Retro wages WTF!!!!

[Metals406]

Forming your own company, buying a broadform (liability), doing your own payroll taxes, buying a comp account (OSHA), etc. Either making yourself into a corporation or an LLC. That takes the payroll burden off a logging contractor, which is a good thing since comp is so expensive for loggers and fallers anymore.

Anyways, someone like Sling'r shouldn't be working as an employee for $250/day. There's a lot of things that go into cutting, and that $250 gets eaten up real quick. I was getting $220-240/day as an employee in the late 90's. Going broke so you can do a job you like is just plain stupid.

Here, you can run as a sole proprietor, and the "owner" doesn't have to have workers comp... Unless it's required by another contractor you're subbing to. State or Fed work may require it of everyone?.. I don't know?

What's a fair days wage for a faller using all his own equipment, but working under another companies liability?

 

[Metals406]

I normally do that for $475 on my own numbers or $345 employee. $40 an hour is crap, may sound like a lot, but unless you have fallen timber for a living you have no idea what the expense is like.

I never did fall for a living... Just worked in the rigging, and fell when it was needed around the landing, etc.

I almost got an apprenticeship under a faller (oldest brother in the family business), but he talked me out'a working in the woods all together.

So are you saying it's $345 for a 6 hour day?.. And a guy can make bills with a little left over?

 

[Tree Sling'r]

I never did fall for a living... Just worked in the rigging, and fell when it was needed around the landing, etc.

I almost got an apprenticeship under a faller (oldest brother in the family business), but he talked me out'a working in the woods all together.

So are you saying it's $345 for a 6 hour day?.. And a guy can make bills with a little left over?

Falling wages are based on a 6 hour day, $345 payroll is good, no complaints there.
But $250 is a slap in the face, and after buying gas and oil for your saw, chains, wear and tear, gas in the vehicle and then getting taxed you are brining home about $130 a day for a skilled trade that very few can do, yet alone produce in.

 

[Metals406]

Falling wages are based on a 6 hour day, $345 payroll is good, no complaints there.
But $250 is a slap in the face, and after buying gas and oil for your saw, chains, wear and tear, gas in the vehicle and then getting taxed you are brining home about $130 a day for a skilled trade that very few can do, yet alone produce in.

Well, tell the guy he can get 4 hours and 20 minutes for $250! LOL

It really pisses me off what happening to our timber industry... Makes me want to puke.

 

[RandyMac]

$250.00!!?? what an insult. Back in the late 70s, if I was offered that, they would have been told to find a place where the sun never shines, to put their offer.

Slinger, play with chainsaws, fish the Klamath, have some fun, see what fire season brings, I'm betting it's going to be a dandy. I loved the type of forestry work I did, in some ways, it was better than some of the logging I did.

 

[Gologit]

Falling wages are based on a 6 hour day, $345 payroll is good, no complaints there.
But $250 is a slap in the face, and after buying gas and oil for your saw, chains, wear and tear, gas in the vehicle and then getting taxed you are brining home about $130 a day for a skilled trade that very few can do, yet alone produce in.

Well said. Don't forget living expenses when you're away from home...which is almost always these days.
And down time...for which you get nothing. One job ends and another one isn't ready yet? Too bad. If you can't pick up some day work you just sit...with no income at all.
And that six hour day? I wonder how many guys realize just how many hours you put in to get that six hours a day. A two hour drive to work isn't even worth mentioning...and two hours back, also. Working on your saws at night, grinding chains, chasing parts and gear, working on the pickup...it all adds up in money and time.
Bringing home 130 bucks a day might be aiming too high. Some days you're lucky to break even.

 

[Meadow Beaver]

Falling wages are based on a 6 hour day, $345 payroll is good, no complaints there.
But $250 is a slap in the face, and after buying gas and oil for your saw, chains, wear and tear, gas in the vehicle and then getting taxed you are brining home about $130 a day for a skilled trade that very few can do, yet alone produce in.

It is an insult, people don't think about all the other places your money goes. It seems like for a lot of fellas drives to work are longer, sawchain, chainsaws and other falling equipment are a lot more expensive now. Since you (fallers
) do this work more than your backyard Joe your equipment doesn't last as long either. And it seems like most fallers like to have the best, or atleast what lasts.

So $250 would be a kick in the nads.

 

[Burvol]

I know I have said it before, but a friend of mine said they were pulling 600 a day busheling back in the mid eighties. The wood was right for it, but they still had an oppourtunity to go flat produce and make some money. Everybody happy.

 

[Jacob J.]

