Hi Guys, I have been lurking through the site a little for a month or two. I have been around the landscaping business for a few years and purchased a skid steer, single axle dump, yada yada yada. I have gotten in good with some contractors and am to the point I have the opportunity to start bidding on a little work I am not 100% used to working around. Digging footings, backfilling slabs, digging for driveways/patios/walks. I have been just running on an hourly rate with the contractors. I am fully insured to do this type of work and am fully legit with all taxes etc.. (Before someone asks) I am just wanting to know how some of you more experienced guys price jobs with your backhoes, skid steers, dump trucks, etc.. Is it normally by the job? By the hour? What do you do that works? What kind of rates are you getting for similar work? Thanks Don G. DIGit:drinkup
First you need to know what you can do with your equipment like digging or backfilling. You get this by keeping records on each days work. Then you can learn to estimate instead of guesstimate. You need to decide what you will take per day for your time. Then your equipment exspense. Do not take a big job now as it could be a bigger loss. Take a job for 5,000 and lose 10% you have a 500 dollar loss. Take a 50,000 job and a 10% loss Smaller losses you can survive. Someone saying I get X dollars in NY will not help you. Try to get pricing from people in or near your area. If your not sure by the hour is safer until you gain experience.
Yeah I see what you are saying, I guess keeping track of stuff wold help me out. I am working on hourly most of the time now and do not keep track of what all I am doing.. I jst get out and dig. I will have to start tracking productivity. I see what you are saying with small losses vs big losses. I normally charge anywhere from.. 60-80xhour to run CTl and 65-85 to run backhoe. Not the most but I am still learning and get paid for time. It works out for now.. What do you guys get for running tri axles? I kinda bought one spur of the moment today..
Truck rates in nastyville are from 55 to 70 an hour depending on who is doing the hiring. This is just for the truck not the equipment to load it. Also the lower rate isn't always the worse deal as they may work more consistantly than the higher paying. Keep in mind the tri is gonna cost ya a lot just to own. 1200 or so for tags unless ya run a zone tag which is around half that. Then you have the heavy highway tax around 600 unless you exempt it for less than 5000 miles of travel a year. Then you have insurance to deal with. It's gonna use more fuel, more tires, and likely more maintance. Exp: I got around 20k mile out of a set of steer tires last year at a cost of around 1300. I was running some ruff job sites and bought a cheaper drive tire for both rear drives at about 1300 a drive and got lucky there have nearly 30k on them and should get threw next year on them. Tires will basicallly come down to job site conditions and driver on how many you will go threw. By the sounds of it you are doing housing work. Most of the people in this area want a flat bid on the work for there books. Which is very tricky here go to the next rise in any direction and the ground can change from top soil to clay to solid rock or a mixture of all the above. A simple thing to do on the cut outs is reuse the material on site. cut the driveway out and reuse the material around the porch maybe to save the builder from having to instal a hand rail ( this gives you cost effectiveness ). Use the material anywhere around the perimiter of the house to get drainage fall for codes or to make the lot more usable for the home owner. All of this is going to vary on how the lot lays though.
You need to collect a lot of data to accurately price your costs. You have to factor in taxes, payroll, insurance, payments on your machine, parts, fuel+oil+etc, wear and tear etc. As for the pricing of the jobs themselves start recording how long it takes you to do a job for someone else. For example to dig 5 footing it takes you 8 hours. Start making notes of your average production per hour, how much material is used etc. Even if it's not your job you can make it into a learning experience. For my company we usually bid things by the quantity, this assumes the conditions are "normal" and we can use larger machines to bulk and make a profit, which then in turn pays for any loss we might incur using a smaller machine to clean up/finish. If the job doesn't have the proper setting to bulk (say you have to drive very slowly through a bunch of hazards, or work through some very wet spots that you need to pick at here and there, or you have to come back and refinish a small area because the grades change in their plans) then we charge by the hour for the machine, as they are special terms where the machine cannot be used to it's full potential.
You guys have been very helpful so far.. keep the relies coming! BooPhoenix.. your tellin me, the big iron is high to operate! We run 22 OTR semi trucks as well and are venturing into this business as we have developed a couple of good contacts. Tires, Fuel, Insrance.. its crazy for these things!! I was thinking around 60 an hour for the truck.. not bad if it keeps busy. I got a good deal on a 99 model mack and we do have a mechanic that maintains all of our equipment so I am thankful that will be able to save some money with the dump as well as all the equipment in general. Yea the housing can be a pretty hard thing to big at a flat rate as I similar lots can vary in clean up/prep time etc 2 hours or more easy! This site is great... I love it guys give me knowledge!!
back when i was running 7 trucks and 23 trailers, i bought a bunch of Wanli tires from Magnum Tire Co. at a super good price. they were road tread and so stiff you only needed to apply air to inflate. no blast of air to seat. i ran these tires for four years on trailers ,sold to a friend who ran the trailer two more years. the man he sold to ran another two years before trailer got stolen.