On price and customers

[John Paul Sanborn]

Last year I did a job for a lady at her Mom's place she was selling for the sale of the estate. It was 3 CB spruce almost roadside. everything went through the chipper. $1200

They wanted me to gove a price on 2 medium to large silver maples with high soil crowns, one over house and shed, the other leaning over nieghbors garden. 1200 each + 300 for chasing surface roots and hauling grindings. Both stumps are in crushed granite beds with fieldstone boarders.

"But we thought it would be the same or maybe less!"

 

[ASD]

"But we thought it would be the same or maybe less!"

:bang: don't you just love when thay say that

 

[Treeinnovator]

you must be really bad at roping down branches if your rates fluctuate that much. it should only extend you an extra 2 hours of work for the tech work involved.

charge an extra $300 + the original $1200 rate and don't be so greedy.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

you must be really bad at roping down branches if your rates fluctuate that much. it should only extend you an extra 2 hours of work for the tech work involved.

charge an extra $300 + the original $1200 rate and don't be so greedy.

With the soruce trees I did not have to rope anything down, they are like ladders, climb up and cut off the rungs as you go, branches get smaller as you go up. With the 18 inch chipper everything went through w/o a problem. Having the duff under the tree allows for dropping chunks w/o turf damage. The only thing that slowed the work down is the ground keeping up with me dropping limbs.

The silver maples are low branching with big stems. The stumps have a high soil crown thus increasing the volume of the grind significantly.

But logs need to be hauled out, being bigger then the chipper can handle.

2 completly different jobs, excurrent and decurrent trees come down very differently. I assumed that tree pro's would understand that, sorry for confusing you.

 

[jomoco]

Admirable patience JPS

With the soruce trees I did not have to rope anything down, they are like ladders, climb up and cut off the rungs as you go, branches get smaller as you go up. With the 18 inch chipper everything went through w/o a problem. Having the duff under the tree allows for dropping chunks w/o turf damage. The only thing that slowed the work down is the ground keeping up with me dropping limbs.

The silver maples are low branching with big stems. The stumps have a high soil crown thus increasing the volume of the grind significantly.

But logs need to be hauled out, being bigger then the chipper can handle.

2 completly different jobs, excurrent and decurrent trees come down very differently. I assumed that tree pro's would understand that, sorry for confusing you.

I admire your patience with this clown JPS!

jomoco

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I admire your patience with this clown JPS!

jomoco

Don't look at it as a clown, but as a misinformed responce. Flames do not add to the conversation, thoughtfull respoonce will. Otherwise just ignore people with whom you disagree.

IMO the flame responces are even more disruptive then the troll posts.

 

[jomoco]

Your Thread- My Apologies

Don't look at it as a clown, but as a misinformed responce. Flames do not add to the conversation, thoughtfull respoonce will. Otherwise just ignore people with whom you disagree.

IMO the flame responces are even more disruptive then the troll posts.

Sorry if my responses to this clown are offensive to you. I happened to read a few of his posts bragging about paying climbers 375 bucks a week, less than any groundman around here has been paid for 20 years. But it's your thread, and I apologize for calling this clown a clown in it.

jomoco

 

[Timberhauler]

"But we thought it would be the same or maybe less!"

Last summer I took down two small white oaks for a customer of mine.They were both about 20 inches in diameter and maybe 60 feet tall..They were in between his house and dog kennel so that made it a little challenging,took me five hours in and out of there because I had to rope the trunk down..Charged him $1000 dollars.....Three weeks later his neighbor calls me.He had a white oak in his back yard.This one was at least 40 inches at the base and well over 90 feet tall.There wasn't to be much roping involved,but I was going to have to cut everything in smaller peices..There was no loader access,everything had to be drug out,and we were gonna have to cut the wood up and wheel barrow it out..I figured if all went well we could possibly get it done in about a day and a half..I told him $2800...He then said.."Well,you cut down TWO trees for my neighbor and hauled them off for $1000.I was thinking it was gonna cost around 600 because it's just a little bigger than one of his trees were"..

