Saturday, a 7 day stay coming in and Sunday, a 9 day stay. The man from Georgia called again, I had written him off, figured he'd found a different place to hang his hat. Not so. He started telling me about the managers of the park he is currently in, I had to chuckle. It wasn't actually funny, but it was so non-sensical that it just came off like something you would hear at a comedy show. Overbearing, intrusive, threatening. I get that parks have rules and guests should at least make an attempt to adhere to them, but getting angry and having temper tantrums serves no useful purpose and will get you a bad reputation.
Ok, I will say that if the same person has been informed of the same violation repeatedly and it's a serious violation, I can see a person's temper raising a bit. There is probably more to the story than he is telling me. Unless he's really bad, I doubt I'd have a problem with him. Most people will comply after you tell them once, the tent lady being a bit different in bringing that dog in my shed after telling her I don't want that dog in my shed. I told the New Jersey people to get that tarp off of their unit, it makes it look trashy even tho they had it very nicely laid out on it and securely tightened down.
It was supposed to be a temporary thing, I put my foot down after they came back and informed them they need to take that off of there.
Anyway, he says "within the next week, they haven't given me a confirmed date yet, but I will be leaving here, do you still have lots available?". The answer, of course, is yes.
These other people contacted me again from the town about 50 miles north of here. Well, we can't come until August now because we can't find anyone to move our trailer. Well I can find someone for you, it will cost you around $300, but that's what everyone charges. I made it clear that I am not moving their trailer for free (and really, I don't want to). I also suggested a person that does it for a living and charges $3 per mile. But there is probably a minimum he charges since the mileage won't be that much. He would probably be able to crank that slide-out back in, but that will undoubtedly be an extra fee.
I had another guy call, but it was obvious he didn't like my price. I think the cheapest place is $350 per month but it's trailer trash at it's finest. You can see piles of junk laying outside of people's trailers, something I couldn't stand. No one will get away with that in my park, or not for long anyway. I will have them clean it up or I will have them leaving. It's as simple as that. Regardless, I am not lowering my prices any more than they already are, I'll give out specials but just money off the first month's rent. After that, they pull full price and I'll think nothing of it.
Just saw my current electric bills. The highest electric bills I have ever seen. And the reason I haven't paid myself anything. It's extraordinarily high, but it's been quite hot and people don't care what temp they set their ac's at all day long. Many of the units the compressors are on all day and they say it is just ok, ie: barely keeping it cool. But I think what is "shocking" about is the fact that power was off 5 full days, so I figured the bill wouldn't be quite so bad.
I was quite wrong. I had this feeling the bill would be high, hence I didn't pay myself. What I would like after the first full year is up is to have the bill equalized so that you pay the same amount every month. That would bring it down quite a bit and I'd rather just have the same bill than this stuff where it's all over the place. Next month/August will be bad as well. What can I do? If I install power meters and charge separately - even if I lowed my monthly rent rate - they will just leave for the parks that don't meter it. Which is all of them around here.
Even if they don't equalize it for business - or especially an RV park - I can equalize it myself. Take a year's worth of bills, divide by 12 and there it is. My shed probably isn't help anything with the power bill, but instead of paying the machines off early, I am just going to allocate that money towards the power bills instead. My machine payment is a set amount and it won't go on forever. I really need to find someone in the business that can come out and change the pricing on one of the machines. I want $3 per load instead of the $2.50 it's currently at. My prices are lower than the laundromats, but not by design. They came set that way.
Well, anyway, the only way I'm going to get that RV ready to sell is to keep working on it, get this water thing done and over with and start looking at other things.
Oh, I forgot. The power company raised their rates. Everyone locally was complaining about their bill going way up. Ours went down, but that's because they installed a brand new central AC unit which is much more efficient than the old thing that was in there. People were getting angry, however, because they raised the rate yet the power goes out at every little storm. Like, if we're going to pay that much, keep the damn power on.
And I can see a lot of potential along 43 for more outages. There are a large number of trees where the power line is buried in the branches, large trees that can easily topple the lines/poles once again. In several places, the tree branches are pushing the power lines down. They don't trim those trees? We're in for more power outages.
And the guy calling from Oregon asking if I know of a water truck delivery service. Telling me they are going to be working on the shutdown of the Pirkey power plant. Yup, it's toast. I don't know if they shut it down yet or not, but it's definitely going to be shut down and soon. These people are going to take up to 2 years to complete the entire shut down process, whatever that entails. The significance is obviously that the power grid, which authorities say is already getting pushed to the limits, isn't getting any better by shutting down these evil, coal-fired plants. And the WH - telling us that they are pushing to get rid of gas water heaters, dryers and stoves. Or force manufacturers to make costly upgrades to them to make them environmentally acceptable.
If a Republican gets into office, all of this nonsense will be wiped off the board only to have it come back with whoever the next, progressive/communist president will be. California basically dictating to the nation what climate change policies will be enacted. It's unbelievable. However, who knows if Biden will serve out his term? By force of age and cognitive decline or the ever-growing pile of evidence against him concerning Burisma and his son. I watch this with amazement, for if democrats went by the same logic they used with Trump, Joe Biden would not only be impeached, he would be labeled a traitor.
Whatever the case, I don't really want any kids with me today. I want to get stuff done and they are a hindrance often-times to progress. I have to give them phones to play with to keep them engaged. Well, mom's home today, no schedule and they can stay home and do whatever.
Yes, the more I think of it, the more I am selling to myself the idea that I need to get the rate changed for the dryer in the shed. It's at $1.00 and that's just not flying. With the AC, water heater and the dryer, I don't even know if I'm breaking even, I have no way of knowing how much power that shed is using. It wasn't intended to be a money maker anyway, but I want to break even in there.
The only good thing is that the worst of summer will be over in maybe a month and a half? A month? The worst of the heat I should say. I intend on installing one of those heat exchange boxes (whatever they call them) that allows the heated air from the dryer to go into the shed for winter. That way, the place is heated by virtue of the dryer instead of paying even more to heat the shed.
The park is slowly - ever so slowly - filling back up. There is only 1 more person that is leaving - sooner or later. I thought he'd already been gone by now. I won't owe him anything for pro-rated return of money for days not used. It's almost the end of the month.
Well, enough. I'll just wait until I get payments in before paying those electric bills. And then I will pay myself something. I don't know how much, but it will be something. My business finances are low because so many people left. I got partial payments from some of them that stayed for another week after telling me they are leaving, but it was nothing near the full lot rent amount.
There is really no way to live off of this income.. I need double the spaces and keep them full or mostly full. The income off of each lot isn't high and I need enough lots to make it add up to a decent salary.
