Large association unable to find vendors - mostly venting but looking for suggestions

Chris,

My association faced a similar problem. Similar in that we had trouble finding vendors we could work with.

In our case, we have nearly 300 miles of dirt roads that need to be graded and otherwise maintained. We are about 75 miles from any large town and the nature of the weather means that most of our must be done in the spring or the fall. Summers are either too dry most of the time or too wet from monsoon rains; in winter the roads are a frozen mud bog. Finding a contractor willing to work with us on our schedule became nearly impossible. We had one grading contractor who initially worked well with us but his equipment was often hundreds of miles away when we needed work to be done. We also suspected that he ignored us whenever someone else was willing to pay him more for his services.

After several years of fighting with the one and only vendor we realized that you cannot exercise much control over contractors. Then there is another issue to look at: When will the work be completed? In the case of our roads, the answer is never. Long after all of us are dead and gone the roads will still require maintenance. So will your landscape.

We bit the bullet and started buying our own equipment and hiring our own employees. Our association is now the proud owner of a $300,000 Caterpillar road grader, an end loader, a maintenance truck, a fuel trailer, and an inspection vehicle. We hire our own operators and support staff. When we need to grade roads we do not need to call the old contractor and beg him to move his equipment up to our place.

Given the size of your complex, you should not be horsing around with contractors. Buy your own equipment, hire your own employees, and stop riding the contractor merry-go-round.

Larry are you hiring full or part time for your employees? I posted a few months back about hiring a part time general maintenance staff member and the vast majority of the responses seemed to indicate what a bad idea that was.

Pita we would probably sign a multiple year contract after one year of satisfactory performance but the company has changed so much since we last used them we don't have much current experience with them to base our decision to sign a pretty large multi year commitment on.

? performance based contract ?

Edited to add: the 30-day out is for contract violations. However, the 60-day out is for no-fault reasons. Meaning we can terminate the contract without giving any reason if we give them 60-days notice.