Hey all, Thank you for all your advice and assistance. I promised to share the results of my land clearing project with you when I got finished with the project. The project was to grub and rake 34 acres of Mesquite and Russian Thistle. It took 28 days for me to complete the project, 13 days grubbing and 15 days raking. I spent 70 hours of skid time grubbing out the mesquites and thistle. The raking took 64 hrs. The total cost to the customer was $8056.00 or $237.00/acre. I started the project on the 6th of May and completed the pasture on the 1st of July. The customer interspersed other projects such as dirt moving, moving some large landscape rocks, dressing tank dams and grubbing other pastures while I was clearing the pasture. I was careful to keep records of the time spent on the various projects. I am still working in other areas of the farm and will probably be there for another couple of weeks. Things that I will do different on the next project? I will likely charge more. Based on pricing discussed in this thread and through other sources, rates for this type of land clearing seem to range from about $700/acre to about $2500/acre and up. Also, I didn’t account for the money it would cost me to travel to and from the worksite for 28 days. That turned out to be a significant unanticipated cost. I will need to figure out some fair way to recover those travel costs. I would like to find a midi (4-5 ton) excavator with a grubber that I could rent for the next project. I think it would speed up the grubbing. Then I could use the skid for raking. Again, thanks for your insights. I hope this thread will be helpful to others down the road Tim
Were you working by yourself?
Yup Tim
You averaged less than five hours day. Work 10-12 hour days and instead of driving back and forth 28 days you would be done in 10-15 days. Aside from saving trips back and forth your customer would probably be happier because it gets done quicker.
True enough, be great if the knees would hold out for 10-12 hours a day. Lets see, 10 hrs on the machine, 1 hr daily machine service, 3 hrs travel/day, 14 hrs/day day in, day out no thanks .
I have bad knees also. No fun. If you are driving three hours a day might be better to get a motel closer to the job. Most people operating equipment I see work long days though with 10-12 being the norm. They don't do it every day though. Maybe work 15 days a month and take 15 off. You do 1 hr of service a day? I service my machine daily but it takes maybe 15 minutes. Heck I changed all the fluids and filters on my skid steer yesterday except for the final drives and that probably didn't take an hour. The problem I have ran into trying to charge for travel is there are people with machines everywhere. You end up competing with the locals.
in the UK muckshifting as we call big machine jobs are on a 7 days a week,12 hours a day...............you work the hours with no time off unless you are a travelling man and live on the job in a caravan.
Yair . . . It's strange how things have changed. I cannot comprehend driving back and forth to a job or putting operators up in motels or pubs as happens now. As robin yates uk mentions our blokes lived on site in caravans (which were provided) and were expected to work the machines to get a potential of twelve hours a day 365 a year. . . if they wanted time off they took it between jobs at the rate of about a week off per month. Accounting for breakdowns, service, and shifting between jobs it was still difficult to get 200 paid hours per month on general contracting, how do you fellers go these days? Cheers.
I'm not sure what equipment you're using, but $60/hr, 1.5 hours from home with 5 billable hours per day isn't sustainable. I put 5 hours in on a job yesterday (after lunch), 20 minutes from the house clearing using a large CTL and 4t mini. My hourly rate is $125. I've worked 100 hours on that job, and my other two folks have worked 114 hours at $125/50/20 per hour.
