>>3538247

yeah I've heard the market in the omaha/council bluffs area is so crazy that it's literally worth my time/fuel to drive 100 miles one way to do work down there…. $50-75 an hour there.

This country backwater that I'm in…. right now… I can make $25-50 an hour but I do get into some stuff that I technically shouldn't that the guys that are supposed to do that stuff don't want to bother with.

I.E. add circuits to electrical panels and install light fixtures. Technically you are supposed to have an certified electrician to do that stuff but what do you do when they're all booked up for 6 months?

Happened to me last year.

It is getting really bad out there. Everyone had their grandpa's doing this shit… all the grandpa's were born in the 1930's and SOME in the 1940's and now they're all dying off and the younger generations didn't pick up on how to do any of this shit.

Now… I will say that all of this shifted in the last 5-10 years at the MOST and I saw it coming for sure…. it wasn't that long ago that I couldn't get $10 an hour to do general handyman work.

My father was a handyman (born in 44) but he never had a job when I was growing up. I know he advertised for handyman work before I was born, don't know how much he got. I did get a lot of education from him… started on a scroll saw when I was 5 years old and learned stick welding when I was 11 years old… replaced my first bath tub at 12-13 years old and fixed lawnmowers at 10-12 years old. I'm fearless when it come to anything I can see and I know how shit works and how shit goes together…. I also have an electrical certificate for 12v auto so that's no stranger to me either.

I'm now 35 so been doing this for a long time.

Have had disability because I'm profoundly hard of hearing along with waardenberg's syndrome so I've worked within their rules but now they're sending me disability review notices and I'm getting $50K in a month and a half and it's looking like a real good idea to get a $8K cargo van and take on handyman work and tell social security to go fly a kite.

Waardenberg's sucks though.

>>3538486

thank you anon.

I currently drive a Honda Odyssey for handyman work. Love it. Gets 20+mpg and carries everything that I need. It's technically my wife's van so I just have the rear seats folded flat and the middle seats are still in there, no cargo boxes or anything.

I am struggling with buying a Express that gets 15mpg on a good day and buying a Ford Transit Connect which gets 22mpg. I've thought I wanted to expand and offer 4x8 lumber hauling, door/window hauling and stuff like that…. but I am not sure I want to get that big. I am perfectly happy being the little guy who does all the work no one else wants to do because they can't stay at one job for a whole day and make a "full days wage". The local lumberyards deliver any amount I want to the jobsite so it hardly makes sense to plan to haul my own stuff when I can just order it delivered. Hauling services are cheap.

On the other hand I could get a Express and a dump trailer and haul for other people. Being in a small town of 2000 people and a school district of 6,000 people with about 15,000 in the county, a few other people doing this stuff as well to a certain point.

On your own skills…. don't be afraid to fuck up. You will fuck up. Everyone fucks up. Learn what you screwed up and move on.

If you really want to practice, go buy a remote control car and tear it all to pieces, cut all the wires (lol) and then put it all back together again and prove to yourself that you can handle mechanical things. They only cost $20 now and there's a lot to learn inside if you want to see it… gears, wiring, circuitry, and more.