Have you called the vendor in to have him explain things to your boss? Maybe the vendor did promise 360,000 cars, or maybe it’s a misunderstanding of some sort. Maybe the contractor that built the facility subtituted a lower quality chain during construction. Getting a manufacturers rep to have a word with your boss may help him understand the situation better.
To the OP: I hope this thread doesn’t jeopardize your position. You’ve given enough incidentals to ID the boss/firm and hopefully someone out there who’s friendly with your boss doesn’t read this and inform him.
I hate to sound arrogant, but if the boss wants to keep his business running without his constant and direct involvement, I’m pretty irreplaceable at this point in the game.
My only worry is that he’s tiring of the headaches and unforeseen expenses (although this one is quite foreseeable, given that every tunnel wash that uses a conveyor needs it’s chain replaced every few years) and will sell the place and I’ll be out of a job.
He’s shopped the place before, but I suspect that nobody, especially in this economic climate, will give him what he’s asking for his washes, simply because I know for a fact that a prospective buyer he entertained balked at his asking price and rightly so…it’s cheaper for our main competitor (Mike’s) with their deep pockets to build a new location rather than incur the issues of an existing one.
And I really don’t care if my boss reads this. In fact, he should, because he’s the reason we have had this problem because he’s the only person that can authorize a repair job of this cost magnitude (our estimate: $6,000, and that’s just for parts, not counting labor which would likely be in the $1500 range, and lost revenue for a whole day to take the old one out and install the new one).
And it can be measured by bank accounts.
The chain broke again on Sunday, and again on Monday. It rained all day yesterday, so the chain didn’t move (wuold have been a perfect day to, I don’t know, replace the chain?) and today so far so good.
We are getting a new chain, finally, but our distributor won’t receive it until Friday, and I doubt we’ll be installing it until after the weekend, when it will likely break again.
And to top it all off, it looks like yours truly will be participating in an overnight install. The boss doesn’t want to shut down during the day to install the new chain, he wants to do it starting at 9:00pm…and it will take about 6-8 hours to install.
I am going to laugh if the chain breaks on the day of the scheduled install, thereby negating the potential revenue he hopes to gain by not just closing and doing it during normal business hours.
We put in a new chain today. God it was a lot of work, but satisfyingly so. That fucker weighs a thousand pounds and we assemble it in sections.
The sweet sound of a quiet, brand-new chain was solace for the savage beast within.
All is well in carwash land, for now.
Congratulations on your new acquisition, FGIE, and a hearty “Well Done!” for your patience and persistence.