The life of a country field tech.

[PASTech]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

What I'd like to know is how much do you charge a customer for an all day call. ??? What if you get there and don't have the part? Darn.

Well many of the customers are on service contract that covers all of the travel. Some pay for their machines to be shipped out to us as it is cheaper than paying for us to come out. If we don't have the parts and it's on Service Contract, we take a look at all the other machines in the area to make it worth while and then we come back another day...If they aren't on Service Contract that includes travel we charge.

[jonezy999]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

My area, we actually go a bit further north west than this.covereage.jpg

[Jude]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

As a testament to the other Canadian Technicians that cover a large territory I know your pains.
I worked in southern Alberta for 10 years and covered what I thought was a large area.
As you can see by the insert, the area encompassed in the red line is the area I covered.
I had a small Mazda car as my service vehicle and would have to drive through Blizzards to service some clients.
I sure don't miss those -40C winters any more.
My new territory encompasses all of Vancouver Island, however here we can experience all weather conditions in 1 day of travel
from south to north.
I have traveled from bright warm sunny weather right into wind driven white outs with 2 feet of snow.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]17691[/ATTACH]

Nice! I took a trip to Whistler once and is one of my favorite places in the world. Remember seeing Vancouver Island on the way up to the mountain. Lot;s of native american/ Native Canadian folks live ther?

[MR Bill]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Still can't be cheap to have a sevice agreement . And with travel time ,expense, etc. $$$$. WOW. I bet it is very pretty country . Hudson Bay. Going to have to go there some day.

[PASTech]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Still can't be cheap to have a sevice agreement . And with travel time ,expense, etc. $$$$. WOW. I bet it is very pretty country . Hudson Bay. Going to have to go there some day.

I imagine not, We don't actually know what they pay. That is up to our salesman and head office. We just fix things and when it is almost dead we help get them in touch with the one who can sell them a new machine.

It is beautify Country!

[Akitu]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

My area, we actually go a bit further north west than this.[ATTACH=CONFIG]17743[/ATTACH]

Now I'm aware Oz is deceptively large, but with your tiny map that can't scale up it's rather hard to get a good idea of how large that area is.

[minimerlin]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

As a testament to the other Canadian Technicians that cover a large territory I know your pains.
I worked in southern Alberta for 10 years and covered what I thought was a large area.
As you can see by the insert, the area encompassed in the red line is the area I covered.
I had a small Mazda car as my service vehicle and would have to drive through Blizzards to service some clients.
I sure don't miss those -40C winters any more.
My new territory encompasses all of Vancouver Island, however here we can experience all weather conditions in 1 day of travel
from south to north.
I have traveled from bright warm sunny weather right into wind driven white outs with 2 feet of snow.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]17691[/ATTACH]

I was surprised to see the area you covered, I was stationed at CFB Suffield back in the early 80s! Fantastic state.

[Akitu]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Picture a 4 hour long drive on a nearly perfectly straight highway with nothing to see but trees, trees and more trees. Oh yeah, and the pavement randomly breaks off for extended patches because the road heaves in the winter and destroys the pavement. Also, did I mention the trees? The biggest challenge isn't psyching yourself up to go do the 1 call that's cleaning the MUSIC sensors in a low end Ricoh machine, the biggest challenge is staying awake while passing by so many of the exact same trees. I've almost run myself off the road many times struggling to stay awake while seeing absolutely nothing but trees.

It's not that bad when you happen to see some wildlife, but that's very seldom. Even the animals can't stand how dull the highway is... The other day while on a somewhat shorter 2.5 hour trip in the other direction I found myself in a freak snowstorm so bad I could hardly see 10 feet in front of me, before I know what even happens I had a bird of some sort kamikaze dive bomb my windshield. All I heard was thud before I struggled to both see in front of me through the snow and the newly added mess of this dead bird's last s*** all over my windshield... Also, did I mention the trees?

Well, apparently a lot of people like my post... Anyone else got interesting stories of how boring their drives can be?

[jonezy999]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Now I'm aware Oz is deceptively large, but with your tiny map that can't scale up it's rather hard to get a good idea of how large that area is.

Yeh, I don't know why it ended up like that, let's just say it takes me three days to drive across my territory. ONE WAY.

[Jude]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Well, apparently a lot of people like my post... Anyone else got interesting stories of how boring their drives can be?

Got any trees?

[Shadow]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

I was surprised to see the area you covered, I was stationed at CFB Suffield back in the early 80s! Fantastic state.

I knew quite a few people out at CFB Suffield, used to do a lot of service work there too.

[Akitu]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Yeh, I don't know why it ended up like that, let's just say it takes me three days to drive across my territory. ONE WAY.

Wow. I would have to say you win then. Though, do you really want to?

[minimerlin]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Yeh, I don't know why it ended up like that, let's just say it takes me three days to drive across my territory. ONE WAY.

May I suggest you take your foot off the brake! lol.

[CableGuy]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Picture a 4 hour long drive on a nearly perfectly straight highway with nothing to see but trees, trees and more trees. Oh yeah, and the pavement randomly breaks off for extended patches because the road heaves in the winter and destroys the pavement. Also, did I mention the trees? The biggest challenge isn't psyching yourself up to go do the 1 call that's cleaning the MUSIC sensors in a low end Ricoh machine, the biggest challenge is staying awake while passing by so many of the exact same trees. I've almost run myself off the road many times struggling to stay awake while seeing absolutely nothing but trees...................

Trees....Trees!!!! What I would have given to see some trees... I used to travel up the west coast from Cape Town to far flung places. The further you went away from Town the less vegetation there was, until it was completely a barren landscape. The up side of this was you could see the bastard with the speed trap and crawl over his little lines in the road, waving at him as you passed....

[Akitu]

Re: The life of a country field tech.

Trees....Trees!!!! What I would have given to see some trees... I used to travel up the west coast from Cape Town to far flung places. The further you went away from Town the less vegetation there was, until it was completely a barren landscape. The up side of this was you could see the bastard with the speed trap and crawl over his little lines in the road, waving at him as you passed....

There's a few reasons why I never speed, speed traps being one of them. If I wanted to get to a customer's office earlier and deal with their stupidity sooner, I would leave earlier, not drive faster and get there sooner. Why work harder when you can work smarter? I'm more than happy to enjoy the leisurely drive where I don't have to think the whole way there. Just put on the favourite satellite radio station and crank the music and let all thoughts fade into oblivion. It's been quite a useful talent to learn to "meditate" anywhere I please simply by focusing on one thing and letting everything else fade away, music, household chores, a long attempt to salvage a fuser that had a transparency wrap around it... Almost anything can be used as long as you focus on it hard enough.

As to the comparison of barren landscape and trees, I would actually think the desert might be easier to drive through, simply because the peripheral vision catches the difference in the shapes of the trees and it has somewhat of an added hypnotic effect alongside the few lines in the road we happen to have sometimes. I can't say for sure that this is the case however, because living in the prairies makes for a whole lot of green textures visible for days at a time. What are hills?