How's the work flow?

Sheeet, I feel a recession hard, but I took December off from looking at new work to stick my finger in the dam...
Another long time company who I worked for semi closed up shop, so I'm picking up many of their clients. If I wanted to do work that I wasn't fond of, and/or if I could find the crew and be more aggressive I could expand into two crews.. None of which I want, as I'd spend all my time doing admin, repairs, and quotes.
 
Things are really slow, but then they almost always are for everyone in my area. I pull my advertising in the winter so the only calls I get are established customers. I tell them that unless it's an emergency or there's imminent risk to people or property it's not worth it for them to have me out. I typically charge higher in the winter. Driving is more hazardous, climbing is slower and more hazardous (I have Reynaud's so some colder days I'm physically incapable of climbing safely), lugging material through a foot or two of snow is just ridiculous. If they still want me out I'll go, but I'll wait until I have two or three days lined up.
 
I've got more than I need, and, that being said, calls are slow, at the moment, without any advertising.

Lots of repeat customers, my bread and butter.

Been putting time into milling. ately. Now that I have my mill set up, I have a lot of burly maple to process.

Having no debt, at the moment, the slow times don't bother me. Getting a dump trailer in the spring.

Looking to hire someone qualified, full time, to add to my part-timer and machines.
 
The phones are slow here, for everyone I’ve heard from/about. Most of the bigger companies are doing ok, but not all, and a lot of little guys are sitting around bored.

We have far less coming in than we would like, but we are keeping the crew busy 3-4 days a week consistently. It’s been raining at least a day or two a week the past month or so, which is slowing us down, but right now I’m not complaining because we don’t have as much to do as we should.
 
I have felt that things are a bit slow here but this is my first year in business trying to keep a crew busy. If it was just me I would be perfectly fine with the current call volume but keeping a team fed certainly adds pressure that I’ve never felt before. I keep trying to find busy work that isn’t necessarily super profitable but covers overhead and gives the guys hours. I just show up enough to help them and take care of the difficult parts and to make sure they have everything they need to succeed and then leave so I don’t get too much of the job done and take hours away from the guys.

Thankfully the Portland area got slammed by a few windstorms in December so since then I’ve been very busy with contract work and even took the whole crew there a few times to help a tree service that was buried in work with a few chippers in the shop. Having contract climbing to fall back on when things are slow is very helpful for our business.
 
Starting to slow down here a bit…reminds me of 2008.

Newer companies are suddenly returning phone calls to potential clients and doing the work almost right away.

My local disposal business called last week to inform me that they have reduced their woodchip disposal price from $100 down to $50 per load.

I’ve noticed a few clients starting to “whine” about my prices too. Again, this reminds me of 2008.
 
I'm in a very seasonal place, lots of second/vacation homes, so things always slow down in the winter which is just fine by me. Mostly it just ends up meaning catchup time from leftover summer/fall jobs. I've been busy year around since my second year of business, but my operation is so small that doesn't take much. What I do know is that property sales and new construction slowed way down at the end of 2022, largely due to higher interest rates I believe and a cooling off of the 'buy rural property!11!' rush during the pandemic. Tech companies in my region, where a lot of the new buyers in my market come from, are starting to do some layoffs, but I think that sector was hugely inflated in the past few years so I'm not sure it is necessarily a sign of doom and gloom to come.
 
L3VI said:
"the covid effect" so, is this a national or even worldwide trend as well?
Click to expand...
We're quite slow, sometimes have less than a week on the books. Prices are down too. And I see tree trucks working here that come from an hour away, which I find mind-blowing. Yes and jobs I don't get I often see have been done just days later. S'all good though, is what it is.

If Mick is slow too, that would suggest larger geographic trend.
 
I raised my prices this year and am booking into August. Revenue is up and expenses are down compared to last year. Attributed to COVID.

I live in a historically low income area that had an influx of big city folk with lots of money during the pandemic. They were selling million dollar big city homes and buy low hundreds of thousand dollar homes here. So disposable income and are used to paying higher city prices for services. I feel they've been propping up a lot of the local economy. However, they've also priced locals out of many things and there's some gentrification happening.
 
How flows the work for you folks? I'm slower than I can remember in 10 years. I'd like to blame the greater economic situation but must admit my enthusiasm for the biz is down in the last few years. Don't think that's helping. More tree companies in my area and less trees. I saw this coming but didn't really do anything, back to street fighter mode I guess! :ROFLMAO: a few months ago I decided to be rid of any clients that were the least bit troublesome and now there's not many left :sorprendido3:
 
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