The Huddle - Episode 155 - The Hidden Costs of Cutting Corners on Safety

This week on The Huddle, Paul, Daniel, and Jose dive into a topic that could make or break your career: jobsite safety. From PPE neglect to skipping prep steps, cutting corners might seem like it saves time—but it can lead to costly consequences for your health, your team, and your reputation.

If you've ever thought, “It’ll be fine this time,” this episode is for you.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

Common safety shortcuts that lead to long-term problems

Real-life stories of when safety was overlooked—and the fallout

How to build a strong safety culture on your crew

Tools and habits that make doing it the right way easier

Whether you're leading a team or running your own one-man operation, safety isn’t optional—it’s essential.

🎧 Next Week on The Huddle: Open Mic with CFI – What’s Going On?

Mark your calendars for July 1st, as we welcome three CFI Advisory Board Members for a raw, unfiltered conversation about current events, leadership changes, and the future of the Certified Flooring Installers association.

🎤 Live audience Q&A, no time limit, no fluff. Just real talk.

Don’t miss it.

🎙️ The Huddle is proudly supported by:

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The Huddle Podcast is where the flooring industry comes together to connect, learn, and thrive! Recognized as the #1 podcast in the flooring community, we provide an unmatched platform for professionals to discuss everything from installation techniques to industry trends.

At The Huddle, we’re all about driving Forward Progress—empowering seasoned installers, contractors, and flooring enthusiasts to grow, innovate, and lead in their craft. Whether you’re looking for real conversations, actionable insights, or inspiration to take your career to the next level, The Huddle is your home for real discussions that matter.

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Please visit our new website! https://thehuddle.team

heat heat

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what is up guys welcome to the huddle

quick shout out to Shag for sponsoring this episode of uh this week's episode

of the huddle uh don't forget to go uh Huddle 10 use Huddle 10 to get your 10%

off want to thank Shag remember them when you're buying anything you need in flooring they have all the top brands

ship fast and you can of course get your 10% off by using Huddle 10 again that's

huddle 10 well everybody welcome back to the huddle we're your weekly playbook

helping you gain forward progress in your career simply put we're here to help you win for all the new viewers

welcome to the team what's up fellas how's it going sir

delightful it's a great day is it super hot over there like it is over here it's

getting hot yeah it's getting hot but I tell you what we're really thankful just

that the rain has stopped it's been like two or three days with no rain and we're like "Yeah." So

and I say two or three days that's not even reality we've gotten some overnight rain but nothing just like a little

sprinkles or something yeah nothing like what we were getting we were getting hammered oh John Styer

with the first comment i met a guy in Breen Ridge Colorado

whose name was Fred and he was the first guy on the chair every day for 40 years

and they called him first chair Fred but we're going to call John

we'll have to come up with a nickname for John i don't know man i don't think you can come up with anything better than Florinator

the Florinator is pretty good for sure first first comment Florinator

we gota we gota find out from him how that originated to give credit to because yeah it is it

stuck arnold of course maybe it's just like one of those like with Mario where

it was he started calling himself the floor god and it just stuck

yeah i'm sure uh you know when you're a a stud like John it's not hard to get

something like the Florinator to stick so shout out to John um okay so today's

topic is the hidden cost of cutting corners on safety um

start this off with one of our company's biggest initiatives this year has been

safety our leadership team is talking about it every week we created a a special channel for all

of our installers for daily safety briefings and and notes and toolbox

talks and such we have learned this lesson um and we

can tell some stories uh but the hidden cost is both monetary

uh where you're losing actual money because of it uh cost of increased

premiums at your insurance um safety mod going up and

uh all of these things that affect your business so uh those are some of the

hidden costs the hidden cost being and I want you guys to chime in here if you've if you've had any of this stuff but your

safety mod going up can keep you from getting work in the commercial world like absolutely yeah I mean I think in

Yeah in every bid package that's what it'll say is if is your safety mod under this number if not you're not

automatically excluded yeah that's the hidden cost that's

opportunity cost lost because your safety mod went up um

lost time it's another one I know about um the now I want to be clear the

title's a little bit misleading it doesn't always mean you're a derelict to safety you can do decent in safety or

even good in safety and still have things happen but um talking about the

hidden cost of safety um you know the the actual

it says cutting corners but the actual costs of safety violations or safety problems range from not so hidden costs

of a OSHA fine which I have never had but have you guys ever gotten fined by

OSHA no yeah we've been lucky I think yeah

knocking on everything we've been visited even this last year one of our sites was completely shut down um

luckily the one time you thank goodness that your flooring installers kind of show up

