ARRGH, If I have another today I'll flip!

[Matt Follett]

OK, yesterday we tackled this 50" DBH oak removal (DEAD), crane job, went smooth... had the tree on the ground in less then 4 hours! (And it was massive, pics coming,everything cool) But by the end of the day we still had some clean up to do... so back this morn for a 'few hours', clean up the bole wood, Hiab onto trailer; limb logs, Hiab onto truck; rake up and sweep up,... well our day finished at 8:00 tonight, first a damaged stabilizer on the Hiab, then a blown rotator piston, which blew out a line as it failed... so forth and so on, picked up wrong chain for the saw, had to drive back for another, pick-up and dump trailer stuck at yard...
Sometimes, I feel like things are just too big, why do we continue to challange ourselves in such foolish ways, why can't I just climb trees, prune off little limbs, chip them into the back of my little pick-up and be happy!!!

Pondering the worthiness of expansion

 

[treeclimber165]

You didn't use the crane to load the big wood?

The only time equipment breakdowns really get me bummed is when it is something I should have fixed before showing up on the job. Then I take it personally because I wasn't prepared. But when stuff breaks unexpectedly in spite of proper maintenance, I just have to take it in stride and fix it.
Hope your tomorrow is better.

 

[Stumper]

I know the feeling! I had a big willow snag today in a backyard. very little top/brush but a big stem and stump. Lots of wind but since there wasn't much top --doable. I got it down and mostly moved to the front for pickup by my firewood guy. He showed up early-just before I moved back to the front to drop a Juniper spar -12" Dbh about 16' tall and buck up a pile of wood from it a and the Goldenrain tree I took down yesterday. My guy says I'll cut if you load-good enough. This guy is a competant sawyer and has won prizes for accuracy felling in competitions. Anyway, he messed up his notch a little trying to work around some big decorative rocks-no biggie-leave some holding wood and hinge it over it'll be okay. He ran through the hinge on the wrong side and it spun pretty as you please and dropped right on the chainlink fence! Poor guy-he was embarrassed and so was I-I don't do that on my jobs-er ...well not often. Seems like this kind of thing always happens on windy days.-The wind had no direct bearing on this but I think it messes with our heads and pushes us to hurry and do foolish things when it blows over 35mph. It definitely blows a lot of junk in my eyes.

 

[treeman82]

I hear what you're saying about the wind. I try not to do anything where a lot of brush has to be rigged out. Too much surface area for the wind to hold onto, not enough weight to keep it from doing anything.

 

[Stumper]

Yeah, high winds create REAL physical problems. Then there is that other effect (on me at least). I find that a lot of the stupid stuff like driving off and leaving a rake etc. happens on high wind days.

 

[TREETX]

Some days/weeks just $uck. Welcome to my week!!!

Lost my a$$ this week with another 3rd party situation. Land clearing - trails for the VP of Whole Foods. 3rd party being landscraper. 4.5K just for trails, no deadwood/cleaning. Done!! Then landscraper needs timber for trails and starts dropping huge cedars (Juniperus ashei) for posts. Expects me to clean slash. Phuckdat!! Already 5 guys, 4 days with chipper.

Wow, I paid everyone and got 8$ an hr for my time

Today I am just trying to regain my sanity.

 

[mikecross23]

I feel ya on the $8 an hour thing! I lost my ass, I guess it was about 3 weeks ago. I worked for 3 days w/ 2 helpers and a loader sub for disposal and pocketed $200 for all three days. No third parties just me and I don't know what I was thinking when I was estimating. HORRIBLE!!!! My head was screwed on bass-ack-wards that day! The weather threw me off, the dang trees were twice as big as I remembered, etc., etc. Now I look back on it and I'm thankful I went ahead and did it knowing that I was working for practically nothing. I have gotten 4 extra jobs from neighbors walking by and one referal. Now I don't feel as bad about how bad I did on that one big job.

Monkeypuzzle gave me a good bit of advice a few weeks ago. . .
Don't underbid. Underbiding causes discouragement, and discouragement causes lack of enjoyment for what we do.

I'm sure this is elemetary thinking for most of you guys but not something that had crossed my newbie mind. I've done a lot better since.

-Mike-

 

[NeTree]

Some days you're the dog...others you're the fireplug.

Don't sweat it bro, we all have those days.

Me? Every thursday. It seems no matter how good the rest of the week goes, everything always turns to $hit on thursdays. I have learned to just accept it.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Some days you're the hammer, some days you're the nail.

 

[Treeman14]

Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug!

 

[Matt Follett]

With everyone's comments about lossing $$$$, I wonder if this industry is more prone to underbid problems then others? I mean yes, if this crane job had have gone okay, we would have walked away fine, making money, no problem, but how often do you hear that everything is fine and dandy? I know all business is tough and I'm not crying for sympathy to the other industries out there, but with our time only (more or less) business I wonder if it's not harder to consistantly bid on line, add to that the complexity and changing conditions, and things can be down right hard to predict.

Any thought from other business owners/industry points of view?

 

[TREETX]

I hate losing my ass but that is life. The sting is good and reminds you that it is ok when you make out like a bandit on some jobs. Not a crime to make money. Getting burned like this will just push me to bid higher. I am better off watching Springer or chasing leads than working for nothing.

