Anyone Work in Trades? Tell Me About Your Journey! | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Anyone Work in Trades? Tell Me About Your Journey!

Mad Mike said:
My oldest kid does carpet cleaning/restoration - it's hard work lugging heavy machines around - but he makes an insane amount of money.
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Funny enough I've always found this to be a very rewarding thing to do. While I can only speak for cleaning my own home carpets I have to admit I have wasted hours watching people on YouTube professional clean carpets in home and where the carpet is brought to a cleaning facility. I absolutely love the results it must make them very proud as you can clearly see the efforts of their work.
 
Ontario never enforced this. The COT was and is a joke. They are terrible to deal with.

My red seal and other licenses cost 60bucks for three years. After COT came about it went to 120 a year

The ministry of training did and still handle the testing.

COT was a place for mcginty to place some of his pals.
 
I went to renew my mechanic's licence after being away (ahem) for many years.
They wanted me to back pay my fees 20+ years !!!
Needless to say they can pound sand.
 
TK4 said:
I went to renew my mechanic's licence after being away (ahem) for many years.
They wanted me to back pay my fees 20+ years !!!
Needless to say they can pound sand.
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This is becoming more and more common beyond classic trades, many professional licensing bodies have started doing it as well as people let them drop to save money (maybe a career change, maybe not required in current job) and come back years later to "renew" when they need it for something. Just be glad that they do not require full re-certification. Some do that if the lapse is greater than four years.... the records are gone, you need to start from scratch again, here is an application form. Some organizations have a lower fee that does not allow you to practice to keep the "file" open.

It is about the $$$$$s of course.
 
Jampy00 said:
Funny enough I've always found this to be a very rewarding thing to do. While I can only speak for cleaning my own home carpets I have to admit I have wasted hours watching people on YouTube professional clean carpets in home and where the carpet is brought to a cleaning facility. I absolutely love the results it must make them very proud as you can clearly see the efforts of their work.
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The stuff you see on you tube is DIY. There aren't many carpet cleaners that do high-end or commercial stuff -- that requires a lot more training and technical expertise than most services offer to homeowners.

You can be a 'carpet technician' using steam cleaning equipment after 30 minutes of training - about as long as it takes one to figure out how to use a Home Depot rental unit (same principle, different scale). That gets you employable at $15-20/hr, at companies that do 3 rooms for $129.

The guys that run commercial rotating equipment need months of on the job training. They deal with difficult situations and unique installations. Get that trade under your belt and you can make $30+/hr working for ServiceMaster or a restoration company. Get really good, get a mini service van + $20Gs of equipment and your phone will ring all day for $100/hr. (fact: an executive plane gets it's carpets cleaned 1-2 times a year at a cost of $500/call. It takes about 1hr. There are 2 guys that do most of the work in the GTA, about 200 calls a year between them).

It's not a red seal trade, and it's not one that many people aspire to. But it is a trade and it can be a lucrative one if you are good.
 
ToSlow said:
If you’re willing to work hard and do a two on two off or a 7 and 7, get into the heavy equipment mechanic apprenticeship.

I was 3k underground last wk, enjoy what i do and also enjoy the money for working 6months a year,
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Maybe you and I should talk sometime…
 
Evoex said:
Maybe you and I should talk sometime…
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1:1 is ok but you can make much more at a 2:1 rotation.

The time at home isn’t paid so your salary is basically half a year.

We worked 17-11 and it was awesome. Especially as each day was 8 at standard rate, 3hrs at 1.5 and Sat/Sun/Holiday were 11h at 1.5x.

Add in the 20% site bonus atop your base salary and it adds up quick.

Most important is whether the family can survive this arrangement. It’s very difficult on the relationship and divorces are very prevalent.
 
mimico_polak said:
1:1 is ok but you can make much more at a 2:1 rotation.

The time at home isn’t paid so your salary is basically half a year.

We worked 17-11 and it was awesome. Especially as each day was 8 at standard rate, 3hrs at 1.5 and Sat/Sun/Holiday were 11h at 1.5x.

Add in the 20% site bonus atop your base salary and it adds up quick.

Most important is whether the family can survive this arrangement. It’s very difficult on the relationship and divorces are very prevalent.
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Only one way to find out 😈
 
Evoex said:
Only one way to find out 😈
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Word of advice from my old manager:

Don’t get divorced while making FIFO money. You’ll never pay off the wife when they go after your remote site payments. Try to do it 2 years after if possible.
 
mimico_polak said:
Word of advice from my old manager:

Don’t get divorced while making FIFO money. You’ll never pay off the wife when they go after your remote site payments. Try to do it 2 years after if possible.
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She makes more then me!
 
