It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.
Thomas Edison? Nope. Benjamin Franklin? Nope. Actually, Stephen King said it. Not exactly a window cleaning icon, but the quote fits perfectly for this field. It overstates the obvious, yet so many window cleaners are unprepared.
9 times out of 10, a window cleaning job goes smoothly. There is that one time, though, when you seem to have a gray cloud hanging over the job site. Everything goes wrong. Everything breaks. Everyone on the crew forgot something. You need to be prepared for every situation. It really stinks to get to a jobsite and have to drive all the way back for a fill-in-the-blank. Or worse, have someone just sit it out, twiddling his thumbs, on your dime. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to be prepared for every emergency and does not take up too much of your time.
In fact, the number one tip from a window cleaning pro is to keep one of everything in your car/truck/van/trailer. Sleeves, t-bars, channels, clips, pole tips, quick release handles and locking clips all break. And, Murphy’s Law says they are not going to break at the end of the day as you pull into your garage. No. They will break in the middle of a huge job. They will break on the cranky customer’s house. They will break when you are running behind for the day. They will break when it is extremely inconvenient for you.
Having extras, being prepared, will make your life a little less stressful. In fact, as older window cleaning tools wear out, see what you can salvage. A spring here, a screw there. Stick them in a Ziploc bag; you’ll be glad you did.