Going to a job blind

[treeman82]

How many of you guys enjoy going to do a job that you have never seen before? I went with my buddy today to do a job about half an hour away. He had never seen the job, but it had been priced for him, supposedly at a reasonable price. We get there, it was a LOT more than what had been explained to him, and we got lucky in that the one removal, the worst lead had already been removed by the town.

Neither of us were happy today

 

[arboromega]

i subcontract at least once a month on weekends. always blind. not often worth the money. helping one of my wife's friends tomarrow on a blind job, will be a cluster fk im sure

 

[rumination]

you mean a fuster cluck, don't you?

 

[Guy Meilleur]

I often go to blind jobs of an other sort. Client finds me on web, emails me with questions, I answer them and give my hourly rate, they say go ahead. I go to job and do it and if they are not home I just email invoice and report. A few clients I have never even met.

That other kind of blind job sounds like slavery. It would be like bending over to pick up a bar of soap in a jailhoouse shower.

 

[MasterBlaster]

It's simple. You just always charge more.

Always expect the worse, and you won't (usually) get screwed.

 

[mikecross23]

I won't do a job for a price set by someone else unless I see it first. But I was contract climbing for a while on my days off from my own work to stay busy and those days were always blind. Subbing is on an hourly rate though.

-Mike-

 

[BigJohn]

I do it every day. No big deal really its all the same just cutting the branches off. Nothing I can't handle. Trees are trees. I paid the same either way. I used to get jobs that were written on beer coasters. Showed up one day and the salesman was like ???? thats a really ash tree. He sold the job and put a number on it and never saw it.

 

[treeman82]

Not my job, I still got paid. It's just nice though to know before stepping onto the property what you are going to be up against. The reason why this job was pre-bid and trusted was because my friend has known the person who bid it for probably 30 years. They have worked together doing tree work numerous times. It's like he and I said this morning though, you get to the job, you have most of the equipment on the truck, but find out that you need a wheelbarrow, or a LOT of room for chips, or whatever. Or vice versa, go there loaded to the brim with equipment when all you need to do is set your notch, make the back cut, and pull the entire thing over in 1 piece.

 

[Frans]

The biggest problem I have with doing jobs blind is I always seem to not have some essential tool with me that I would have if I'de seen the job before hand.
Frans

 

[Stumper]

Frans, That is why we need such big trucks with lots of tool storage.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Originally posted by Stumper
Frans, That is why we need such big trucks with lots of tool storage.

That's why I allways have The Winch with me.

"dang, So & so still has my other two blcoks!"

 

[SteveBullman]

the secret is when you're subbing, is never climb to your full potential.
you can be sure next job you go to if you do will have a much bigger workload piled on

 

[roachy]

Thats the truth! I sub every sat. and learned that lesson the hard way now I slow it down and have fun with it ,that also allows me to play around with new tricks and ideas.
As for goingn in blind thats the story of my life and if I dont have what I need (or want) there are always other options well at least most of the time.

 

[OutOnaLimb]

I fly blind just about every day as a sub. Most of the time the bids are reasonable. But every once in a while I show up and the bid was wayyyy under bid. There have been more than a few times when I showed up looked at the tree and said No Way Jose. Im not doing it for that price, its not worth my time for 20% The contractor usually re adjusts the bid, or ups my percentage. Last week I did that on two trees, one maple and one Dead Cottonwood. I told the contractor over the phone with out even seeing the cotton wood that I wouldnt do it. He bid $250 on a big dead cotton wood that was leaning over the garage. I would have gotten $50.00 For a days worth of climbing. I dont think so.
He got gruff with me saying I hadnt even seen the tree and told me he would get some one else to do it. As it turned out the guy he got to do the jobs walked out about half way through, leaving a 35ft and25 ft spar still leaning over the garage. The clown even left one of his ropes in the tree. The contractor told me he would pay me the full price if I got the spars down and cut up. This wasnt that bad I just had to spike up and bomb some chunks down and then pull over the spars, The whole think took us about an hour and a half.

The moral of the story is to bid jobs accordingly in order to take care of your subbs, and if you dont, dont get bent out of shape when the hack you hire fouls things up.

Kenn:Monkey:

 

[wiley_p]

With the exception of one company in this area, every job is blind and in the phone conversation key aspects are always left out. If some of the guys screw up bad enough I will squeeze them hard on the jobsite, sometimes doubleing my rate.

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Doing the math

Originally posted by OutOnaLimb
He bid $250 on a big dead cotton wood that was leaning over the garage. I would have gotten $50.00 This wasnt that bad I just had to spike up and bomb some chunks down and then pull over the spars, The whole think took us about an hour and a half.

The moral of the story is to

Do the math. If you're getting $50. for 90 minutes work, you're just getting $33./hr. Then you figure in travel and setup time, and you're getting way less. That sounds too cheap for a hired gun, equipped and insured.

Wasn't that bad maybe, but not that good for you either, right? Good for the pimp that got you there tho.