Clearing Small Lots (long)

[Doctor Dave]

Firewood rights? When I pay someone for low grade stumpage, I only pay $10-$20 a cord. All the money in firewood is in the labor.

I agree. What I am trying to tell the guy is that if his main objective is development of the properties, he should concentrate on that. Good luck to him if he is going to build a firewood cutting and selling business at the same time that will pay his development expenses! There are only 24 hours in a day, and he hasn't mentioned that he has a crew or a large line of credit or loan from a bank. Plus, he will undoubtedly be competing with a lot of low-income people in WV that are trying to scratch out a living cutting and selling firewood already.

I'm not trying to rain on his parade, but maybe he should see if he can make his system work for one property, start to finish, and at a profit. It could be that he just saves some money on building a house (or siting a trailor) for himself. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Husky137]

I agree. What I am trying to tell the guy is that if his main objective is development of the properties, he should concentrate on that. Good luck to him if he is going to build a firewood cutting and selling business at the same time that will pay his development expenses! There are only 24 hours in a day, and he hasn't mentioned that he has a crew or a large line of credit or loan from a bank. Plus, he will undoubtedly be competing with a lot of low-income people in WV that are trying to scratch out a living cutting and selling firewood already.

I'm not trying to rain on his parade, but maybe he should see if he can make his system work for one property, start to finish, and at a profit. It could be that he just saves some money on building a house (or siting a trailor) for himself. Nothing wrong with that.

Read his threads carefully, his main goal is to keep one of his lawn jockeys busy during the winter months and maybe make a profit doing it. I agree there are better ways of doing this that don't tie up loads of cash in a speculative proposition.

 

[lsylvain]

I actually don't really care if this venture makes a profit. Well, I do care since extra money is always nice. What I do care about of course is loosing money. But as long as I break even on the lots I'm going to have the other benifits I have mentioned.

If I could come up with some other work that would help me keep an employee on and would be less of a PITA I would jump on it.

Snow will not pay someone to work full time or even parttime durring the winter. I can work the hell out of someone when it snows, but then nothing for sometimes 3-4 weeks.

Fall cleanups again is great money and I would love to have the extrahelp, but this has two problems fall cleanup work is hard to come by because the city has a giant truck loader that runs around for about a month so all the home owner has to do is rake/blow their leaves to the street. It is so easy for them to do themselves in most cases. Even if I could get all the work I could handle that would only cover a guy for about a month.

I thought about odd job type crap like handyman stuff, but number one who the heck wants to do that, and 2 again I don't see being able to put someone else to work with something like this.

I thought about the firewood thing, which would work without buying the lots, but then I think why work your butt of to make other people money. ie. letting a tree service dump their crap on my property for the wood. I still have all the brush and mess to deal with and have to dispose of it in some way. Or going in onto other peoples property and getting the wood I still have to deal with all the mess and clean up and then have to haul all the wood off.

So basically I'm looking for something that can be done from Nov 1st though Feb 28th Each year and not run over that much in either direction. My Spring cleanups start Mar 1st and the mowing season ends in October. Something that can be droped the second the snow starts falling.

 

[mike385]

If you are gonna make a go of it, sell two saws and buy a splitter. My .02.

 

[lsylvain]

I think I'm going to go for it. I guess it wouldn't hurt to look anyway. I mean if I go look at a lot and estimate the timber, and firewood and the numbers work out, what do I have to loose. If I can't find any properties where the numbers work, I'm out some time and like Dr. Dave said worst case, I save some money on a house or shop for myself.

As far as competeing with the poor guys, I know how that is. I went through the whole thing with the lawn care when i first started and will go through it again when I re open. show up on time, deliver a quality product, customer service, do the jobs that they don't have the funds to do.