Curbside leaf pick up

[Rftreeman]

ive been using my 16hp billygoat for 10yrs now, i fly thru my fall cleanups with it, yes these machines are animals, but for those of u who are just doing the pickup it creates a lot of wear on the impeller, doing it cheap will hurt u in the wallet come repair time, just price out how much a new one goes for.

anything with "BillyGoat" on it cost an arm and a leg, I couldn't afford $1600 so I found a used loader on ebay for $500 last year, it has a Kohler 10hp engine and a the intake hose is 10" dia, it hangs on the tail gate of my chip truck and it does the job pretty good. I almost bought a tow behind unit for $750 but then I got to thinking about it being pulled behind the truck how would I pull my trailer with all my blowers and such.

Now I only have 1 dump truck... the thing had been tied up for almost a month with leaf pick-ups... so that screwed up my tree work schedule for quite some time. Not something I was happy about.

I only have one truck also but my tree work has slowed enough that there isn't a problem but if something did come up I would just put it in the schedule.

 

[STLfirewood]

I have a little wonder set-up. It's 16hp and really does a good job. I bought it last year with a canvas for my dump trailer. I got a heck of a buy $1100 for the whole set up. It was 3 months old. The guy needed some money.
The pics came out kind of dark.

Scott

 

[Curbside]

Sorry guys I still can't see it doing it for that price. I also own a 20hp Billy goat Vac. Personally I think your a little overly optimistic about a 100 foot windowrow of leaves and ending up with a wheel barrel of debris. (Maybe I misunderstood you.)

If you had neighbor after neighbor on a single street maybe you could do it for 35-40 dollars per pick up but to drive somewhere to do a single pick up. Maybe if your in a tiny town and you don't have to drive anywhere longer than 5 minutes to get to your next pile but if your working in a city its going to take you at least 15-30 minutes to get to your pile by the time you ravel out the hose and start the machine and do the job hand out the invoice and pack back up your going to be pushing an hour. Now pay for your machines, fuel, insurance and truck and trailer and don't forget to pay yourself I can't see it. Oh and then you have to drive to the dump at the end of the day.

 

[Rftreeman]

Sorry guys I still can't see it doing it for that price. I also own a 20hp Billy goat Vac. Personally I think your a little overly optimistic about a 100 foot windowrow of leaves and ending up with a wheel barrel of debris. (Maybe I misunderstood you.)

If you had neighbor after neighbor on a single street maybe you could do it for 35-40 dollars per pick up but to drive somewhere to do a single pick up. Maybe if your in a tiny town and you don't have to drive anywhere longer than 5 minutes to get to your next pile but if your working in a city its going to take you at least 15-30 minutes to get to your pile by the time you ravel out the hose and start the machine and do the job hand out the invoice and pack back up your going to be pushing an hour. Now pay for your machines, fuel, insurance and truck and trailer and don't forget to pay yourself I can't see it. Oh and then you have to drive to the dump at the end of the day.

my machines are all paid for and have paid for them selfs, my truck cost me .34 cents, yes .34 cents and hour to run on a 40 hour week plus I'm by myself so I can make money at $35 or $40 per pickup but I'm not getting just pickups so I'm not making it good, if all I had to do was curbside pickups I'd do them all day, I can suck up a pile of leaves the size of a pick up truck in 30 minutes or less.

 

[STLfirewood]

I can fit 15 yards that I charge $40-$50 for in my trailer. At $50 that is $750 for the day. I don't think that is to bad for picking up leaves.

Scott

 

[pdqdl]

I have a little wonder set-up. It's 16hp and really does a good job. I bought it last year with a canvas for my dump trailer. I got a heck of a buy $1100 for the whole set up. It was 3 months old. The guy needed some money.
The pics came out kind of dark.

Scott

I took the liberty of brightening up your pictures. Microsoft photo editor or any other software that does "gamma correction" I used Lview, an ancient freeware program for graphics.

 

[GarethVW]

I have the leaf vac contract for a village near my house (15 min away) I get paid $125 per hour (with three people) to pick up the leaves on the curb I will make about $7000 there this year. I also have a trailer park, and I do some individuals with a minimum fee of $75. I am usually not there more than 15min on those jobs. However, I have a big industrial vac like the cities use (That I picked up for under $3000) with a 65 hp diesel engine. My F450 holds 17 yards. Also, yards are subjective to how wet the leaves are if they are wet they pack twice as tight.

 

[STLfirewood]

Thank you for doing that. I'm not good at doing those things.

Scott

 

[pdqdl]

Right mouse click on the pics shown above, and you can save them back to your files in their edited version. I renamed them, so it should be a breeze.