a little late but uh you know it was it was kind of a

safety a little bit relaxed on safety job site and they got shut down for a

whole day and you know you want to talk about hidden cost the hidden cost of not

performing any construction work on a construction site with a deadline for a whole day if you got 40 guys on that job

and you got eight hours a day you do the math that's how many hours in

that that you just lost yeah jeremy says there was one time but luckily we were on break and I don't think we were on

break i think as soon as OSHA showed up we were like "Hey it's break time." Yeah 100% and and then they just come

and start talking to you anyway so it it wasn't bad or anything it was just they

were like "Hey this is your guys' equipment." Yep looks good thanks here's

some uh let's talk about some areas where where corners are cut and this is

more in the commercial world although it still applies in the residential world it just for some reason does not get um

monitored i mean you know there's not not there the the fines aren't the juice

isn't worth the squeeze for OSHA on that you know going to a large you know

commercial job site you can pop you can probably get five or six people fined

for it you know or or five or six writeups at least you get to a residential job site it's a little bit

different but one of the areas that we try to do

better and uh certainly go Carrera helps with it is um having the MSDS sheets in

your guys possession uh that is something that we still struggle with even with Go Carrera like

just getting my guys to put the MSDS sheets for all the product uh the

adhesives and cleaners one time we did actually do pretty well uh it was a

really big uh hospital job osha came we had all of them except for denatured

alcohol they were using denatured alcohol to clean some stuff up and we didn't have the MSDS for that luckily we

had them for everything else and he he let us off with just a little tongue lashing or warning kind of thing but um

that was on a local hospital um but those do you guys find that that is

that's a tough one to execute on every single project well it's because you

don't know sometimes what they're going to be bringing in like you can try and account for everything but it's like that denatured

alcohol were they going to use did you have a different cleaner on there and then they just brought that in because that's what was on the van and it's

it is I think um that's something that that we deal with too on on the bigger projects when especially when you I mean

some of these you got a book of stuff that you're bringing in there dude yeah

that's why I say go career does help us because we just add them to the uh work order and the guys can show it's got the

job name address everything around the work order with the MSDS sheets

attached and uh that that works really well and it allows us actually if

somebody's like hey OSHA's on site we can upload those documents right then if we forgot to initially

do you run into a lot of uh where they want hard documents or they don't accept the digital documents

they want what they prefer the hard documents instead of digital do you run into that at all No the the the rule

doesn't say that it has to be uh hard documents they have to already be

downloaded they can't search for them and they have to um be in a in a file or

a format that has the job's name on it so if you send them out with a book of

all your products that you use and it doesn't have the job name OSHA can in

fact they really at least around here they really dislike that because you're just trying to get away with giving them

all of the potential adhesives and then they got to finger through them the idea is you go to the the binder that has the

job name on it you open it to the product and you know what to do for somebody who

got it in their eye or got it you know accidentally ingested it or whatever the scenario so

accidental ingestion is a thing dude i know it's hard to believe but think of this think of how many times you may

have stuck some denatured alcohol in a Gatorade bottle because you only had one

can and three of you were using it that's That's actually a bad

Well we've done it so um nobody ingested but I'm saying that's how it happens

it's not like somebody takes the the court and is like "Oh teenager alcohol." That's when you said usually when you're

trying to split things up and you only have one container of it which is against OSHA rules anyway because you're

not supposed to have them in unmarked containers but uh when accidents happen

uh that's one of them so that that's a corner cutting corner thing that I know

we it's not really cutting corners we forget or it's we don't think the job

site's big enough uh I'd like for my company particularly to be uh more apt

in uploading an MSDS file for every job onto the work order um but

but yeah so let's talk about some of those other hidden costs have you guys

uh had any safety what's your guys' thoughts I should say on safety issues

and how it affects your premiums i think definitely talk to your insurance person

to see uh what they say because ours is in here i mean it's no secret that we've talked about it we both use federated

right and he's in here pretty frequently and he's like "Hey this is what you guys should do in order to do this." And they

will list out the things that they they have available for you as far as toolbox

talks videos there's a bunch of resources just from your insurance person so that way um you can say I mean

