Prefinishing shop

I know its a common theme here on painttalk, but it totally depends on your production rates. I dont know enough about your shop set up in terms of rack systems, heat, air circulation and most importantly the efficiency and diligence of the people applying the finishes. Everything about the way you receive, sort, organize, finish, dry, bundle, load and transport the materials comes into play. Keep in mind that builders are used to paying 10-15 cents per lineal for factory preprimed stuff, so 60 can be high to them, but 60 can be really tight for you because of all the aforementioned factors that come into play in production prefinishing.

On the labor side, shop work can be incredibly mindless, tedious and repetitive. Thats why I am good at such an operation. Having people in the shop who can keep their heads in the game is key. I know personally the rage that sets in when you have rocked out 2000 feet of something and theres 8000 more sitting there and the pile isnt getting any smaller. Not to discourage you, just keeping it real. It is a great service to offer. I would suggest taking a small quantity of something like the typical base profile you mentioned and running 1000 ft of it at a price you feel comfortable with and job cost the crap out of it. It may help to focus on the materials that builders cant get factory preprimed.

small

I don't mind the questions...it might be more helpful to have a phone conversation at some point, as I still don't know where you are at in your process.

A shop service of any size can be profitable, it depends on who you are serving. If you are taking 10s of thousands of feet directly from lumber distributors, you need to be set up for lower priced volume. If you are doing smaller batches for custom builders, the smaller your operation the better you control costs and quality.

In terms of what they are looking for in quality, they can get cedar clapboard siding prestained with Cabot from the factory for 15 cents per lineal. The siding is passed through a machine and a dryer and quickly ready to load on a truck for delivery. You will not be able to compete with that, no matter how much better your Cabot is or how custom your application methods are. Its a niche market that depends on figuring out the materials that they are unable to get factory prefinished and focusing heavily on those things. If there is enough demand for those items, you have a good thing.

As to delivery, we have done it a number of ways over the years, using a combination of our trucks, various trailers, lumber trucks and even hiring a moving company to transport large quantities of extremely fragile product. I wouldnt recommend investing in hard core delivery rigs up front until your initial set up and operation costs are recovered. For me, after 5 years it got to the point where it was as much for our convenience as the customers. However, the builder still doesnt ultimately care if common products show up prefinished from the factory in a curtain truck or prefinished from us on trucks and trailer, and that decision is usually based on cost. Having observed enough of the factory prefinish delivery system on job sites over the years, I found their weaknesses and made them our strengths. There are alot of little aspects of the process that we do, that the factories are not doing. It would be imprudent to lay that all out in this format, but if you put this idea into action seriously, I could offer more advice.