My story, simple. My dad owned a bodyshop when I was a kid and I always around it, loved it, and now I work on my own stuff for the most part. In High school I did the co-op program to be an auto service tech and I quickly realized just how much I hated working on other people's junk. Mind you, I also hated working on my E90 328i every 2 months but at least I drove with pride and satisfaction when it was working. That was one thing I didn't like.

The pay was the second thing. I really did not like the fact that you get paid per job/rather than per hour/salary. You could spend 10 hours on a 6 hour job but you get paid the 6hr. In a way it incentivizes you to work quicker and complete jobs quicker than they say on paper. Rip through like a billion oil changes and rake it in lol. On the other hand, speed kills quality.

Third, I didn't like to be permanently dirty.
 
Karfanatik said:
My story, simple. My dad owned a bodyshop when I was a kid and I always around it, loved it, and now I work on my own stuff for the most part. In High school I did the co-op program to be an auto service tech and I quickly realized just how much I hated working on other people's junk. Mind you, I also hated working on my E90 328i every 2 months but at least I drove with pride and satisfaction when it was working. That was one thing I didn't like.

The pay was the second thing. I really did not like the fact that you get paid per job/rather than per hour/salary. You could spend 10 hours on a 6 hour job but you get paid the 6hr. In a way it incentivizes you to work quicker and complete jobs quicker than they say on paper. Rip through like a billion oil changes and rake it in lol. On the other hand, speed kills quality.

Third, I didn't like to be permanently dirty.
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Shot in the dark here, but any chance your Dad's name was Ned?
 
Op,

Retail is a grind. But it’s also a great training grown in sales and service which can pivot to other industries.

Finance is one. Look at Citi Financial. They have branch employees with little or no experience that do well and move up in the company or get educated with the company support and move up.

Decent hours, yes you work in a branch and have to make some outbound calls at times but, generally speaking folks do well if they are good with people.

Just a thought.

I admire Mike Rowe and his determination to show trades are an excellent place to seek a career.

I did 4 years high school and 3 years college for electrical engineering. I ended up in insurance and now finance.

The only dirt under my nails is from my bike or car. I couldn’t do the physical work on a regular basis and figured that out eventually.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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One life lesson I learned that (I firmly believe) really helped me out in my career was being 'stuck' working at a car dealership. I worked as a lot attendant, parts advisor, service advisor and then sales advisor over the course of 7 years. Part time during the year, full time during the summer. Paid off my entire education with that job. Each aspect helped me gain skills that were important later on. But the most important one was talking to people from all walks of life. From the stupid rich, to the normal 'worked off my whole life and now I want a Jag' folk it was a very good learning experience.

Sink or swim, sales will ALWAYS be in demand. Maybe not directly...but you need to negotiate with your boss, co-workers, stakeholders, contractors, and everyone else in your life...there is always negotiations and car sales really helped me out.

That opened a door to a career in technical sales in the water and wastewater industry...then that helped me move into the heavy civil world I'm in now working on underground projects....meanwhile I graduated in Aerospace Engineering...go figure.
 
Wow thanks everyone for the thoughtful and informative responses! I've been MIA for a bit dealing with some personal stuff, but its nice coming back to this after a few weeks and reading all of your responses.

Going to give another read or 10 as there's a ton of info and experiences on here. Progress will likely be slow re any sort of job transition for me as I have student debt + usual living expenses to pay off, so unfortunately going back to $15 an hour when starting out somewhere will require some serious cushion (if I can even form one), or otherwise doing night school or something before I am ready to make a jump!

Sales experience is definitely good to have I feel. Though in the retail department it's definitely getting tiring at an exponential rate after doing it for so long. Maybe even transitioning to a more blue collar role with that experience tentatively may be a good way to build up some extra cash before I seriously thing of making a dramatic job change.
 
mimico_polak said:
One life lesson I learned that (I firmly believe) really helped me out in my career was being 'stuck' working at a car dealership. I worked as a lot attendant, parts advisor, service advisor and then sales advisor over the course of 7 years. Part time during the year, full time during the summer. Paid off my entire education with that job. Each aspect helped me gain skills that were important later on. But the most important one was talking to people from all walks of life. From the stupid rich, to the normal 'worked off my whole life and now I want a Jag' folk it was a very good learning experience.

Sink or swim, sales will ALWAYS be in demand. Maybe not directly...but you need to negotiate with your boss, co-workers, stakeholders, contractors, and everyone else in your life...there is always negotiations and car sales really helped me out.

That opened a door to a career in technical sales in the water and wastewater industry...then that helped me move into the heavy civil world I'm in now working on underground projects....meanwhile I graduated in Aerospace Engineering...go figure.
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Funny you say that as i also have my OIT in all four categories
 
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