I always say it I'm like hey we're doing this stuff when am I going to start seeing this you know some discounts and

stuff like that yeah and those

I can tell you cuz we've had a few work comp things uh some of them just degenerative meaning guy was on his

knees for 25 years and you know his knee was hurting and he went to the doctor and they're like hey you got

scar tissue and stuff and rips and he's one of our best guys and

you know we decided to uh make sure that he was taken care of we wasn't we didn't want him to you know not be taken care

of um but so that wasn't really an incident or an accident but that was a

pretty expensive deal that greatly impacted our mod rating uh it and it

increased our premiums um they'll always get their money the insurance company so

somehow someway the best thing you could do is

be safe follow as many practices as you can to safely perform your job every day

so you go home in the same condition as you did when you got there uh the the

bottom line is it's going to cost you in one way or another and those those uh

premium increases as well as those safety mod ratings are two way two of those hidden costs we're talking about

um I got a question uh what about the most common like the

the everyday cuts like you know like a lot of projects that require the the Kevlar or cut resistant gloves um or you

have to wear sleeves when you're grinding or certain demo like the smart thing but like

uh five stitches here you know a little slip here or you reach into your pouch

and you left the blade upside down and it catches you in the spot These are

I would say pretty common but like to someone who's new they might have a little bit of a

freaker outer i will say that my very first good cut I was like "Oop I got to

go get stitches." And now I I can see

into my body in some of the cuts i'm like "Oh that's good this is all they're gonna do now." Kind of yeah

it depends on how long you've been in it I think because I've seen him like cut a tendon or something in his hand and then

just tuck it in and then keep on working before but I mean if something like that happens then you got to do something but

a cut i mean that's we we use duct tape but um we always have at least first aid

kits in the vehicles and I'm trying to I've been trying to tell them we got to

bring this in every single job site guys like it's got to be on site at all times

yeah we haven't went that far but we definitely make sure that each van has a a first aid kit you're probably right

that it ought to be in the toolbox or one of the you know put it somewhere where it's on site especially on larger

projects where you're not having we have I don't know about you guys but like

some of our hospitals you can't park in their parking lot they give you this parking lot that's in the you got to

park across the street and walk a mile across the street behind the Panera Brad to

you got to walk to the jobs you can go unload and then park over there and then you got to walk back so you know it's

it's a good 10 minute jaunt even if you're hustling to get there and get get

the stuff and 10 probably 10 minutes back you know by the time you get to the eighth floor elevators all that stuff so

that's probably a good a good point um I don't know if you were asking this Jose

but one of the things on the smaller stuff is uh talk to your insurance company but you can increase your

deductible to where all those things you just pay out of pocket and it will not

hit your mod rating at least or your premium so it would not increase

your premium or your mod rating if you have if it's in that deductible amount

because in the deductible amount you're paying it anyway and that covers your you know your stitches your things uh so

a lot of companies will have $2,000 or $1,500 deductible most of the companies

are um that my insurance company work with he recommends 2500 to 5,000

if you have a bigger crew out working some are even at 10,000 but in the state

of Kansas and this is state by state that's why I say you need to talk to your insurance company and don't just listen this I'm sure there's some

version of this in every state but in Kansas the most you the highest deductible you can have is 10,000

so that'll cover you know we had a guy cut get seven stitches or whatever is

$1,200 deal or whatever that's your But you also and here's a good point so

I want to bring this up one of the things that we do and I have done is on

those things I just self-pay it i don't even run it through insurance

my insurance agent was like I get why you do that i would rather you increase your deductible and still pay it and

still claim it because here's the bottom line if he gets gang green in his thumb or something else happens

now you're you got to god forbid he loses his thumb for some reason or any

number of things a major infection being obvious uh on a on a big cut

um if he's not taking care of it and he gets gets it infected that's still on

you it was still an injury at work and that is still on you so it's better to

have the coverage in case something like that happens even on a smaller thing so I think most with that question will

advise you hey if you want to self-pace and you get these little nicks and

knacks and ticks and tax self-pay it but do it still do it

through your insurance so that because they'll they'll be like there's no claim that's not covered and then personally

liable to cover his hospital bills if something went ary with that scenario

now I've not had that happen i've self-paid before and um but after

talking to him about that I was like "Yeah that's that's how we're going to do in the future." Well increase our our

uh deductible still pay out of pocket so it doesn't hit our premium still pay out of pocket so it doesn't hit your mod but

if something catastrophic was to happen off of something small you're not you

know going broke over the deal right and I think a lot of that is like location location location where where's the cut

how deep is it um are you maintaining it and that's where I was going with the

question what you just said about the insurance and all that um because here and I'm sure everywhere

anytime you go to the hospital for an emergency or something like that they say "What were you doing where were you at did this happen at work?" I believe

the last time something happened Daniel got a phone call directly from the hospital was that called Daniel yeah

from the urgent care yep so I mean there's

there's no hiding any of it um when it when the proper channels are No but you

can you can still elect to self-pay and it's different in each state so again talk to your local insurance company

federated um if they would sponsor this show I would promote them uh but they uh

they uh they're our insurance firm and they you know they can advise me on

Kansas you guys may have different rules up in um

uh Michigan or there I'm sure there's different rules in different parts of it's a state law so you just got to get

