I'm hiring out for $750/day with my 7-ton maintainer/grader. It's a Mauldin M413XT with 10' moldboard, ripper, and loader bucket. Today I recut and shaped 1200' of gravel road in about 3 hours, then recut his side drainage ditches for another hour. I only charged the guy $600. What do y'all hire out for? I suspect I may be way too low but don't want to ask my local competition for advice. I also deliver and tailgate road base but that's easy to price based on cost and mileage.
$600 sounds reasonable for almost a 1/4 mile driveway. I like your machine.
I've never saw one of those machines in person. Would be very handy and productive for what you described. Can't tell by the pic, does it front steer and articulate?
Front steer but no articulation or no leaning front wheels. They did come out with a new model that has four wheel steering so it would be kind of like articulated as far as you could avoid the windrow with rear wheels. But it's got Electronics and tier 4 and its $100,000 so that kind of sucks
I would love to have the 4 wheel steering, and have often wished that the front boom would extend. Ours is $100 bucks an hour plus tax. Since it's mostly on private driveways prepping for asphalt, it works by the job 90% of the time. She cleans up good. Glad you're happy with it. Hope she works out for you.
LOL, I found some asphalt on the ripper when I was cutting those four unused teeth free. Seems these machines get used for paving a lot. $100/hour is right about where I am too, but it's gotta be $500 minimum. Texas being so big.
That is a nice machine, it would be really nice recovering some of our gravel on ATV trails we have, long narrow driveway's, private roads, the list could be endless, I like your front end bucket as well great idea, we charge just over $200 a hour plus tax for any private requests for work done, some jobs are less then a hour but you still get charged the hourly rate, we raised our rates a few years ago trying to discourage private requests, some private jobs you do the land owners they thinks that your machine can take pit run with rocks and clay and magically shoot class A gravel out the rear of your grader.
The county I'm in does custom work for $100/hr.
The ATV club here bought one of our old maintainer graders. An old retired tractor man runs her all summer grading the trails. They wanted a quote to do some 40 miles of railbed. Owner told them it would be cheaper to buy our old Puckett if they had someone to run it, so they did.
The floor of your bucket is about half the size of mine. It must be a lot easier to load with. If I round mine up too much and it's wet, I can't get it up to full height to load a tandem truck.
That's odd. I have picked up the entire front end of an F350 dually flatbed with its +900lb 7.3 motor. Lift power is pretty good. I wonder if you have a different cylinder in it. There seem to be a fair number of differences between our Mauldins. You probably have a lot more wet base to deal with than I do. Most stuff dries fast here. One day after downpour, the base at the quarry is barely wet. If not, I let it sit in the dump trailer for another day and it's dry. I lived in a climate more like yours, France, and the constant wet, mold, moss, rust, mildew, depressed me.
She'll lift no problem, but if The bucket is full and wet, I can't get that last foot or so to full height to load a tandem. Sometimes all it takes is a shake of the bucket and she'll lift the rest of the way. In order for me to load, I have to pretty much lift as high as I can. Once the heel of the bucket clears the sideboard, I'm good. I can get 16 tons of gravel on him no problem. Our construction season only lasts from May till December, although paving shuts down in October because of the cold, and hot asphalt does not react well to frozen ground. Most of the snow is gone, only snowbanks, and shaded areas left. It is a beautiful spring day. 11 degrees or 52. The hottest days in summer are around 35 or 95. I swept parking lots last night and it went down to -3 or 27. Broke a toe, so I wore sandals last night. No one around, and I didn't have to get out of the loader. Blew a hose, and had to get out to swap brooms, cold on the toes. There are so many different types of material here, sometimes you have no idea what to expect. The material from our quarry is dry when it's fresh from the crusher, but the stockpiles will hold the moisture from the winter. I hate the fresh stuff. Hard to grade prefer a bit of moisture.
Man that is a shorter work season than even France. But I've only done dirt work, no pavement. Maybe they shutdown like y'all do. Here's what I lifted and moved today. 8' sturdy steel flatbed with headache rack. I had a doubt or two, but it lifted right up even at idle. I tend to run at as low an rpm as will do the job.
The bar that runs above your boom in order to keep your bucket from dumping over the back when you raise it. Keep an eye out for cracks at either end where it is welded to the pins. I broke the bucket end last summer, and the windshield end on our old Puckett years ago. It came through the window on the puckett. Is your's slow to fuel? I wish I had a fill cap on both tanks, or a bigger crossover line.
Thanks for that tip. The last time I fueled up it was dark and I did it by ear. It's quiet out here. I pump by hand pump out of a 100g bed tank in a pickup. Somehow I overfilled the Mauldin, so wiped that off and put away the nozzle. But, back in the cab the next day, it was only 2/3 full on the gauge. Hmmm. I filled it up again and got another 10g or so in. Now that you mention it, I know what happened. Twin tanks, small crossover line. But I pump by hand so I rarely pump quickly. If I ever pull off those covers, maybe I'll see if a bigger line can be put in.
I would say you’re about right. I figure $100 an hour including hauling/drive time. It usually works out good. I often quote a little high and short the final bill a little from original quotes. I feel that it helps people to trust me and work with me in the future. Also covers my butt if I under estimate the job.
Always easier to come down than go up in price. Sometimes it's good to be about 10% high and when the customer questions it you lower the price and they feel like they got a better deal due to their great negotiating skills.