"I guess it depends on your clients. About 75% of my work is residential or rural and I always prepare paper copies."
Not to beat a dead horse, but emailing pdfs to Kinkos to be printed is an option if you must have paper. There is always a way.
It's not the $1200 plotter that kills you, its the hundred dollar cartridges. Add a $10 charge per full sized copy (the Kinkos fee) and you will have all your clients wanting pdfs.
I believe you on the ink and cartridge. That stuff will cost you your first born just for home use. Lol. We don’t even have a home printer anymore for that very reason and the printer itself is useless in no time.
I would have to do a search on line to find out how close the nearest Kinko's happens to be. I'm guessing 70 miles. It's that sort of thing that can make big differences in how to identify what is most economical to own as opposed to outsource. Heck, I started out borrowing a metal detector that my neighbor used to use to hunt for lost bolts and such while working on farm equipment out in fields. Had a 99-foot steel tape.
I have two 300 ft add tapes steel. One still in the box with calibrations paperwork from navy to invar. Lol. I use one to lay out paddocks. I have chaining pins and plumb bob. Heck a brunton compass and right angle prism still so i am good lol. 99 ft what cut it a bush ace or shovel. I was pretty good at making repairs to steel tapes Do they even make those kits anymore?
"Not to beat a dead horse, but emailing pdfs to Kinkos to be printed is an option if you must have paper."
For me the critical product is mylar for filing with the county. When I was no longer able to find new ink cartridges for my HP450C, I tried FedEx/Kinko's as well as the local mom-and-pop reprographics place as a substitute, but neither was able to do mylar larger than 24" (I need 18"x26" per CA requirements). So I bought an Epson T3470 plotter (around $2k in 2019) and have been pretty happy with it.
What you state by saying start out as one man band and get comfortable with all aspects of the business is some wise advice. Before you take on the responsibilities of feeding others. I guess hypothetically if i were 20 years younger and looking at this. I would probably write a business plan that would have payroll set aside for x amount of employees as time went on for x amount of months before hiring. I had a very talented cousin who good do wonders with craftsmanship I mean just a natural woods worker. Cabinets shelves anything. But he started out in debt hired several people of course payroll was borrowed everything tools and all . We all know what happened. He was so stressed so worried about the folks and there families he was supporting it drove him to a breaking point. It took him a long time to get over that when things went south. He worked for someone else for years before saving and getting the confidence to go on his own and has been successful now. But he still carries that weight to this day of failing those folks early on.
"Not to beat a dead horse, but emailing pdfs to Kinkos to be printed is an option if you must have paper. There is always a way."
I understand what you're saying about the cost of ink, maintenance, printheads, ect but outsourcing my printing adds 40 miles of driving for prints (or waiting for the mail), not to mention people calling to say they can't read my map because they printed it on 8.5 x 11. People want paper maps in my area. In addition, I prefer to do markups and map reviews on an actual hard copy. I did it long enough to know I needed a printer when I started up.
60k for a stripped down 3500 Ram with 8' bed, just got one. They are hard to come by.
GULP!!!!
Probably did it too early, there could be a crash coming for vehicles.
Buyers market hitting now.
60k for a stripped down 3500 Ram with 8′ bed, just got one. They are hard to come by.
My office is a block from the local Ford dealer. Sometimes at lunch I go look at the new trucks and their sticker prices. There are some F150s in the low $50k range, none lower. Then there are some in the high 90's. YIKE!
I did it long enough to know I needed a printer when I started up.
I'd want a plotter in my office, too. Nevertheless, we have one here in a 30 person office that gets used so rarely before you print anything you have to spend a half hour running head cleaning operations. But my major point is that if you have to get along without one for awhile during business startup there are ways that can be done.
And buck up, Jim. One of these days the counties are going to join the 21st century and accept pdf submissions for record. Maybe. Someday. One can hope.
When the housing market crashed in 2008, I found myself unemployed. Since I had been surveying for almost 30 years at the time, I had already accumulated much of the field tools needed to equip the truck that I already owned. I spent about $50K of my 401K money to purchase a new Leica 2" TS, data collector and AutoCAD (with license) that I bought off of Ebay and a $1 million E & O policy.
At the time of the launch, I did not have a plotter, anything that I need to plot in smaller formats was plotted from my personal laser printer, anything larger than 8.5" x 14" was printed to pdf on a thumb drive and taken to Kinko's for plotting and reproduction.
I always saved a personal copy of my client contacts incase I made an employment move. Before I made the decision to pull the trigger, I reached out to them to see there was any interest in sending work my way and got a lot of support. I was also fortunate that I had a talent pool to draw from as a result of them being laid off to.
I managed to realize an ROI in less than a year, bought a plotter and other needed items as well as paid myself and others good wages. I'll have to tell you though, it was not at all easy as I found myself working 12 to 16 hour days, 6 days a week. I did the proposals, calculations, attended meetings, marketed, answered the phone and payroll, all on my lonesome. I had a few major projects doing construction layout that kept the cash flowing when few other area surveyors in the area had a work load, with some businesses failing. When businesses were closing their doors, I jumped at the chance to buy any good used equipment that I wanted.
The whole key to being successful as a start up is to start with a following that will send work your way. In the beginning, you can't just sit back and wait for your phone to ring, you need to be able to get your work out the door and let your name get out there through networking, marketing and any other means.
Now is not really the best time to launch a new survey business with the economy lagging and interest rates high. Housing starts are declining and nobody wants to finance a project in the current economy. The leading factor in me starting my own venture in a crashed economy was that unemployment was not enough to feed my family and pay the bills, so, I rolled the dice. On the upside, when the economy turned around in 2012, I sold my company for a good profit and took a 9 to 5 job again.
> I’d want a plotter in my office
I find an A3 colour inkjet suffices for my needs
Using colour I can display the same information in A3 as I can on A2 or A1
Its good for checking before creating pdf's
And doesn't cost the earth to run
Yeah I watched during covid trucks selling for above sticker prices. My 21 F350 is tge base model as well. I searched for a while to get one that had no carpet and just basic stuff. I can’t stand carpet in a truck. But i use mine on farm. So it sees everything from dog to cow pies . Water hose and a hand whisk broom is all ya need. Lol