I bill 100/hr for my 333D and Turbo Saw cutting Eastern Red Cedar and I charge 65/hr for second machine with a grapple. Some smaller ERC can be dug out with the grapple, but the saw is so fast that unless the grapple op doesn't have to slow down to do it or can get in it less than 3 seconds he leaves it for me. Land clearing around here is billed hourly because a very very small change in tree diameter can wreck production. I don't take a lot of jobs, but the ones I do are less than 20 minutes drive. Everyone loses money on a job at least once, chalk this one up to education. Example of the trees and brush I have and our operations: http://youtu.be/D2odzR-tHw4
Hey guys, This thread is based on the results of my first substantial (to me anyway) land clearing project as described in a previous thread. It was somewhat of an experiment to figure out how I needed to set my rates for future land clearing projects. I figured out that $60/hr is too low. Lumberjack, you are right that won't be sustainable. Fortunately I did make some money on this project. If I had had a major breakdown (I did break a drive chain but was able to repair it myself) I would have been screwed. One of the questions I asked in my other thread was what others around the country were charging for land clearing. I found that I was way on the low end of the scale. In retrospect I would have been better off taking my 5th wheel to an RV park closer to the job (within 10 miles) and spending the weekdays there. Besides saving the fuel I burned driving back and forth, I could probably have put another 2 hours per day on the skid and been less tired at the end of the day. Redhill, dang I wish I could go that fast Really enjoyed your video. Where is Sun City? From your video it looks like the scrub cedar we have around here. Around here it is pretty easy to pull out as it has a shallow root system. I can get under them with the grubber and root them out pretty quick. The Mesquite I was grubbing in this project was another story. Mesquite has to be taken out by the root or it will grow back with a vengeance. Typically the smaller ones like I was grubbing will have a tap root that is longer than the tree is tall. When the ground is dry, they can be the devil to get out. A little moisture in the ground helps a lot. You are absolutely right about billing by the hour. I billed this job out by by the hour. I kept track of the hours so I would have a way to estimate for future reference. Most of my customers want some idea of what it will cost them to get a project done. I don't mind giving estimates but I will make sure that the customer know that it is an estimate and that I will be billing by the hour. If the project is not going to suit him, he always has the right to stop the work at any time. If that were to happen, the customer would be responsible for paying only for the work done to that point and mobilization costs. NC, Yes I was working by my self. I try to avoid hiring others if at all possible. The exception would be to possibly hire a sub with his own machine, or to sub myself and my machine out to another contractor. I have a hard time trusting others with my machinery. Scrub & Robin, I think they have work camps like that here in the US too. I have never worked in one although I did talk to a recruiter once about operating a skid on a large solar project in far West Texas on the border. They were paying an hourly wage and per diem. The job was to last 2 months and it was 12 on 12 off. The per diem wouldn't pay the motel rate much less the meals. The hourly wage was nothing to write home about either. I passed on the offer. I have spent several months away from home and family working on occasion but I try not to make a habit of it. Guys, I appreciate all of your comments. Tim
I have friends that run dozers, newer D5's. that are not far from you maybe 100 miles. They charge $75 hr I think and can probably get a lot more done than a SS. They have some skid steers they run with tree shears also but I am not sure what they charge for that. IMO $65/hr is pretty good for running a grubber like that. Heck I am three hours away but would drive over and stay in a motel and do it for that much but I would be working long days to make the motel cost not so significant.
Agree, when we work out of town, we usually try to work at least 12 hour days to make the extra cost worth it. I have recently taken 2 SS and camped on a clients property while working the 4 days. It was definitely worth it. By the time the sun was up we were already running full steam. Just an idea.
tmc, Sun City is about in the middle east/west about 30 miles from the OK line. We have the red hills and cedars like they do all the way south to 40. I looked where Merkel is, you're for sure in juniper country. Some of them are easy to get out, but we've had 3 years of persistent drought, so the ground is like iron. The video is sped up about 40 times normal speed, but we still work quick. Watch the time in the lower right, it's set to actual time. ERC is very closely related to the junipers you have down there. The Edwards Plateau is close by, yes? Check with the research station there, they may have some better info for you on how to best effectively clear the Junipers and Mesquite. My Turbo Saw has a built in sprayer, the nozzle is right behind the blade. Nothing I cut I am worried about resprouting, but if I did...50/50 diesel/remedy will kill anything if you get the stump coated. That's an expensive option, Remedy Ultra was 126 bucks a gallon last time I bought some. I have zero clue if that will work on mesquite though, but I can't imagine it won't. I have done some custom spraying of brush before, hourly machine rate + actual chemical cost is how I charged that.