Hay Doug,
My take on this is..
Concider your business as having 2 divisions:
a) Service work
Advertising service work can be a big expence expecially for a younger company. It can cost you xx$ to get a new customer. It may generate answering number of waist of time phone calls. If you do the free estomate thing well that costs you too. Service calls may not last as long as projects. So you tend to waist time in a day going from one job to another. The jobs may need to get done right away and you could need some unforeseen material. So a quick supply run. Most service work is on a tight schedule. Most customers want to know exactly what day and time you will arive.
A GC can (or should) screen out the nonsence phone calls and estomates. Yes you may have to bid out the jobs and see the site. If the project may be bigger so it may not have to get that morning. That give you more time to make a material run if needed. The schedule may be more flexable as to when you can do the work. So you could use it more like filler work between service calls. A GC could also relieve you from waisting time with the customer like answering general questions. The bigest con with a GC for me is colecting da money. Are you going to waist time tracking down your cash. So you need to look at the GC as far as when you would get paid and how much you trust them. Also look at how much time you spend on them. Do you bid out lots and lots of jobs only to get a few. Or do you get most of what you bid. Also how organized it the GC. Are they on top of problems oor is it every trade for themselves. Is the scheduling good, are things done in the wrong order, or all at the same time.
For thesr reasons I charge more for small jobs then big ones (normaly thru a GC).
When are you going at it full time Doug?
Tom