with your uh insurance agent so be safe bottom line is if you can just get a get

get u get around it by not having accidents is the best way you'll still have some stuff like the safest

companies still have some stuff and that's where you can uh kind of

think through these things but it's when you have too many in a given what is it Daniel three years on

mod isn't it a rolling three years yeah yeah three years yeah i think it's a

rolling three years so you know every year passes the

first of the three years falls off when you start a new one um

so if you have if you pack some too many accidents within one three-year period

it's kind of like your license and get it suspended but uh you pack too many

work comp claims in a given period you can even lose work comp coverage and so

you got to be careful um and look there you know I don't want to

diminish the the side of it like we all want our our employees to be safe as

well and us to be safe so if you're an independent installer out there

um I would like to address you for a minute one of the things that I hear I see a lot is we require work comp here

for our our our uh subs

now they're able to um like elect to not cover themselves

but if you do not have health insurance guys you should definitely have work comp on

yourself even if you're the owner operator uh if you have a great if you have good

work good health insurance then I understand it but consider that you get hurt at work and you don't have health

insurance nor work comp you're losing all over the place because you're having to pay out of pocket who

knows how much it's going to cost the loss work time all that stuff and work comp will help cover that for you so I

would highly recommend that um

that if you do not have health insurance that you have work comp

it took us a while to understand that portion of it um from an investment

standpoint because like you know you grow up insurance is just a scam they

don't ever cover anything anyway right it's not paying out and hoping that you get

covered it's it's still a scam they are they are without a doubt some

of the wealthiest companies on the planet i say it all the time they they sponsor every golf tournament yeah and

it's until something bad happens you don't appreciate it

yeah so there's there's always a um you

know outside of insurance and uh all that stuff you also have lost time if

you injure yourself so we had a guy last year jump over a fence and break his

heel now why he decided to climb the fence in the first place on the job site that's

all anybody you know we're I'm not gonna get into that but it it broke his heel

and he was out of work for a while now if he would have been a sub and did not

have health insurance it was not he couldn't walk for about a week he couldn't really put any weight on it at

all um I remember I put a metal rod through my foot at my house not on work

uh but I couldn't work for a few days and then I had to really like go against

every doctor's recommendation and still go out there and and work because I had to feed my family and this was early on

when I was installing and I had a subcrew and we were just getting ready to start full service offering you know

materials and labor um and yeah I had to work so I didn't I didn't you know that

lost revenue from lost work especially if you're a subcontractor and you have nothing to fall back on um that that's a

hidden cost that sometimes you just don't think about and it's it's probably one of the more expensive ones i tell

you what I've had some injuries that I probably shouldn't have been working i

didn't have a choice um bills were still due i wasn't I was young i wasn't

protected didn't protect myself so that's just one of those hidden those

hidden costs right you either costing yourself uh relationships

costing yourself potential uh projects or opportunities or you're cost c

costing yourself in your body additional stress that it doesn't need and you're

not allowing time to heal um well that's a good point really good

ones that's another good point is not so

talking about safety and flooring we're talking about knee pads and lifting

properly all of this stuff that you know you can tear your body apart you want to

talk about a hidden cost a cost you don't see for a decade or two or three and then all of a sudden your knee goes

out your back goes out whatever goes out and you're not able to work and that was an accumulated cost over you know a long

career uh so take care of your body we've have entire episodes about taking

care of your your body and your it's your most important tool your physical health your most important tool is

yourself right your body and you got to take care of that that's why you know when we talked about knee pads just look

at that and I just went to the doctor last week because my knees and my hips

are bothering me so much and um he said that I have bone spurs and

that's why I'm getting so much pain but it's probably due to how much I was

overworking myself without wearing knee pads and stuff like that for I mean the

first five years or so that was dumb dude why'd you do that i I

didn't wear knee pads for a long time luckily I don't have

um I don't The guy I worked with he never wore them and now granted mid9s knee

pads are not what they are today you can get a pair of Home Depot knee pads that are better than the ones I used to have

um Oh yeah but he never wore knee pads and I started copying him of course I

didn't look very sexy in a set of shorts but I I uh

I got used to it and luckily I don't have any major knee problems but um you

know Rollins sounds like he may not may not need knee pad may not wear knee pads

either but some people can get away with it man well he's been doing it for 152

years already so yeah he's got a bone spur on his knee kneecap that's why

calcium deposit you got callus is the thickness of a knee pad

but like you said eventually it catches up with most people and so taking care

of your body on a job picking up properly um

you know back in the day we had a lot of problems uh when you had a new guy that

would uh drop a roll before he was ready to drop a roll carpet you know you ever

have that happen yep especially when especially when it's on your ear it

feels really good oh yeah well snap your dang back into uh Yeah if you're the

front yeah having having um So I mean that

really just falls back to safety training make sure you're teaching people how to uh do things safely um you