 

[Ax-man]

JP, I know where your coming from this one, big difference between an straight stemmed Spruce verses those multi-stemmed Maples with their Titanic sinking iceberg stumps half raised out of the ground.

I myself don't follow how people think when it comes to trees. All the customer sees is one tree, basically one price for all, we as the arborists see time and hours. I got into earlier this spring in a similar situation between neighbors, both jobs were about the same on time. One neighbor thought I was charging too much because his "stuff " was smaller than the neighbors. One neighbor needed some large limbs from two Sycamores roped down and away from the house, easy job, other neighbor had many more smaller trees, light crown raising, and some deadwooding. It is all about hours and equipment and of course labor.


Larry

 

[hornett22]

Treeinnovator is no "tree pro",

he is a pro $hitbag and that is about it.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Sorry if my responses to this clown are offensive to you. I happened to read a few of his posts bragging about paying climbers 375 bucks a week, less than any groundman around here has been paid for 20 years. But it's your thread, and I apologize for calling this clown a clown in it.

jomoco

It's not that it is offensive to me, more like frustrating. One comes in to discuss and learn, but has to wade through dozens of bickering little flames when people have to respond to someone they see as an idiot.

I've been on the board from near the beginning, and have seen good people leave because others cannot get over it and carry on.

I guess this is my quadrenial rant on people feeding the trolls.

he is a pro $hitbag and that is about it.

How do these comments, day in day out, advance the discussion of our profession and vocation?

A twist on the old saying, "If you cannot say something constructive, don't say anything at all."

And "If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem."



If your in a bar having a productive discussion and one of your buddies starts getting into a pissing contest with the vilage idion, do you tell your buddy to calm down or take it outside, or do you drop the discussion and join in on the little hate fest while the giggling little puke gets the attention he needs by ruining your night and all the people in the bar.

The the other patronds leave the bar, because they want to go someplace where they can have join in civil discorse without a bunch of drunken louts bickering over everyone else.

 

[ropensaddle]

jps I understand the differences very well, I wish people would pay
what it is worth around here. You would be lucky to get 800 for those
maples here. It sucks the cut throats and uninsured bid and then you
hear why are you so high the rest of my bids were half that, which when
it is busy I say no big deal let chuck in a truck do it. This year is terrible
not enough calls and cut throats and landscapers using illegals are turning
business to chit! I went by a big red oak I bid 900.00 on looked up and
saw a Spanish feller no rope doing a balancing act cutting limbs allready
knocked off a gutter and then a truck with a landscape sign on it. If it
gets any worse I am getting out and going back to powerline work I hate
it but at least gainfully employed the highest I have got to take down
any tree here was 1200 and the only reason I got that was no one else
had enough experience to attempt it. I bid it when things were busy
and owner said no one would give him a bid as he let tree go too long
hollow bad red oak leaning toward house. Tree would be worth 3000.
were you guys bid a few of these kind of trees when I get busy I have
tried to bid like you'all do never got a call back but did not care figured
I would make money if I did. I bid a 45 inch dead gum last week not all
dead but near house in front yard close to busy road told the lady we
would be near 1000 but would be better if bucket could access she
how much then 800 with no stump and got the feeling I was not going
to get it! I hate to miss work when there is a drought on work so I called
her and said mam I want your business so I will go back and reevaluate
your tree and see if I can shave some off, she said ok that she thought
I was too high, so I wont do very good on her tree but beats setting
around typing on as another week. I hope things get better here the
cutthroats are hurting biz here and expense is coming faster than work!

 

[nytreeman]

jps I understand the differences very well, I wish people would pay
what it is worth around here.......
I hate to miss work when there is a drought on work so I called
her and said mam I want your business so I will go back and reevaluate
your tree and see if I can shave some off, she said ok that she thought
I was too high, so I wont do very good on her tree but beats setting
around typing on as another week. I hope things get better here the
cutthroats are hurting biz here and expense is coming faster than work!

