2023 Contract Climber Rates?

It's a lot different. You set your own schedule, negotiate your pay, can work with whoever, whenever you want just to name a few examples.
Set his own schedule? So if you schedule a all day job and 5 hours into it your sub groundie says he is done and needs to leave, does he get a full days pay? Does the customer have to wait for completion to another day, even though they were told one day? Do you then do the ground work and get part of his pay?
 
But not everyone is that way. In fact a lot of people are not, which is why they stay at flipping burgers at mcdonalds etc. Which is why there are so many on unemployment, when they could actually work.
I agree to an extent which is why we need more options. A lot of people feel hopeless and or undervalued. If people had hope and respect and dignity they'd apply themselves more. The current model just sucks for a lot of people and many people and beaten down before they even get a chance at bat. No body wants to be a loser.
 
Set his own schedule? So if you schedule a all day job and 5 hours into it your sub groundie says he is done and needs to leave, does he get a full days pay? Does the customer have to wait for completion to another day, even though they were told one day? Do you then do the ground work and get part of his pay?
All depends on the agreement/arrangement between contractors.
 
It's a lot different. You set your own schedule, negotiate your pay, can work with whoever, whenever you want just to name a few examples.
It's the same,
Set his own schedule? So if you schedule a all day job and 5 hours into it your sub groundie says he is done and needs to leave, does he get a full days pay? Does the customer have to wait for completion to another day, even though they were told one day? Do you then do the ground work and get part of his pay?
Right like any regular employee job if you just left in the middle of the day without discussing it ahead of time with the other contractors you wouldn't get called back to work and wouldn't get more referrals.
You can always try to set your own schedule and pay with a regular employer just like you set rates with another contractor you just might not get them. If I set my own rates and schedule with a client and they don't like them I won't get the job, if I contact for another company and they don't like my rates and availability I won't end up working with them or I will have to compromise and they might have to as well, if I go to work for someone as an employee and they don't like my expected income for what I bring to the table they won't hire me and if they won't move into what I feel I need to make I won't work for them. I have been in pretty much all these positions.
I'll also add if I really needed to make money right now (my wife is an rn they do really well here) I would go work for mountain in a heart beat, I wouldn't like it but, guaranteed work good pay (by normal expectations) benefits etc basically the only thing I would be giving up is my ability to just schedule next Wed off if I feel like it.
 
So once again that really says nothing. I asked what you would do. You counted on him being there working a full day for his "cut". His price is 300 a day, but he bailed early. what do you do? Putting it in real world here.
Idk I don't hire subs personally but I'd probably pro rate the pay and tell him to piss off, unless he had a good reason for leaving. Shit happens ya know.
 
It's the same,

Right like any regular employee job if you just left in the middle of the day without discussing it ahead of time with the other contractors you wouldn't get called back to work and wouldn't get more referrals.
You can always try to set your own schedule and pay with a regular employer just like you set rates with another contractor you just might not get them. If I set my own rates and schedule with a client and they don't like them I won't get the job, if I contact for another company and they don't like my rates and availability I won't end up working with them or I will have to compromise and they might have to as well, if I go to work for someone as an employee and they don't like my expected income for what I bring to the table they won't hire me and if they won't move into what I feel I need to make I won't work for them. I have been in pretty much all these positions.
I'll also add if I really needed to make money right now (my wife is an rn they do really well here) I would go work for mountain in a heart beat, I wouldn't like it but, guaranteed work good pay (by normal expectations) benefits etc basically the only thing I would be giving up is my ability to just schedule next Wed off if I feel like it.
I've never seen a job add that said you could work 1-7 days a week, work with other companies whenever you'd like, take off three months whenever, work 2 days one week, 5 the next and zero the week after that, hire us to do your jobs with you too! Most businesses hiring employees I've seen want consistency and they set the terms of schedule and pay, take it or leave it.

I'm not sure where this theoretical situation of leaving in the middle of the day came from but I've never seen anyone do that, sub or employee unless they had a dentist appointment or something and it was discussed beforehand.
 
