Today I dealt with a couple issues. First, I met with my office manager for a few hours to go over our chart of accounts and some other miscellaneous odds and ends.
Secondly, I was managing our mechanic.
This is the first year we have had a company mechanic. His job is to maintain the equipment on pre-set maintenance schedules and repair anything that breaks. If he can’t, he must send it out to get repaired.
Currently, we have one mechanic that is paid $16/hour. Hes a younger kid (22) and in school to be an accountant. He is very talented, but his primary focus is school and his mechanic work with us comes second. While he is there he is great, but while he’s not there, hes not there, which is a problem for us.
To solve this problem, we are looking for an alternative mechanic. We are not sure 100% of what we need, to some extent we will need to cater to whomever we hire. Next year, we intend to also do mulch deliveries so he will be responsible for loading up the mulch. If we have a younger guy, we can also use him to fill in when needed when we are short a laborer.
Temporarily, we have hired a 16 year old kid to work alongside our mechanic. Today was the first day we tried him out. We figured working at 10 an hour will save us some money if he works under the management of the higher paid mechanic. Also, as a younger guy, he would be able to grow with us as well as fill in for some of the landscaping when needed.
The alternative of two mechanics to cover for each other would be one reliable older guy that would be on call. The reason I say older retired guy is that he may not need the income but will be able to have full time availability. The problem with part time workers is they come with part time commitment.
Our current mechanic will be leaving the end of next year, so maybe we will be able to get the best of both worlds, and replace our current mechanic with a fully available older mechanic and a younger helper to save us money and give us a versatile worker.
