Selecting a Roof Compared to Buying a Car

You have decided to buy a new car. You go to a couple of dealers until you find what you are looking for, buy it, and take it home. The place you buy that car may be important, but you are more interested in the car and its features, right? You bet, because a Ford from one dealer is the same as a Ford from any other dealer. Roofs are not like that. If cars were sold like roofs, things would work quite a little bit differently. After you signed the paperwork, several large semi-trailers would appear at the front of your facility and would unpack THOUSANDS of parts and pieces. Then the dealer’s service crew would start to assemble your new car, from scratch, right there in your driveway. Just think of all those parts! Piston rings in this pile, tires over there, rolls of upholstery material for the seats stacked in a pile (which only got a little bit wet when it rained), an engine block sitting near a bunch of gears for the transmission. You get the idea. And if they actually did that, can you imagine what your finished car might look like?

Now here is the important question:
If your new car is going to be assembled at your home by the local dealer are you going to be more concerned with whether you buy a Ford or Chevy, or are you going to be more concerned who is going to put it together? When you select the type of roofing system to install, as important as that may be, all you have really done is decided to buy a Ford or Chevy. The contractor you select is going to assemble that roof “in your driveway”, not on a high-tech assembly line.

You Don’t Grade On “The Curve”
Remember back in school that my teachers would often grade “on the curve”? So, you could get an “87” and still have an “A”. With roofs, an “87” is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The specific method used to install a roof varies from product to product and application to application, but they all have one thing in common, they are extremely labor intensive to install. Each step is a chance to make a mistake that might end up as a roof leak. Installing a quality roofing system takes a high degree of experience. You expect and need for your new roof to be 100% leak free, no grading on the curve here!

Finding The Best Installer
In our industry, quality work at competitive prices is difficult to find, to say the least. Here are a few reasons why.

1. It is not easy to correctly “assemble a car in your driveway”. Correctly installing a roofing system is difficult and it does take care. Many roofing contractors tend to hire people with lower level skills, but those people also tend to have poor work habits and often have a “I don’t care” attitude, which is where the problems come in.
2. There are lots of poor contractors out there. Why do those subpar contractors stay in business? Well, because people actually hire them. Why would anybody intentionally hire an inferior contractor? Nobody does. But many people do a very poor job of screening the contractors they consider. They just assume that a Ford is a Ford, and after all Ford is a big company... They don’t realize that a roof system is a package. Do your research and select only the best.

Finding a good roofing contractor is essential to a quality roofing system. Florida’s top building owners, managers and contractors consistently turn to RAMCON. We are known throughout the industry for our quality and professionalism and are rated in the top 1% of all contractors in the world!