I find I always burn myself when I haven't worked in a few weeks. I am much faster in my mind than in reality.

When I haven't worked in a while, I tend to just see the cutting part and lose my arse because I don't figure the clean up.

I have even burned myself and had customers offer to pay me more. I have always turned it down. I figure the sting will do me good and keep me from making the same mistake.

 

[Toddppm]

When bidding, thinking that if I'm going to be the one climbing: I'm never as fast as I used to be once there doing the job.

Best 2 pieces of advice I ever got: 1. Don't work for FREE. 2. Work smarter not harder.

The tree work side of the green industry is a trip as far as bidding, have had people say, I've gotten 4+ different bids, how can there be such a difference in price? Say for about a $1200 job, bids ranging from $500-$2000! Lotta people out there either have no clue or are working for weekend beer money.
I've definately underbid my fair share but like Tex said I can go broke sitting at home!
The landscaping side seems to be so much more inline price wise and easier to sell even though it's not nearly as dangerous or have a major impact on the total landscape as trees

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Originally posted by TREETX
I am better off watching Springer or chasing leads than working for nothing.

You need to know what your fixed and variable costs are. If you watch Springer, you're not paying your fixed costs. If you bid lower than the variable costs, then you're better off watching Springer.

Bid < fixed cost = you loose $, watch Springer(bad).
Bid > fixed cost but < fixed + variable cost = go to work, don't make money(just OK).
Bid > fixed cost + variable cost = go to work, make money(best).

Does that make sense?

 

[Acer]

I know I've been prone to underbidding. As owner of the business, I'm the last in line for any money, and there never seems to be that much at the end of a job (Out of everything I earn, I seem to keep 25%. 50% goes on labour, and the rest on endless bills). Sometimes it's because I underestimate how much there is to do (Friday, hired in a tractor chipper to chip waste, ..didn't get it done, so now need to hire the tractor for another day..expected to make £ 100 in 1 day, will now lose £50 over 2 days ), a lot of the time it's because I underestimate how much my "helpers" can/will do. If they get fed up, their heads go down and you might as well send them home. I sometimes wonder if I make any money on my labour. If I did the work myself over a longer period, I'm sure I'd make the same amount.

A few things have helped in costing. In the UK, there's a good book on costing, which gives standard times and costs on all sorts of landscaping tasks. This is it. Perhaps there's a similar book in the US? If you can find a similar activity, you should be able to work out an acceptable time. It's good for putting in tenders, because it's the standard reference that landscape artichokes, surveyors etc. use to put their budgets together, so a quote based on that will see you near the mark. (A mate put in a quote to remove a clump of large trees for a builder. He didn't have a clue, but put in what he thought was a silly amount, £2100. By the time he finished the job, 2 weeks later, he had nothing but the 046 he'd had to buy to get through some of the wood. We checked in the Spons book, and found he should have been quoting >£5000 - and that's what the nearest quote was, the builder later told him..poor Mike worked for 2 weeks just to line that bloke's pocket!)

As far as costing goes, I think of the following, and this seems to follow industry standards:-

Labour: for everyone working, take their hourly wages, including everything like employers' taxes, and increase by 50%. That covers slack time, illness, etc that would normally rob you of your profit. That's what you charge labour out to the customer..don't forget to include yourself as labour.

Overheads: All your annual costs you have to pay regardless, like insurance, phone, general materials, divided by the number of hours you spend on jobs, gives you an hourly indirect overhead rate. (I split these into indirect, which are costs I have to pay regardless of the work type, and direct, which are costs that you only pay for a particular type of work. eg. my tree work overhead covers tipping fees, my planting overhead does not because that job produces no waste. If I didn't do this, I'd be expensive on planting and cheap on trees, so I'd get loads of tree work and make little money. Don't forget to add depreciation.!

Profit: what do you want to put back into the business?

Once you've done that, it's amazing how much you do have to charge. I still feel guilty sometimes about quoting some of these prices, but what I'm left with is still pretty modest. Last year, my tree work charges for two of us for a day were £150. I now know I should have been quoting nearer £230 / day. £150 paid everything apart from my share.

The only problem now is whether the market is there for the correct price. If all the competition are pricing a lot lower, it causes problems. They do around here, because most of them are putting in low prices and turning over a huge amount of work to a very low standard. My future lies in working for bigger companies and local authorities. You have to spend hours and hours preparing paperwork, like risk assessments, safety policies, and more and more things need to be covered by certificates of competence, but the rewards are bigger. You can charge a respectable rate for your work. I'm slowly giving up scrabbling around in people's gardens, because there's next to no money in it. If I want to earn nothing, it would be easier and safer to do that by sitting on my sofa with my feet up!!

 

[Jumper]

Storm work??

Matt:

Hopefully the storm that ripped through here this past two days has brought a little work your way.

 

[Matt Follett]

Storm work

Yes and no, it was mostly ice pellets which didn't stick to the trees, so luckliy not to much damage, but not to much work either out of it,... one blow down pine, that was it for calls , it slowed us down more then anything, trying to get dormant pruning finished up.