When I lived in Wyoming I traveled all over the place tuning and repairing pianos and organs. I called all the local weekly papers and placed an ad a month in advance using an 800 number provided by an answering service. As the calls would trickle in I'd try to zone my trip so that I could at least give them an idea as to what part of what day I'd be there. I'd be on the road for a week to 10 days at a time. Forecasting how long it would take to drive distances of up to 150 miles between calls using every short cut and back road that I thought might be open for the winter. Prior to my 10 years in Wyoming I did calls in Minnesota on a similar basis covering Cambridge to Brainerd and all points north and south by about 50 miles and previous to that I lived in Minneapolis and traveled Cambridge to Rochester. Recently I tuned 12 pianos about 100 miles from here, stayed the night on the coast and watched the sun set each evening, walked the beach, ate rice and veggies mostly, lost about 5 pounds and gained a few dollars for the bank account. I've since gained 10 pounds eating the bushel of oysters (BBQ'd with butter, garlic, cheese and Yoshidas) that I shared with my neighbors. I know it sounds tough but it's all in a days work eh?? When I schedule the customer and there's an indication of repairs needed, I start asking lots of pesky questions to try and determine what parts I need to bring along. I used to carry a full set of strings and other parts but the climate here isn't conducive to "rust free" storage. It doesn't look good when you reach for a part and give it a shake to remove all the moss. There's lots of people out there that have pianos in their homes that live in remote areas. They need them tuned just like all the others. Getting to them these days is especially tough/expensive with gas prices being what they are. If I have a "flowing circuit" to work I usually don't charge all that much for mileage. Here in the metro area it's common to travel 80 to 100 miles in a day doing 3 and 4 calls so if I'm on the road and I travel that far doing 4 and 5 calls I can get away with charging a set fee for mileage for each call. I used to enjoy the travel and meeting the people way back in the woods living with the mushrooms but any more now days I prefer to stay home. I'm getting the "been there, done that" syndrome about it all. Lar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101013/07875824/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC