Bidding drop and leave jobs.

southsoundtree

southsoundtree

Been here much more than a while
Location
Olympia, WA
How do you all differ in bidding, if at all, if you have Drop and Leave, versus chipping and such.

I had a two day job where everything was just going down the hillside, no real way to move things out, even if they wanted to do so. The one house's first story gutters are 3" from touching the neighbor's house, literally.

No chipper, no dulling of the chipper blades, no dump truck, no after the fact processing (firewood) or dumping (chips), just a pick-up truck, climbing gear, rigging gear (no more than a porty, block, and couple ropes).


Do you figure "x" per hour for all the equipment, and 0.8X for drop and leave, or X per hour no matter what? Or???
 
All tree work should consider time, material and risk. Risk and material can be "averaged" out on most jobs (extreme jobs should warrant more risk hence more money). Therefore you should have a figure for a man/hr rate and stick to it. Keep that figure consistent and simple.
 
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All tree work should consider time, material and risk. Risk and material can be "averaged" out on most jobs (extreme jobs should warrant more risk hence more money). Therefore you should have a figure for a man/hr rate and stick to it. Keep that figure consistent and simple.

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Chris. Do you really mark up stuff for risk?
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I sort of see what you're saying, but why?

Sure, there are times when I see one tree more risky than another, but I don't mark it up. I would simply need to take more steps to reduce the chance for personal injury or major property damage, therefore the TIME is increased. Ultimataly increa$ing the bid.
 
Jamin, of course high risk trees should be billed higher. Weather you are paid by the job OR hour, the pool of arborists that can do the high risk ones successfully is a LOT smaller than the pool ogf guys who can do a flopper in the middle of no-where!

I agree with Chris 100%.
 
It looks like we are all pretty much on the same page with this one.

Though Jammin appears to use use a direct factor for the risk when bidding a high risker I think we all somehow factored that in in other ways, but similar ways.

We just did a large ugly Pinus strobus that had some risks I just wasn't interested in accommodating.

Consequently we worked the bid based upon our normal time formula and then added my "highball" factor which is nothing more than my attempt to price the job high enough to not get the job.

That added cushion is more than adequate for allowing us to take the extra steps to mitigate the risk.

As for the Flop & Drops, again, we've got our standard formula for time, materials and hassle factors and stick to it.

No hauling, chipping or bucking? Less time on the job, the lower the bid.
 
I sort of figure in some high risk$ like this....If your "normal" man hour rate is say 90/hr.....and then you get something really huge odd or difficult then just up your hourly and your time will be longer as Jamin mentioned so it gets you more where you ought to be. I feel as though on some jobs you need a little wiggle room to allow the proper amount of time to do the work safely and not feel that clock tickin in your head.
There are some storm jobs where I tell folks flat out ,its time and material.I will give them an estimate of what I think but sometimes ya just do not know until you begin the job etc!! I hope this makes sense!!??
 
If you are looking at a job through the eyes of someone who is going to do the work or has in the past done a similar job. I think that you intrinsically consider risk. I agree with you Jamin- some risks can be alleviated by taking longer on the job. However, you could argue that some risks are inherent and significant above and beyond the time it takes to do the job.

Think of working above a power-line: yes, taking more time, careful planning, and an expert climber improves the odds of not failing, but the cost of failure is still very high. Therefore, risk and time are correlated, but still independent.
 
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... but the cost of failure is still very high. Therefore, risk and time are correlated, but still independent....

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The cost of failure could mean that we don't get paid either.
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2 weeks ago I did a crane assisted tree removal above a sun room. The sun room was about 30' long and 12 wide. I couldn't afford to drop nutt'n. Let's say the worst happened and tree split apart while the removal was taking place. (Which this tree could have. It had a lot of rot).

Do we think the home owner would actually pay me if I smashed his $30k dollar sun room? Heck no! I'd be at a huge loss no matter if I marked up the price or not.
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So, in the event that a risky job goes south, we will be paying in many ways:

Insurance deductible
Personal time fixing stuff
Customer with holding a payment until the stuff is fixed
Taken to court

All the above.
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I'm certain that some of my competitors bid this way as well. That is great. Because risk is like beauty: It is in the eye of the beholder.

I am banking on jobs that are very risky jobs, if they had to be dismantled by a climber. We all know the type, a large tree that may be in a corner of a lot. It over hangs 4 yards, a couple of sheds, the summer garden, neighboring trees/shrubs, and the tree has been standing dead for 3 years, etc... But, if a crane can get to it, the risk can go down tremendously, IMO. All this year I have put a crane on 95% of my jobs. To me, this has greatly reduced my risk and keeps my rates at a smokin' hot level for the competition that may raise their rates, simply because their impression of a job was more "risky."

One more example and I'll stop... A green horn climber may think something is risky, but a veteran climber may think it is routine work.

So, to me it is a relative subject in more ways than I just pointed out.

Y'all catch my drift?
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HELLO
I cant bleve you leat a young boy hold a still dont teach the boy a bad habit like still it should be husqavanu. lol
 
HELLO
CHRIS HOW DO YOU GAT THAT A CHOP AND DROP IS AS MUCH AS A CLEANUP JOB.1 YOU SAVE ON FULE AND THE COST OF THE PERSON TO MOVE THE SUTUPH FURM POUNT A TO POUNT B THE COST OF THE CHIPER WICH SHOUD COME TO A BOUT 400 A DAY.
 
I guess part of my thinking is that competition for the drop and leave jobs MAY be higher as the service provider will not need to have a chipper/ dump truck/ wood hauler.

Of course the "fixed costs" of an already owned chipper, etc will not go away.





The "variable costs" will change, as one doesn't have the risk of driving the larger vehicle (supposing one uses a regular pick-up truck as I do when doing D&L's), the expense of fuel/ wearandtear, won't need the additional driver's expense (unless there is shop work to be done, my crew meets me at the job usually).

The goal of an hourly rate is that you have an hourly profit margin. Seems that people's advice is to add your costs, add your margin, you have your hourly price. If your costs go down, do you figure less per hour to maintain your margin and competitiveness (if you are competing for the job if there are lots of capable service providers)?


This makes me wonder too about bidding fruit tree pruning for similar reasons. Less equipment, more people capable (theoretically, as often there is not a need to tie-in/ climb, just work off an orchard ladder in the orchard). I started doing a lot of fruit trees last winter, and figured that I needed to charge less per hour than if I was doing a 100' fir job. Thoughts?
 
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