Carolina Commercial Roofing
How One Estimator Does the Work of Three — and Saves $70K a Year Doing It
Dale Gillis founded Carolina Commercial Roofing in 1990 and has been its owner, president, and sole estimator ever since. His portfolio includes Apple’s Data Center, the State Farm corporate office, the Mandarin Hotel in Buckhead, and Cox Communications — projects that most solo estimators couldn’t touch. His secret: The EDGE lets him produce the same volume of bids that two to three employees would typically handle.
Before adopting The EDGE, Gillis was still estimating the way he learned in the 1970s — scale ruler, calculator, and paper plans. He was skeptical of the shift to software, but recouped his investment in under a year. Today he completes three to four bids a day, each in one to two hours, and estimates The EDGE saves him $70,000–$80,000 annually in staffing costs he simply doesn’t need. “I’m surprised that everyone is not using The EDGE,” he said. “It is the single best piece of equipment that we use in this business.”
