and not have been able to do it right. That would have taken a much worse toll on your relationship with your client.
 
The biggest problem with milk spills is the conversation always starts off like this "I had a gallon of milk spill in my car a COUPLE WEEKS AGO and now it is starting to smell real bad..."
 
WAS said:
If you're not equipped to clean that type of job, then I wouldn't worry about it. Rather to have turned it down than taken it on and not have been able to do it right. That would have taken a much worse toll on your relationship with your client.
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we think alike a lot....



got a call today from a lady who wanted the carpets shampoo'd and the fabric seats cleaned...

I focus mainly on paint correction and am not setup for full interior jobs like he mentioned she wanted. I have a few people whom I refer work out to for interior jobs like that because they are better at them than I because they have the right stuff (I sold me extractor to a friend so I send him some work from time to time). I mentioned to the lady "I would rather give you a good recommendation rather than a half-assed job". in the end, she is going to just take it to the car wash to have the interior done, and have me do the paint correction work!
 
I spoke with my client yesterday, he said he was glad I didn't do it, I guess the driver has C. Dif, he's been in the hospital since last Friday. I told him I was bumming all weekend because I felt I let him down, he told me to forget about it and get there early next Friday to do a paint correction on his Denali and get his Z06 cleaned up for the summer. I guess I need to stop over thinking stuff like that, thanks for the help guy's!
 
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