know we don't want to sound like a broken record but this stuff will impact your business if you're ever wanting to

build a bigger installation team or you're wanting to build a full-fledged

company like a full-fledged fullervice material and labor company these are

things you really need to think about because they will impact your business more than you can imagine uh one year

our insurance premiums went up $30,000 oh in one year now part of that we grew

we had more employees and things but 30 grand you know what I'm saying like that's a raw overhead cost and these are

things that you want to do everything you can to keep down and the the best way you can keep your your insurance

cost down is is staying safe and Daniel was talking about it i'll have

him uh explore it or um you know expand on it a little bit more but you can do

some of these programs with your insurance company that will show that

you're being more safe and uh help reduce your premiums as well yeah i mean

you just got to talk to them to see what they offer right cuz there's every insurance company that we've worked with so far has had their own program and um

they give you sheets where you can keep track of all these toolbox talks and you

can go down the list one by one you can pick and choose which ones you want to do and then what I was doing like over

the winter while the vans were warming up when we were having meetings is I would do a toolbox talk and then

correlate it with one of the videos that they had so that way we weren't just talking about it it was all right let's

watch this video and there was some really helpful stuff on there to where um you know we watched it about backing

up just backing up a vehicle safely and how you can do that and then baby sister

was like the crazy thing is the very next day is we were working in a little blind spot like that and I was able to

use some of those tips that they were sharing in that video that she never really thought about before that's cool

i'll tell you that some of those tips don't work when it's snowing and it's a white out and you're backing out of a

driveway for residential job and you don't see the ditch because everything looks the same h that sounds like a

particular scenario it does yeah that also happened it wasn't me but that was going in forward

i think a uh good time to mention to the audience that next week we're going to have uh CFI on here if you have

questions um in regards to anything going on at CFI uh as mentioned last week we all

know Ralph Falavina has uh left CFI and um so a lot of people have questions

about what's what's the future is there going to be a replacement is our guys uh

is someone stepping into that role you know all these kind of questions we've been asked um you'll have a chance and

we'll have a chance to uh get that straight from the horse's mouth with rightive team CFI beth already made a a

pretty good video on it right with uh the I don't I guess leadership from over

there and you you know just if you haven't seen it watch that but also we need the

questions like that you need answered regardless of what it's about like you have any questions on CFI this is the

time to ask them yeah and you can email us questions at

forwardprogressthehuddle.team forwardprogressthehuddle.team

i should like have that off the top of my head and I don't sorry but forwardprogress@thehuddle.team

email us your questions we'll make sure that if there's time uh that we we u ask

those questions uh if you want to get your question out live which I recommend

everybody do uh I would join the huddle jump on Facebook chat and watch us live

and uh you know shoot your questions right there uh it's a great opportunity to to do this i I cannot tell you how

many times I I talk to people at a convention or things like this and they

say that no one's there to listen or they they don't know who to ask about

something well you have the people to ask these questions on coming on next week's huddle again it's next Tuesday 3

p.m central and I encourage you to join us i encourage you to have your questions

ready and fire them off and we'll uh we'll see if we can get some answers and and engage the team so we look forward

to that something as simple as what's up with the throwback and throwback logo yeah yeah if if you got questions

everything from what's up with the logo to what's up with leadership to what's

up with the WFCA and CFI and what's up with training any questions you have

that CFI can be directed to CFI I encourage you to jump on and uh ask them

or shoot us an email at

progress.comte sorry I almost said the huddle.team.forprogress i almost did that back for progress

right there it's right there scrolling on the bottom of the screen too oh well that could help me forward progress

atthehuddle.team how about that okay guys so so I wanted to to go over this

what John just said said about you know staying healthy and more guys need to put down the smokes and booze

and I think that's like an people our generation right because the new kids

coming in don't really have an issue with that i think that's more like

vaping on the job sites and stuff like that instead of dealing with

the booze and stuff but it is an issue i mean um just think of it in terms of

walking into a job site and smelling like an ashtray and I mean I'm going to

be honest with you that smell makes me sick and I can only imagine if you're around a customer for a few hours how

they would feel about it well in somebody's home yeah you get away with a lot more on a commercial job site than you're going to get away with the

residential i think you should always I mean there's so much into that comment first off what you said earlier Daniel

your number one asset is your body and uh so putting those two things down

would help your body great I mean tremendously um

longevity of life as well as healing and there's a lot of data on that and I'm not here to to you know tell everybody

