Is anybody adding a fuel surcharge!! My answer is how can you not! ointhead I see co.'s say no fuel surcharges. I say is BS !! at $4 a gal for road diesel how can that be!!!
we put any anticipated fuel increases into ouir proposals/contracts. i don't like going begging owner for more money. if it doesn't go up? more profit for us. if we lose the job? let the bloke who bid to cheap have at it!
On a sizeable job I include a surcharge clause stating the price of fuel on the day the bid goes in and that any substantial increase will be billed as a surcharge, with that bill I hand in my fuel tag. Sometimes there are delays starting a job because of permit issues and it may be 4 or 5 months after the bid date. I can't take that gamble that fuel will remain the same. Some of the jobs I've had require 10- 15 thousand gallons. I had a $9000 surcharge after the Hurricane Katrina increase. I recieved it without any questions, just good business
we typically run 2 excavators, 1 end loader per crew. our time on the average per jobsite is a month or less. i can see where you're limited to mobility on permits, on one jobsite for an extended period where you might have to put in your escalator....i feel in our operation, it's just good business to anticipate my fuel needs, bid accordingly, and not go begging the owner of the project for additional money. they'd much rather know upfront what the total cost of the project will be. size of operations is i guess what distinguishes our decision, huh?
Ya, I try to be fair, on smaller jobs I don't even mention it or if I have enough fuel on hand. It's the larger ones with no start date that worry me. I usually put (current for 60 days) on the bids. With the volatile market anything can happen in that 60 days with fuel prices. The surcharge In the upper post was for 3 1/2 months work. 2 scrapers, 1 compactor, 1 dozer/ ripper 1 grader and a water truck
I rented a crane the other day to set a large drainage tank. There was a 5% fuel surcharge and a 5% insurance surcharge. Never heard of the insurance one but wish I could start charging for that.
My thoughts exactly DPete. We had a big (for us, 500000 yds or so) dirt job a couple of years back. The start date was delayed by 6 months or so. We had no choice but to hand in a fuel increase charge. I want to say it was around $20k or so. How can you absorb that??
I think it's important to have an agreement before you start. Would'nt want to spring a bill like that on anyone without a prior understanding. Never thought I'd see fuel be so unpredictable.
Was the insurance charge an equipment floater/rental insurance? I might not be explaining this right but I have a leased or rented equipment rider on my policy. When I have rented equipment the rental house added insurance to the bill and I had to get them a standard accord stating the rented/leased equipment insurance to have the charge removed.
I ve rented equipment before and some of the places charged a % on the value of equipment if they did not have my proof of insurance on record for that year. It is way cheaper for me to provide them with that than pay what they want for their %.
It's better business to raise your rates than to add any "extra" fees. I know guys that have shown too much detail on their bills and have gotten stiffed because of it.
I could not agree more, I learned that the hard way! Simple is sometimes better.
I should have written it better, but it was a manned crane I rented from another company. A parking lot I bid for snow work was $25,000 for the insurance, on top of my regular insurance.
man, that's an insane premium, i think i'd be shopping for a new agent
My old company wanted $4000 to insure a Mack 6 wheeler I bought for $1200 to plow with. The new company wanted $1000, I did the truck over now, but its still $1000 a year for the insurance. I take them off the road in the spring and summer so it costs me about $600 a year after I get my refund. The $25,000 insurance policy was for $8 million. Why they wanted 8 million dollars for insurance blows my mind.
Where I work, they handle fuel in 1 of 3 ways. On rental jobs, we fuel for a higher rate. Customer fuels for a lower rate. On contract jobs, a fuel surcharge based on current market prices is written into the contract. For me, I work hourly + fuel. I run allot of miles either to and from work. While at work, I may be running parts, checking on different jobs or moving materials, generators or compressors. It all adds up. At the end of every evening, I always make sure my tank is full before I leave the yard.