I think it is really interesting the direction this thread has gone. It is the direction that I feel strongly it needs to go. Contract climbers are workers who are taking control of their wages by forgoing the benefits of being an employee: work comp, unemployment insurance, not to mention the tax benefits of being a W2 employee vs paying self employment tax… But why not form companies or shift companies to be slightly different models where a rising tide raises all ships instead of one guy at the top benefiting greatly and paying everyone else the minimum to maximize profit? This model encourages people who feel like they have topped out salary wise to start their own thing or become a contract climber to have freedom and to start getting their slice of the pie. A good friend of mine in Portland and I regularly have conversations about a different model where the business would not use contract climbers but instead everyone would be an employee paid an hourly rate and be covered by workers comp. At the end of every quarter hours would be tabulated and based on the profit and loss statement for that quarter, bonuses would be paid out. All financials would be accessible to employees to review. It doesn’t have to be owned or controlled by the employees or all decisions made by consensus or anything like that to really give people a sense of a company working for them as much as they work for a company. Maybe I’m too much of an optimist about this subject, but I think that workers who feel that it benefits them to think about profitability will certainly do so more.
This is very similar to how I run our tree company. Bonuses paid quarterly on company profits, all employees are part of discussions on new equipment purchases and any procedure changes. They are also encouraged to share anything that they would like to see different, both in organization, efficiency, and equipment. Team atmosphere is cultivated, and we have very little turnover.

If every employer would treat their employees they way they would want to be treated this world would be a better place!
 
I agree to an extent which is why we need more options. A lot of people feel hopeless and or undervalued. If people had hope and respect and dignity they'd apply themselves more. The current model just sucks for a lot of people and many people and beaten down before they even get a chance at bat. No body wants to be a loser.
Respect and dignity must come from within an indidvidual. You can not wait or depend on an outside source to provide this regardless of your situation.
 
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Respect and dignity coming from within is great but if your not getting treated with respect and dignity in the work place it doesn't change that fact. If someone has self respect it's still entirely possible to be treated disrespectfully in all sorts of situations. Having a sense of self respect and dignity is an entirely different situation than respect and dignity in the workplace.
 
Yes but those still are just words. Someone along that line is almost always going to feels screwed. Feels like too much was left in the business, feels like they put more money/time in the business, feels like the cost of work was too high (but they had to get it done...so now they are strapped for money or not making a life).

This is why most partnerships fail or break apart.

So this is why I'm asking for real world numbers to be put in and drawn out. Who pays for that first chipper, Truck, saws etc. Do the ones that bring these to the table get more? As they upgrade, do they get a bigger share? Those that stay stagnant always get the same share, even though they are not trying to improve? At what point does that stagnant person feel he isn't making enough money and say he is being held back by the others.
Not every person is cut out to work for a company like this and not every person is cut out to start or run a company like this. Everybody has to have a certain amount of faith and trust in each other and that they all have each others backs. The phrase “a rising tide raises all ships” is a very important concept in my opinion. If I don’t attract the right people, trust in others, or if I continually distrust their work ethic, am unwilling to depend on them, or am unwilling to think they have my best interest at heart we can never truly succeed in forming a partnership or a relationship not built on a hierarchy or a pyramid model with most of the gains going to an individual or a small group at the top. Yes, at some point the whole thing might fall apart. People grow, people change, and their life goals change thus necessitating shifts in their lives.

My goal is to shift my company to a model where profits are shared. I am an employee of my company. Yes, I have invested more than the others but we all are working for the same machine and all of our labor makes the payments on the equipment and pays all of our salaries. Because of my contributions to building the company I might take a larger bonus than the other workers and might even still take a disbursement at the end of the year if the company is profitable enough. Or at some point I could talk to my team and my accountant and figure out a fair way to reimburse myself for my time, energy, and money invested and end up on a level playing field with the rest of the team. Then all of us would have our quarterly bonuses based on hours worked rather than my hard to quantify initial investments.

There will always be someone who pulls more than their weight and someone who at times doesn’t seem to pull enough. Or perhaps that is just a matter of perspective. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses and those like many things will shift over time. Someone who shows up and plods steadily along for years in what some would call mediocrity might be more valuable than someone who is a rock star who burns hot and bright but then quickly leaves the orbit of an organization. Not all of us treat this work as our passion and our hobby. I do. I treat tree work as a sport. I obsess over it. I strive to improve and after a removal where everyone else thinks we knocked it out of the park, I obsess over the details about the various transitions where we lost time or a rigging event where one plant was damaged. I don’t want or expect everyone to be like me. Workers who have a life and hobbies outside of work are likely more well rounded and balanced individuals than I am. As our company grows I hope we can attract people who want to work for a company that strives to support the whole team and help them reach their goals whether that is working for us long term or not.