Well, tell the guy he can get 4 hours and 20 minutes for $250! LOL

I know guys that can cut as much in 4 hours than most guys can in 6. So typically what they do is work 4.5 hour days, 7 days a week. These are contractors paid by the load (which is the only way to do it.)

You don't want to run in the woods as a sole proprietor, the liability is too great. All it takes is one forester who misses a unit boundary, you cut over and boom! you're liable for triple stumpage.

$250.00!!?? what an insult. Back in the late 70s, if I was offered that, they would have been told to find a place where the sun never shines, to put their offer.

Slinger, play with chainsaws, fish the Klamath, have some fun, see what fire season brings, I'm betting it's going to be a dandy. I loved the type of forestry work I did, in some ways, it was better than some of the logging I did.

People tell me I'm crazy, but I can remember my dad saying he was making $260/270 a day in 1975 on the big wood jobs for Crown Pacific and Medco as a contractor. I remember when he was grossing the price of a new pickup almost every month.

I know I have said it before, but a friend of mine said they were pulling 600 a day busheling back in the mid eighties. The wood was right for it, but they still had an oppourtunity to go flat produce and make some money. Everybody happy.

I know a few old boys that were doing that- Mostly in Federal old-growth shelterwood sites that were cat-logged. One of them told me that they were trying to get wood out so fast that the cat skinners would be less than a tree length away on the entire job.

 

[Metals406]

I know guys that can cut as much in 4 hours than most guys can in 6. So typically what they do is work 4.5 hour days, 7 days a week. These are contractors paid by the load (which is the only way to do it.)

You don't want to run in the woods as a sole proprietor, the liability is too great. All it takes is one forester who misses a unit boundary, you cut over and boom! you're liable for triple stumpage.

Our fallers did 6 a day... Not counting the couple hour drive there and home. Forestryworks was telling me that guy in Colorado wanted him to do 10's.

You're absolutely right about sole proprietor and boundary lines... My bro-in-law cut two trees just over his really vague property line... The landowner saw the stumps, and made him pay $700 a tree. Guess it pays to know where your property lines are huh?

In a totally unrelated cost comparison (about the only one I can make)... When I had my fab shop, and did a big structural job, my comp (had to have it on that job, required by the contractor) cost me 3000.00, and 1800 more for liability insurance. Not sure if it's much more for a faller?

 

[tlandrum]

i have my own logging company here in tn and i would be tickled friggin pink if i could get back to clearing 250 a day. i spend,spend,spend for very little return.i sent the nicest hard maple i have ever fell to the mill this week and got 500 a 1000 for it.this was veneer logs that i expected to see 3-5000 per 1000 on. i thought i was going to make real bank, not piggy bank. i am at the end of my rope. i am thinking about shutting my gig down and falling for someone else. i cant take much more of this 5 out 1 in crap. i am on an 85 acre boundry that i am considering pulling out on and taking my equiptment home before i literally have to start paying to go to work. good luck to us all that call ourselves loggers in these poor times.

 

[hammerlogging]

Ya'lls rates are much higher out west. Does it have something to do with seasonality? Do you cut year round? Or is it just cause you'r running 30,000 ft per acre instead of 5000 ft per acre?

Day rate falling $300/day is the best I've found. "bushelling", you can make or break, depending on the timber you're in, but the prescription can kill you too- we're often working muti- age class timber. Sometimes its easy to cut 18,000ft plus, sometimes its hard to sneak out 12 mbf in a day. The day rate ain't bad because it avarages out the good days and bad days.

But yes, a very expensive job. But I love it.

 

[sILlogger]

I normally do that for $475 on my own numbers or $345 employee. $40 an hour is crap, may sound like a lot, but unless you have fallen timber for a living you have no idea what the expense is like.

HAHAHA!! a cutter is lucky to get $20 an hour our here!! i make my best money cutting by the bushel.

 

[Meadow Beaver]

You fellas who are taking hourly rate are getting jacked up. Getting payed by what you cut is the best way, Caleb your getting :censored:.

 

[sILlogger]

You fellas who are taking hourly rate are getting jacked up. Getting payed by what you cut is the best way, Caleb your getting :censored:.

and that is y i cut by the bushel. it is funny as hell.. people won't pay you much by the foot because they think it is alot....but if you do it by the foot and put the wood on the ground you end up making more than the $20 and hr they were gonna pay you. it just doesn't make sense

 

[Metals406]

Some of the best rates for making money up here was piece work. How many trees times X dollars per tree... Or some guys got payed by the cut. One to three cuts per tree, times X amount per cut. That's what the fallers told me anyway.