My area is like this to. Contractors don'tpay the greatest in my area, but techs see the tickets they bring back to the shop and figure they might as well go to work for themselves and collect the entire amount of the ticket instead of just their hourly pay. As you stated, big mistake. There is much more to it than it appears on the surface as you found out. So as a result, many of these guys go back to working for a shop. It seem like companies show up and melt away just like the winter snow around here.