I hear what you are saying but here is what we have been running into. When we receive a call on some heavy haul work (6 axle) we quote it out at $90 per hr. with a 14% fuel sir charge. Our competitors will quote the same load out at $85 with a 25% fuel sir charge. All though we are cheaper, at the first glance our competitor looks cheaper. It seems that what sticks in the callers mind is $85 an hour is cheaper than $90. Better go with brand x. :beatsme
This following news item is the reason why your ins co is demanding $8M for insurance levels. A guy here in Australia drove his loaded truck and trailer at around 80-90kmh (50-55mph) in fog .. where the visibility was only 20-50 metres .. and ran into the side of a freight train doing 111kmh (70mph). He hit the 2nd of three locos, and rammed it right off the rails. The train concertinaed, and the final damage bill was AU$30M (about US$28M) .. all because ONE guy didn't exercise a little caution .. http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...tal-truck-crash/2007/02/07/1170524164158.html
that's a pain in the ass. With that same train of thought, you could base your price on $75 per hour with a 36% fuel surcharge. You may sound like a wise ass, but maybe you should quote 3 different rates with 3 different fuel surcharges that all net out to the same total cost per hour ($75 with x fuel surcharge, $85 with Y fuel surcharge and $90 with Z fuel surcharge). You'd get the benefit of saying you charge $75 per hour and the caller may appreciate and respect your willingness to cut through the BS so you end up getting the job....or they'll just hang up on you. ointhead
The local ready mix companies are at $80.00 cu yd plus drive time plus a per minute charge while on the job. I guess that's their surcharge.
Update, They are charging $1.00 per minute upon arrival to the site. Everyone should be able to make a tidy profit. But this is new here and I think it is an opportunity for the ready mix companies to screw the consumer.
has any one ever run biofuel in a cat engine, or heard of someone trying it?
last company i worked at ran biodiesel in every machine in the fleet. No real issues other than having to change filters more often and fuel waxing/gelling in extreme cold temps. I say change the filters more often because our lube guys tended not to change filters when they should have. In fact i usually ended up changing at least the pre filter on my 320clu before they would get to it. At one point the machine would hit 200 hours on a filter and would almost to the hour die out. I found that if i went to the pre filter every morning, cracked the drain on it, waited till the fuel came out pink/red. It would increase filter life to over 300 hours, even tho service should have been performed at 250 hrs
Ain't nobody screwing nobody. Are you sure the extra charge is upon arrival? Doesn't sound right to me. When I had my transfer back in the mid 80's - early 90's, we got stand by after 10 mins on the job or at the plant while hauling tonnage. This was to protect us O/O's from loosing our tails if the plant over-trucked a job. Upon arrival back at the plant, I'd let the scale house know that I was back in the plant. She'd tell me to load something, I'd say "10-4" . That's the last you'd hear from us unless the loader or scale house called. Sometimes, we'd sit next to the pile of whatever for over an hour waiting to load. Needless to say, Granite got the hint and switched us all back to hourly rates. If there is ever any screwing going on, its usually the independent O/O who gets bent over the fender
rolloverpete, just found out that one of my son's college classmates works with granite at indio. in fact, he's driving over to vegas here for conexpo thursday or friday i think.
I feel bad for the truck owner/operators. If they dont have a fuel surcharge, or start charging a higher rate, how will they make any money?
They won't.
The local newspaper had an article about what the state was paying truck owners for snow plowing. I forget how much it was but it didn't sound like all that much, for a truck with a driver. The headline made it sound like it was just the drivers wage, you had to read nearly to the end of the article to find out it was only if they were supplying the truck, with a driver. You wouldn't believe the comments people posted about truck drivers make too much money blah, blah, blah.
Insurance nightmares A lot of insurance companies are trying to charge a premium for additional insured endorsements... Negotiate those endorsements in when you renew and they won't be able to charge you for it. If you do a lot of different jobs, it can be a sizeable savings. You can also include hired/non-owned coverages to your policy at it's inception and save yourself the hassle of having the insurance company hold you over a barrel during the policy term.
So what has every one been doing now that diesel is more than anything? so is the adverage 5% onto total job.
I charge 50$ to show up. Most jobs are within 20 miles for me. All other fuel prices are rolled into equipment pricing per hour.
you got it!