quit drinking and quit smoking but I'm telling you if you're doing if you're doing it too much uh like John Styer

just said like might want to check that thing because um also safe work

practices tend to go uh a little more lax if you are inebriated from the night

before yeah sometimes I don't like even when we

go to some of the conventions and stuff like that and there's guys all drinking they're like "What do you want?" Water

like I'll have a drink or something but I can't even do it anymore i'm such a lightweight the only time I drink is at

a flooring convention well I think that might be the case for

a lot of uh a lot of people against Ty but uh I mean I get made fun of what's important is taking care of your body i

mean no one on here really cares too much uh other than you taking care of

your body and uh there's a lot of things that um

you know you do on your own accord and at your own time that can affect that so I encourage you I I I know plenty of

people that have not taken care of themselves and are struggling um you know at that time but uh you know

take care of your body take care of of of uh your customer too you mentioned it

earlier Daniel you know recognizing that you the you're

not special if you smoke and go into a customer's house you are going to smell like that and so uh doing what you can

to not uh present yourself in that manner is is better uh again commercial

job sites are just a different beast and it probably doesn't matter as much

people are getting a little bit fussier here I would say well it's certainly difficult to find

like where you're smoke at so to speak you know more and more job sites don't

allow smoking on the job site uh certainly not in the building but I mean

even anywhere outside the building uh sometimes they'll say it's a you know

you're you're no smoking campus is what a lot of the healthc care and you know

any education is going to right so it's just something that you have to deal with and I mean I've even you know

rolled up on the guys like we're working and I come out and they're smoking i'm like dude like you guys have worked in

healthcare buildings so much why are you even smoking well this guy over here is doing it i don't care if this guy over

here is doing it i don't even care if someone came over and said it's it's fine if you smoke right there and they work here the fact of the matter is it's

a non-smoking campus so we're going to treat it like a non-smoking campus

if you're treating it like that anyway it reflects on you and and the people on your cruise or part who are part of your

crews who do not smoke right it gives everybody the same label and as an

ex-smoker I can honestly say that you're blind

to what stress you cause and what you smell like and the smells you leave behind um you're blind to why people

don't want you back at their project why you lose work well there there's been

some jobs where uh the sight's out in the middle of an old farm field and they

don't allow it because of fire hazards things like that down here in the old Kansas well and you don't know who is

getting that secondhand smoke off you too right because just take my mom for instance she's you know um she's on

dialysis right now and looking for a kidney and her her doctor straight up said even

secondhand smoking could affect your eligibility h

amazing well I think we can all agree that coffee is the go-to

and uh Jose's got to leave us a little early he's got some kid duties i believe

he's got some baseball baseball all right my brother well we'll catch you uh catch you next week again don't

forget next week is our podcast uh featuring CFI's uh leadership so be

great chance for everybody to get on and have a great conversation yeah so what

the the other you know hidden cost um of

safety is that I don't think we've talked about yet is setting bad example

for younger people for the more experienced guys out there you do

something unsafe that you've got some little trick or little deal think about who's watching you um and setting a good

example for your crew setting a good example for your your other people who may not be uh quite as lucky as you uh

when they do something uh that's un right like you like having these be

safety glasses just going like this squinting your eyes what is I think uh

like instead of wearing safety glasses you just squint like this in there yeah

or or uh even more unsafe I've brought this up before but like guys stick

scrapers foreign scraper in the back of their pockets i've seen that and I'm like dude that is incredibly crazy stop

doing that you know you're reach back sometime and slit yourself wide open

it's one of those things where um when you were when I was younger and these things were happening and then you find

that like that older guy on a job site and it's I think it was when I was younger it was typically like one of

those old carpenters because they just do finished carpentry they don't got to go super fast and you see them setting

up and you know they're setting everything up and they got their safety glasses on and before they make a cut

they're making sure that their ear muffs are on and they're making sure that they got their gloves on and it's like when I

was younger I was like man just get it done and now that I'm older it's like yeah I'm going to go grab my safety

glasses and my earplugs and I get it now but it's sometimes it's a little too

late and you don't want that on your yourself yeah or the people that are working for you yeah i mean the worst

safety violations are ones that put other people in danger it's one thing to do yourself um