And perhaps my accountant will give me a nice slap across the face with some reality and these pipe dreams will be words on a page that inspire a few responses and then I’ll just go back to running on the capitalistic treadmill that doesn’t really inspire me. Perhaps I have these thoughts because I am not a family man and don’t have kids, am not having kids, and thus there is no need for me to build generational wealth. I’m just here for now and for building connections with my community and my friends. And perhaps I will become jaded over time and that perspective will shift like many of my perspectives have over the years. We all change. Hopefully we can just all keep shifting and growing in a way that benefits more than just ourselves.
 
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Good thoughts, Ryan.





An important component that would help people a lot is a retirement match program, common with other employers.






Since every owner has the ability to change wages and pay bonuses, at will (according to accounting laws), it seems like profit-sharing has an easy mechanism without lots of additional work. It is more of a personal choice than a mathematical formula.

I pay more as people can do more, because they are more valuable. This works out regardless of how well or poorly I bid a quarter's jobs.

In my micro-biz, training for safety, productivity and other skills and professional development always happens for anyone who stays around. By the nature of time spent working, people's value increases, so I pay them more. Raises and bonuses are easily added to checks (our W/C is not payroll-based, rather it is hourly-based EDIT: We pay per hour, with a safety discount for no lost-time claims. This doesn't penalize employers for highing higher paid, more skilled and experienced workers. ). I've even heard that people have been handed green paper with their checks.




A system would incentivize some people more than promises of pay raises and bonuses.

For other's they don't want to be put in with a collective. Suppose John drags ass, and Jane kick's ass. John's low performance not only puts more work onto Jane, but its may financially affect Jane as well. Suppose John drives the truck into someone's house, and all profit is gone. Jane suffers.
 
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Anyone should be allowed to form a business- separate from licensing considerations- and run it however they like. Anyone who wants to start a business should have the opportunity. There's plenty of folks who've not done anything 'wrong', yet they're denied that opportunity.

If you've been able to do well, I congratulate you, but not everyone who is smart enough, and willing enough, and has a good work ethic, and is honest gets that opportunity, and it's not all of society holding them back in any situation I can think of. But there are bad actors who deny various people of 'lower class' socioeconomic positions that opportunity because of myriad different prejudices.

I would not have gotten where I am today without some unbelievable luck, and I believe that there's enough to go around, and everyone deserves to be as lucky as I have been; blessed with opportunities to allow my hard work and 'smarts' to be fully realized. The simple fact of living in this country, which regardless of who's been in power at any given time in the last 150 years at least, has been statistically, the luckiest place to get to live, regardless of how you got here.

I don't want to regulate how anyone lives their life, and I don't want my life regulated by anyone else, but it seems to me that there are a great many compromises to be made by many people across all lines to make this world a more just and equitable place for all.

The resources exist for everyone to have it better than we currently do, and I believe the path to that future is through more and more cooperation. I have been putting my money where my mouth is since I decided to take a job back in 2010, and I am preparing to start posting videos documenting my progress thus far and projects moving forward.

I'm building a farm on an old ranch parcel, and an entirely off grid residence, though I would be grid tied if I could afford it. There's a long list of related projects, but that's another thread.
 
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Where does everyone keep getting this idea than anyone is saying that race is the sole determining factor in financial success? I haven't seen anyone put that idea forth. To say that it is not a factor at all is ridiculous. That graph also paints a very clear picture of consistent disparities based on race! That pattern alone speaks volumes, and to argue that it's not racist because white isn't on top is naive as fuck, because we generally see a 'positive' bias towards Asians in medicine and technology- two fields which tend to have especially high pay, and that 'positive' bias is still racist.
 
Lol.

Very angry response.

Are you now claiming it is an Asian supremecist society and it is asian systemic racism?

The absurdity of your beliefs might be why you are experiencing such an emotional response.
 
Lol.

Very angry response.

Are you now claiming it is an Asian supremecist society and it is asian systemic racism?

The absurdity of your beliefs might be why you are experiencing such an emotional response.
Try reading what I said again, because that wasn't what I said.
 

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