I picked up a long reach machine to use on my personal property to clean out my pond. Since annual maintenance is pricey I was thinking to offer me+my machine out for a few small jobs to help cover costs. Someone had mentioned in 2017 they charged $300/hr for long reach work. Anyone know what todays pricing would be?
Welcome aboard! What size machine is it?
Welcome to the Forums JQ! First of all tell us a little about yourself. What is your experience with heavy equipment? As far as what to charge per hour you'll need to figure that out as you are the only one that knows your operating costs, labor burden and what % return on investment you need. $300 per hour in one part of the country may be extremely high or ridiculously low in another part.
Thank you and I’m grateful that you all are here. I’m a hobbyist farmer engineer and have about 400-500 machine hours total between skid and ex. My latest machine is a Hitachi Ex 270lc-5 52ft long reach that I picked up on an auction to clean out the never ending silt out my pond. My goal is to not be an owner operator full time and do 3-5 jobs annually which would be enough to pay for the maintenance of the machine and make it worthwhile of my time. I live in Kansas City.
A long reach is a different animal than a normal excavator. Just take it slow and easy - things can go bad quickly.
52' is pretty short kit for a 270. Does it have a thumb? The 270 I operated had some extra counterweight and 65' reach. extra dangle plate.
We live in a very litigious society. If you have something to lose, side jobs become less and less appealing.
Also, why an excavator for sludge? A semi trash sump pump works great. Toss it in, wait 30 mins, reel it back in and toss it in at a new spot.
I was working a 210 on a remediation job on the side of a mountain above Issaquah, and Tommy was really eager to get in the seat. I told him to take it easy, and just stir in some fly ash I had already put down in the fill. I see him bring the boom up and stick in at the wrong speed, and he tossed about 100 pounds of dirt on his feet and the pedals. I deftly distracted the super and another company guy while he turned away and cleared the cab out by hand :rofl: Nobody saw a thing. Good thing I was working way below me and already had to toe glass out.
You'll need liability insurance and you have zero experience with a longer boom excavator. I think you need to get some more experience before you do any outside jobs. It doesn't matter what you charge, customers will always think it's too much. Also you can't base your rates on what highly experienced operators on here charge. You need to get your machine figured out first. It takes time to become proficient enough that you can charge enough to make it worth your while or not have customers questioning your experience or time the job took.
That’s true about the something to lose bit. I’d start up an LLC and such to protect assets. As far as why the long reach it’s because I need to clear my silt pond out without having to get the machine a total mess. I’ve heard from YouTubers to take the long reach slow and drag material closer to the machine before “picking it up to swing it.” Seems like solid advice to not swing the machine with it extended way out there. It’s for sure that I don’t know what I don’t know about doing work for others or even using a long reach. Any other advice would be welcome. Currently, I’m having the seals replaced due to a few cylinders leaking. I thought it would be good to replace the hydraulic fluid and give the machine a good tune up since I don’t know its maintenance record. It appears to be in reasonable shape for a 12k hour machine. I know it’s a lot but I’ve seen some of these selling with 25k hours on them.
No thumb on the machine. I don’t think I’ve seen a long reach with a thumb. Seems like any extra weight wouldn’t be ideal.
How much will it cost to set up an LLC? Doing side jobs can turn out to be a real hassle. If it's not your primary job and a customer wants their job done by a certain time you can get in trouble. Weather is always a factor too.
Dave that’s good advice for sure. Before I’d offer anything up. I’ll have plenty of practice with it on my property. By no means would I be an expert but hopefully good enough to get a job done in a reasonable fashion. Transport is prolly the biggest issue. Getting a 60k lb machine around is costly.
Would your customers be prepared to pay $300 or so extra to have the machine moved to their location and then back to your property? What some operators do is include mobilization or give a discount if the job takes a minimum number of days. I had some work done and got a break on transport costs because it was over 2 days. The bigger issue was the guy was also a farmer and the job took way longer than it should have. I can understand an emergency having to take a relative to the hospital but continual excuses don't cut it. If he couldn't do the scope of work in a reasonable amount of time he should have said so from the outset or not taken the job. There was 3 to 4 weeks of work but it took over 4 month's to get it completed and that was only because we kept on him. It wasn't acceptable and then he had his father in law running his smaller dozer and he didn't have enough experience. Too much material was taken out of one area and another area had too much. With some help I had to spend quite a bit of time and extra money (on fuel) fixing this mistake. Worse when talking to him about how long it was taking his FIL butts in and says he has to wait too. Maybe but he's not paying $25K for a job either. I think a lot of his jobs are clearing bush in the winter where there's not field work to do. Regardless, like I said earlier, if you can't commit to getting the job done in a timely fashion you shouldn't accept it. A week or 2 delay because of weather, a break down or something beyond your control is one thing but month's of delays and excuses is unacceptable. Saying your coming to finish and then going to the lake with no notice and ignoring your phone is especially bad.
52' is short enough to have a thumb. They use them in some marine work. @Tugger2 posted a picture of one.
The liability policy will likely be too expensive to perform occasional side jobs. Perhaps get a cost on the repair of a buried fiber-optic line before deciding whether or not you should get commercial liability insurance, and keep in mind just how easy it is to get into overhead utilities with a long reach. Plus you may need to get a contractor's license, and a pickup with a transfer tank to haul fuel. All that said, your cost should be used to determine the low end of your hourly rate, and demand for your services will determine the high end. To help determine your cost without a track record you could get a quote on a rental rate in your area. That size long reach will probably be in the vicinity of $10k per month, $3300 per week, and $1100 per day, plus 10% if you do not have insurance, and sales tax. Rates vary by region so that's just a guess. Fuel consumption should be 5 to 7 gallons per hour. A competent operator will cost at least $50 per hour all in. Then you have mobilization. I know I sound pessimistic and have not answered your question, but some of us here are who you will be competing against, and we have made a substantial investment in our ability to provide the services that we do. A large part of that investment is in the experience we have gained over time. My advice would be first to always call digline, practice on your pond and get a feel for what it takes, and see how it goes from there.
^^^ Well said. There I fixed the last part -
Indeed! I might fix it further by saying "paying" instead of "paid".
Oxbow awesome write up and things to consider. Around here a long reach is $6700 per week + transportation. Totally agree with everything that has been said. Powerlines are a real problem around here. I’m not too worried about utilities under a pond especially when I have a no tooth bucket. It can only scoop soft stuff. But you are 100% write on about utilities locate. Additionally, I would only consider a small job here. Anything of size, I’d skip which is actually better around here. It seems like the larger outfits only do large jobs. I’ve tried numerous times to get someone to even bid my dredging job and they just decline.
Wow, your prices are high. Maybe I'll haul our long reach down and rent it out!
Yeah, that’s why I ended up just buying one. It was lower cost than renting one annually.
Haven't priced a long reach rental here but a 326 sized long reach would probably be in the $6-7K range per week.
Really? We converted the 329 long reach that we had rented this past year to a purchase, but the rent was 11k and change per month. I thought our rates would be higher than yours because of our short season.
Just an assumption on my part figuring they would charge about the same rate as a 326 with a hammer or processor.
At our dealer they are about 20% more than a conventional machine. I have never rented a hammer, but I did price renting one a few hears ago and as I recall the hammer was nearly as much as the excavator.
In my neck of the woods.... cat 326 60 ft reach is $12,800 a month, $5,000 a week. FWIW