Amen to that,if it wasn't for callbacks and refferals from customers I'd be screwed,lots of newguys around here working for nothing,I'll take the hit and get cheaper when it's slow but wtf ya gotta be able to pay the bills or why bother?hope the phone gets back to ringing:bang:

 

[joesawer]

In the mid 90s I was a working for a really good family owned tree service in AL. A great place for me to work, had a lot of fun and learned a lot.
I was doing almost all of the bidding. One bid and unhappy customer sticks in my mind.
The ground was saturated, many summer thunderstorms, lots of broken limbs and isolated storm damage, very busy, and a tropical depression growing larger in the gulf. A woman calls around 3:30 pm and says she has an emergency and needs her tree cut today.
My crew is on a job and there is no way to get them to her house today. But I will come and look at it rite now.
She has a co dominate sweet gum beside the house, each stem about 40" and about 80' tall. The stem leaning away from the house has broken off and the remaining un balanced side is leaning towards the house and is heaving the saturated soil. There is an old grass covered road bed beside the tree but I can't assume that it will hold up a truck.
I tell her $1500 for the whole job, She starts in the little game of how much to take it down, how much to clean up, how much for the stump. One of my favorite games. You should see the look on their face when they realize that every time we go around the price goes up, and they inform me as if I didn't know that I was raising the price and I just smile and say "I know".
We settled on $400 to put the remaining halve on the ground. She was pretty bitter about it. As I was leaving she made the comment, "My family could go on a vacation for that". She couldn't have even made one of her car payments for $400.
I bid the tree as a climb, but told Mike the climber to take the bucket and try the old road bed. He did and it worked and the tree was on the ground in about 15 minutes. She called back a very unhappy camper. Fortunately she had gone to the store as soon as they showed up and had come home just over an hour later.
She cussed my boss out but wanted a price on grinding the stump. He was laughing (quietly) as he handed me the phone. She wanted the stump ground for free, because we had made $400 in an hour and her husband didn't even make that much an hour and he was a high powered attorney. My boss listened to me explain that the price was for a whole crew and equipment and my time and the travel time and the time in between jobs,etc. Then quietly told me to just get the check for the amount owed and then start over on the stump bid. She was one irate lady but she paid us to grind the stumps.
Oh yeah she had illegals clean the mess up but she didn't trust them to cut the tree leaning over her house (something about liability insurance and a lawyers wife) and the didn't have a stump grinder.
Yeah I had a lot of fun in those days.

 

[Pancake]

Granite beds and fieldstone borders sounds like a cleanup nightmare- did you use tarps? Silver Maples here are brittle and usually full of voids once they get some size to them. Was there a central TIP?

sticks and stones- I never understand why people can't express themselves publically without usinf pseudoprofanity of outright vulgarity, maybe a sign of their intellegence level.

Cost is in the eyes of the customer valued at their personal perception of the
proposed employee. If you present and work well, know what you are talking about, and have a reputation that precedes you, mos tpeople accept your rate as fair and will sign the contract with the expectation that the jo bwill be done to their standards or better.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Granite beds and fieldstone borders sounds like a cleanup nightmare- did you use tarps? . Was there a central TIP?

So far there has not been a call back, probably shopping around. They wanted it ASAP because the pool construction guys were coming in next week. Another reason for the cost, it was not at our conveniance, ASAP costs more.

The tops of both trees would have fit in an old Asplundh Topkick with the 18 inch chipper, but the logs would have ahd to go on another truck, so with the stumper and loader that is 3 trucks 4 men and one day of work. They also wanted the stump debris removed, but I had not gotten around to adding that in because she freaked at the initial price.

When she expressed her dissatisfaction, I offered to come down with higher impact work and driving on the lawn, everything for $2k, they restore lawn.

I will never be low bidder on removals, there will always be someone out there.

I work with several other tree companies in the area, the same one who I would have brought on this job had me look at a monster oak TD that would have needed a crane. I figured 1 day with his bucket and me in the tree and 1 day with the crane for the big stuff. With what we wanted it was 4250, turned out that Davey's had bid ~2k less then us. There was no margine for error in those numbers with the mass of wood coming out, unless they were binging one of their cranes up from Chicagoland. Still cannot see the proffit there with the rollingstock required.