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by noahjk 398 days ago
For this reason, maybe a handyman / jack-of-all-trades will have less wear and tear on their body? Diversity in tasks could mean a week of concrete followed by a week of cabinets, then a day or two of building a staircase, three hours of adding a new receptacle, and then two days of painting? Although in some ways, a handyman's job might be harder - they should be a quick learner, have good support / contacts in specific trades, and it might require better/more marketing to get customers.
1 comments
Balgair 398 days ago
Those are vanishingly small jobs these days in the US at least. Most companies and guys will specialize in electrical or drywall or something as they become faster at it and time is money in the trades. These skilled jobs typically require more than a single truck's worth of equipment to do quickly.

Like, tying rebar is really hard to do by hand, but they make a gun that will do it for you in seconds: https://amsalesinc.com/products/rebar-tying-gun-makita-xrt01... . You can do a whole pad of concrete in an hour that would take you days otherwise. But that gun is thousands of dollars (supply and demand baby). So having a truck of these time saving gadgets for a bunch of job types isn't feasible. Hence the specialization.

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ty6853 398 days ago
Unless you live in a remarkably remote area, rental yards carry pretty much everything you can need. I've even rented $100,000 excavators I needed for a day quite easily, and it eats into the value of your labor maybe 20-30% at worst.
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Balgair 398 days ago
I mean, not a lot of handymen are able to eat 20%; that a pretty big cost.
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pasttense01 398 days ago
Apparently you are not a homeowner--as they have large numbers of these small jobs.
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Balgair 397 days ago
Oh, I very much have a lot of these jobs at the house. It's just that I tend to call a specialist [0] as the handy men around me tend to, well, not really exist anymore. Besides, most of the smaller things that don't require the really tall ladders, I can do myself.

[0] who then never shows up on time and charges too much. But that's a whole nother story about where I live...

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