Rin I think next week we only got four hours so you're going to have to keep yourself

um but it's those safety hazards that you put other people in danger and those

are almost inexcusable um you know putting other people in danger on a job site or you know at your

workplace it's uh you know then that can come all the way down to picking up your

trash that's a real easy way to like keep a safer job site is keep the debris off the job site there's a reason every

contract says to do that and I don't know about you guys but there's some LVTs that if you step on them

you're going down slicker than snot and there's carpet tile as well there's some hardback

carpet tile that I tell you what i won't name brands because it it's a

good carpet tile but I hate the backing because you step on it dude it's like an

ice ring well you you go and grab it out of the box and as soon as you pick it up it just like fans out mhm

yeah i think we are talking about the exact same yeah I think so we We know oh yeah dust

mitigation all day every day in res it's not even residential job sites that's

every job site especially since the silica standard came out uh they don't play about dust at all it's you're

controlling it or else what are you doing here yeah that's I'm glad he said that because this is talking about you

want to talk about hidden like things it's things that don't catch up to you

until years later that's a silica that's the asbestous thing that they didn't find out asbestous was terrible for you

know how many years and we all intuitively know that breathing in a

bunch of dust is not good for you and so you should probably have a dust mask and keep the dust down but when I first

started dude I would have dust boogers like you wouldn't believe when I got home every day because I never wore dust

masks I didn't it never crossed my mind and we didn't I didn't work at a company that had a affinity or even a care about

safety um but yeah you're right i mean it's it's imperative on any job that's

occupied to have some level of dust control but it's still required even on

our on our big commercial sites luckily a lot of the thin sets and the patches

and things like that have taken the silica out and so now you don't have to have a bag cover or a a a bucket cover

to mix it but right and still when we are doing self-levelers we still hook up

because I mean you're dealing with pounds and pounds of it so in order to

mitigate how much dust it does create just from p pouring it in there and mixing it we we still hook a vacuum up

to it just to not not just for you know the the clients but for everyone that is

working there too like we want to keep ourselves healthy cuz you like you said you don't want to be breathing that in

which is crazy that drywallers still get to make as much dust as they want yeah I

know someday drywall dust is going to be the problem

at least I hope because I tell you what right i mean they they are the messiest

one of the messiest crews on site i just did a job off topic here but we're we're

in the middle of it but we finished one of the towers up recently and we fought

with that GC and the drywaller like the floor was coated we were like "This is a

loose lay product we don't plan on coming in to each one of these units and

you know scraping and buffing just like we want to come in do a quick sand a

vacuum prime in some cases and install

not all this other stuff but man they are messy." Sorry that I got off topic

there we start talking about dry you bring up drywallers or electricians man I'm going to go down a rabbit hole on

you right john says a shopv or some sort of vacuum should be one of the first tools

in the job site and we didn't learn about this until years later because we always used to have just like hand

brooms and push brooms yeah and you still see some of the older guys they'll

with that little foxtail they'll sweep an entire room with that and it's like bro there's easier ways now i like to

fill it with my hands

rollins says the smoke from hour at a time day after day can mess up your sinus

i'm not entire I think entirely sure what he's trying to say there do you got it i think just smoking in general maybe

well either right some clarification Robin yeah you're going to have to expand on that one Roland but I tell you

what the the um what's important is that we recognize there's there's costs that

you won't incur tomorrow from unsafe practices there's costs that like I've

you know we've beaten to death here is your experience mod on your work comp

your insurance premiums uh increases and that goes for liability insurance

too if you mess up something because you weren't properly trained on a scissor lift but it was in your way and you jump

on it to move it and you take down a wall or something

that's a liability you're you're responsible for it and that's going to go against your your uh your moderating

as well even if you don't have like and it's statebyst state so I don't want to

make a blanket comment on that but a lot of this stuff is just it's going to build up on you and before you know it

it's incredibly expensive both in your body and in your pocketbook then you lose insurance and

then you're you're just out of work altogether because without insurance no one's going to hire you even the the

people that are on Facebook Marketplace looking for the cheapest person they're always like "I need it done cheap." But with someone that's licensed and insured

and it's like sometimes it's one or the other guys

yeah i I I dream of a world where you know

the quality guys who do everything right get paid what they're worth and get get

the work and the other guys they may still work in flip houses or something but I mean

it's it's a if you show you're safe

whether it's to a homeowner or to a business a company like a construction

company proof of safety it will get you work people care that you're going to

treat their property and you're going to be safe practice safe work habits on

their property yeah and you know going back to like if you're safety if you're OSHA 30 or OSHA 10 certified which if

you're not you should get on OSHA i mean it's simple to do it's it's a it's only like 50 bucks it's it's pretty cheap you

can get online and do it and then you can tout that you're OSHA 30 certified and I I'm telling you that people care

about that stuff so yeah there's some of the the bids that come out over here

that says that the entire crew working on the job site must be at least OSHA 10

and they want at least one person OSHA 30 mhm yeah we got a job with

Amazon right now and it is we you got an online um orientation an on-site

orientation um you have to have OSHA 30 CPR and um

CPR and first aid trained somebody um

like through the roof safety so and and again these are things that yeah you can

pay out of pocket for but look at what your local construction companies are doing right because every March one and

