I have been scouring the forums avidly for the last several months & it has not yet completely deterred me from attempting to cut my teeth in the industry. I know how the search features work & that there are plenty of threads similar to this, but hopefully you all can answer my not so basic questions that I have. I currently work offshore in the oil field and spend 21 days offshore and 21 days home... a lot of you are probably going to tell me that i'm better off just sticking to the oilfield, but with this last slowdown, I am really looking into different paths to take. I was at a sustainable farming workshop recently and someone mentioned forestry mulching. This obviously piqued my interest since I am currently working on clearing out 10 acres of overgrown dense forest with several high dollar trees being crowded out by a lot of not so high dollar cheaper smaller trees and brush. after scouring the forums I came to the rather obvious conclusion that buying a CTL and a Fecon type head for it would be incredibly awesome, but not a good business model in itself by any means. The area I currently live in has a lot of expanding going on with nicer custom homes being built on lots that are mostly forgotten forest similar to mine so I was thinking a land clearing business could work to some extent. There are a couple of people doing it south of me and one quote for mulching/brush clearing was $60 an hour. most of these companies seem to be pretty diversified. now, I still believe that I could get into this business in my time off if I developed a good relationship with a few custom contractors around here. The equipment I have been looking at would be a John Deere 333 with high flow or a kubota SLV-90 with high flow. John Deere has much better customer service in my opinion & I currently own a compact tractor from the same dealer. I am open to opinions, these are just the two closest options for me. I would also be looking into a Bradco Extreme Duty Ground Shark, a Grapple Bucket, one of the stump grapples (suggestions? experience?), & Possibly a Marshall saw. I realize that the key to staying in business is to be as diverse as possible so I am asking for opinions on what attachments you would buy in addition to/instead of these. I also had High Tensile Fence installation in mind for another line of work. I am aware of the need for a trailer & truck that can handle a CTL & that I will need to get a CDL. so, do you all think this is feasible at all? anything else I should think of/consider? don't tell me to just hire someone else to do it because I plan on purchasing a large piece of land not too far down the road and clearing that out into pasture so there is no talking me out of this, but you can try! thanks for putting up with another skid steer post, sorry for the redundancy. any advice is appreciated!
ive got most of that stuff but just no connections to get big jobs . ive got jd 333d w high flow . I wanted the ground shark but couldn't afford it so got next thing down from it but I have bout 9/10 attachments and a big 18ft single axle dump truck . I love my 333d enclosed is way to go .
nice! I was definitely going to go for enclosed. do you load your JD into your dump truck bed or do you tow it on a trailer behind the dump truck? when you say you have no connections to big jobs, do you still get small jobs? I'm not looking to do this full time unless I can make comparable money to what I am in the oilfield. are most of your jobs for land clearing/brush management, or more construction? thanks!
at $60 Hr he's already broke and doesn't know it. I was getting that 20years ago for just a skid steer and bucket. I've not run the numbers but you would need at least $120-150 hr with a minimum of a couple hrs to get out of bed and break even with any kind of mulching attachment
yes that's true clintm I get $80 w bucket work min 4 hours and goes up to $140 w bushhogging everything has a min of 4 hours like I sayed Ive got to get w some contacts. I don't have a trailer for my dump truck to pull my skid so I have to use my truck to pull skid on gooseneck and have someone to drive dump truck to go to job if I need. yes I still get small jobs by word of mouth and some advertising
If you're buying all this equipment new, do you realize it will cost well over a 100K? The economy is in a recession right now so I don't know how people are spending lots of money on mulching and building custom homes? I think a rubber track CTL working in brush is going to be real hard on the rubber tracks and the type of work in general would have much more potential for repairs and oops than something like say rough grading or spreading topsoil. Large brush clearing machines/mulchers bring $600/hr and more. I agree a CTL would need at least $120/hr. I also don't know how it would work part time. Like the saying goes, you have to make hay when the sun is shining. You get rain or bad weather and can't work, the customer might not want to wait 21 days or more hoping it's nice and you can come back to the job. How do schedule other jobs if 1 or 2 get delayed? It's hard being a one man show. You have to answer the phone, meet potential customers and give estimates, do the jobs you have, make time for maintenance and repairs and somehow keep a bit of sanity. Lots of people do it though so put a lot of thought into it. Figure out what your payments will be and how much you need to make a month to break even and go from there. Keep in mind you have to make the payments year round whether you're busy or not.
When you say "break even" do you mean making the monthly payments on the machine or with fuel/repair costs? I would like to break into this as a viable way out of the oilfield if possibly but if not then I just want to have it for when I purchase my property a couple years down the road. bjs: do you stay decently busy with the small jobs you do? Is there a lot of competition in your area? Is your machine payed off or are you relying on this work to pay for your machine? I don't want to strike it rich quick, I was just wondering if it would be worth the investment or if I'm better off paying someone to do it at a price that I could put a down payment on a set up for. Thanks for the replies so far, I'm going to call around tomorrow and find out what these people are running/how much other people are charging in my area. I know the economy is down but new houses are still popping up in the sticks all the time around me.
All costs need to be covered or you're losing money. Typically they say most business don't make a profit for 3 years but you want to try to at least cover your expenses and payments. Once established you'd probably want to pay yourself $30/hr or more and put any additional monies back into the business for maintenance, fuel, expenses, repairs and emergencies. That should come from the business and not from you personally. If you just want to have it for your own 10 acres that's big pile of money.
hey yes there is some competition but not bad . I stay consistant but I have a lawncare I also run that helped pay for my machine and when I was slow and not much work to pay for my machine I would use my taxes and pay for a hole years worth of payments and that would help in slow times and when I worked through the year I would put it back but its payed off . had 5 year loan and payed off in 4 so very happy for that . but I also had a big down payment helped .
$150 an hour around OKLA. is normal for mulching. Rent it first is my suggestion. Can not go wrong with Bobcat stuff.
i understand that breaking even or better is the goal but given my primary source of income, i can afford the payments no problem with no additional income stream. i am hoping to make money while i am saving for a much larger piece of land and simultaneously having it around to hone my skills/transform the current plot of land i am on. i have thought of renting to try it out definitely. there is a bobcat, new holland, mustang, kubota, & John Deere dealers within reasonable distance of me. i know that takeuchi is the best in most peoples opinion, but they have no dealers close to me. i honestly had not even thought of bobcat, i've heard & read several bad things about them. i dont want to turn this thread into a brand debate, but i would love to hearing peoples experiences good & bad about the options. I really appreciate all the feedback I am getting. thank you all very much!!
just don't screw the market up for the people that doesn't have a second income and are trying to make a living by there self
Right on clintm. Not only do they screw the market for others they screw it for them selves. Years ago I started out with a RC100 and Fecon mulcher charging $185 per hr on $155,000 worth of equipment and was flatout from the getgo. Now idiots are charging as low as $120 per hr for $250,000 worth of gear and don't have much work. Its just bloody nuts.