your insurance company yeah and so they get discounts so every March over here

um they call it safety week and one of the construction companies puts on a whole a whole week of training as far as

you know OSHA 10 OSHA 30 sometimes and then they'll do lift trainings and

there's um like CPR and stuff like that and just this last year they started

doing it in English and in Spanish cool so there there's things out there you

just have to look out for them yeah well knowing where to go going to your your

local um builders association and finding out a lot of times they have

them the AGC the Association of General Contractors if you're in the commercial side um they'll have them they'll have

safety oriented thing uh meetings and trainings and different stuff through the AGC all the time as well you can

also get with your insurance company and talk to them they'll do uh like safety

like they they're coming to certify our forklift drivers and all that stuff so

you can leverage make this might be the most important one of the most important

points make your insurance company work for you yeah that's what I was going to say

because they have people that that will come there and they're like "You want this training you want that training

just give me a date we'll be there i said we started at 7 am he said I'll be there at 6:50 ready to go yep yeah so

put your uh put your insurance company to work for you they'll they'll they'll hook you up with many multiple different

types of training again it depends on the the company and the state I'm sure

that you're in but they're going to be certifying our forklift guys so you know

yeah and so I wanted to go back to kind of the dust thing that we were talking about and John saying that you have to

have a vacuum on site and this goes back to a job i know we we've talked about it

um in previous episodes but we were on on site and we're using you know multiple grinders and we have the

vacuums going and I brought air scrubbers that were you know our personal air scrubbers i didn't go to

the GC and it's like hey you need to provide this it's this is what I'm doing because it's my guys on site and I'm

protecting them like everyone else is just a bonus i'm protecting my guys and the safety guy walked through and he was

like "Dude can I just get pictures of you guys?" Because it I've never walked into a site where they had this much

grinding and cleaning and everything and it be this clear yeah yeah and that's

why when when people ask you know what what sets what sets us apart it's things

like that it's because I'm doing that just because I want to do it not because I'm getting a bunch of extra money for

it it's because it's just what needs in fact it's probably costing you extra because it's your equipment getting used

and the time to set it up on site it's costing you extra but you're trying to do the right thing

you know yep but it's like again it's your guys if you're on site it's you out

there you're protecting yourself so do what needs to be done people will notice and then you will get recognized for it

and I don't think um I don't think anyone's going to complain

about it right that's something that they're always going to remember they're going to be like "Hey remember the last

time they were on this job site and it was that clean we need them over here again

yeah the and like you said the the in the commercial world with the silica

once that came out and when it came out what is it three or four or five years ago it was like all hands on deck on

every commercial site it was it was actually like seven or eight years ago has it been well I I just remember when

it happened uh we got a call from a general contractor i did uh from their lead

superintendent because we had guys out mixing mud without containing mix and

thin set it's before they took the silica out and we didn't have a bucket

cover and the vacuum hooked up like they were dead serious it took me a minute to

get caught up on it u which is another good reason to stay in touch with your insurance company because they'll keep

you up to date on a lot of that stuff too all right well

here we are at the end of the podcast want to say thank you to Jose and Daniel

uh Jose had to run a little bit early but um and and thanks to Mr paul Stewart thanks

sir for for keeping everything in line appreciate that um

next week again we're going to have a a nice conversation with CFI we're looking forward to that so join us there come

with your questions and um I want to do another shout out to Shag Tools remember

remember Huddle 10 is your discount code there so you can get anything on Shag

Tools and uh you can scan this QR code and go straight on and get your get your

10% off so I want to thank Shag Tools for sponsoring this episode and again

thanks to my uh my my friends over in Michigan and Preferred Flooring the the

the Huddle Staples uh they often run this podcast on their own and they are

excellent also if you It's a team effort don't let them lie to you it is a team

effort and we all um have done a really good job of having each other's back over the years here so uh also if you

speak Spanish and you want to join the Spanish speaking episode Jorge will be doing uh we do one of them every quarter

or so quarter or so and um make So yeah make sure to check that out and and uh

that one is going to be on July 8th so if you want to be on that one um and talk to Jorge in Spanish just uh email

him atthehuddle.team too and uh I'm sure he'd be he'd be glad

to have you yeah so join the conversation get involved stay involved and we love you guys we really

appreciate everything give us a thumbs up if you like the content continue to uh support us

yeah there you go uh continue to support us with your comments and your your your

um engagement online that really helps us out a lot and uh we certainly

appreciate our audience and we appreciate you guys so much so until next week uh we're out

thanks guys see you guys [Music]