Cost of stepping off the ground

climbingmonkey24 said:
Apparently some people here are perfect and make no mistakes, but don’t shy away at criticizing others for theirs.

I’m not one to take things personally or too serious on the internet, but when one person (me) says they left a throw ball in a tree, another member says they’ve left and lost multiple throw balls, and then a few members decide to make a big deal and single out me and use the term negligent, etc. hard to not view that as personal when you’re talking about the way I work, etc.
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Dude nobody attacked you personally. Chill out you are overreacting.
 
So I think everyone seems to have $1800-$2800 invested on average. Back to the original question, what would you charge per client/visit just to get off the ground and pay for the gear by the time it needs to be replaced.
$2300/3yrs gear life/40wks climbing work per year = $19.20 per week gear cost. Granted ropes will wear out far quicker than spurs or ascenders.
 
A tie in question is, How much does it cost to get you to just put on your harness, regardless of the job? Not counting favors, or rescuing critters and other charitable work.
Me? I won't leave my recliner for less than $450. The cost goes up from there depending upon the job, location and weather.
 
For what it's worth, I didn't mean to come across hostile yesterday or derail the thread. I agree with everything you all said. When I initially wrote that post about the throw ball, it wasn't meant to be in the context that I thought that was an acceptable practice or without consequence. I know it wasn't the best decision, and I certainly will not make it again.

Shadowscape said:
A tie in question is, How much does it cost to get you to just put on your harness, regardless of the job? Not counting favors, or rescuing critters and other charitable work.
Me? I won't leave my recliner for less than $450. The cost goes up from there depending upon the job, location and weather.
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I usually have a starting minimum around $125 / $150 for any size job, but if climbing tend to fall more around a $200 / $250 minimum. Entirely depends on the nature of the work, whether it's just a quick cut and drop, etc. And that isn't taking into account cleanup.

But a lot of the jobs I do are pruning and other smaller stuff, so for me I feel like these margins make sense. For a larger operation with more overhead, maybe they wouldn't.
 
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Shadowscape said:
A tie in question is, How much does it cost to get you to just put on your harness, regardless of the job? Not counting favors, or rescuing critters and other charitable work.
Me? I won't leave my recliner for less than $450. The cost goes up from there depending upon the job, location and weather.
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I won’t put anyone in the air for less than $500, and our minimum to show up to do anything at all is $250. There’s not many projects we do that are that small.
 
When I think of having a minimum under $200, I’m thinking of a 1-2 man crew, with the scope of the work maybe being a couple shrubs trimmed, maybe some branches cut with a pole saw, or a short climb and quick cut and drop.

But that could change depending on the nature of the work. Case in point, this week I removed a small fruit tree, and with two of us it took about an hour cleanup included. Bid it at $300. No climbing, just cut off some lower branches and then felled the leads before knocking down the trunk. Have to factor in travel time too.

An hour’s worth of shrub trimming isn’t the same as an hour’s worth of tree removal (in my opinion). Tree is going to have more debris, more labor intensive (unless you use all machines), etc.

But I know not a lot of arborists like to get into shrubs and hedges, me personally I happen to like them lol.
 
Shadowscape said:
A tie in question is, How much does it cost to get you to just put on your harness, regardless of the job? Not counting favors, or rescuing critters and other charitable work.
Me? I won't leave my recliner for less than $450. The cost goes up from there depending upon the job, location and weather.
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Is critter rescue supposed to be charitable?
 
Normally 500-800$ minimum for me if we're climbing, the exception being if we're already there and it's something we can quickly do. Example we had a short day neighbor across the street asked if we could pull down a couple widow makers for him, gave him a do it now price life 250 and he said sure sounds good. We're already on site it doesn't have to be scheduled into another day possibly keeping us from a higher paying job it's just a tag on to make the day more profitable.
 
Able Feller said:
Is critter rescue supposed to be charitable?
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For me it is. But each to their own. I look at it this way... You couldn't pay me enough to climb a tree and grab a cat, so I might as well do it for free. And I get enough enjoyment out of putting the big birds back in their nest after getting blown out that I don't need to get paid. Don't know who would pay me anyway.
 
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Returning to the original question
Maybe 1k, but I’m very minimalist about gear.
My nephew is 3 years in and loves all the new stuff, so a lot more. But I guess it’s better spent on that trying to improve his skills than spending it on cocaine or whatever, so good for him!
 
I have done one cat rescue in my 15 years of arb work. And it was pretty rubbish
Mick Dempsey said:
Returning to the original question
Maybe 1k, but I’m very minimalist about gear.
My nephew is 3 years in and loves all the new stuff, so a lot more. But I guess it’s better spent on that trying to improve his skills than spending it on cocaine or whatever, so good for him!
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Yup say no to coke.
 
How much do y'all think the cost of our gear deters the next generation from learning this trade instead of another?

Most service trades requires the employees to provide their own tools, but I haven't really seen that personally in the arboriculture world. Just trying to think of how to get some interest in tree work with the younger generation.
 
I would like to see the tree climbing comps to post notices to the general public more and have them be able to come and watch rather than just focusing on letting the climbers know about where and when. Maybe even host comps at county fairs so the younger people can see how fun it is. We tend to focus too much, or all on getting word out to just the people already in the climbing business and the children of those in the business. The general public seems to get left out, and those are going to be the next generation we are trying to tap into.
 
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Phil said:
My tally is comparably fairly low. I wait for folks to buy high dollar stuff, realize they don't like it, then post it to treebay where I swoop in and pick it up. If I'm paying full price then its an emergency.
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That is my method at times now. Things are not as flush as times gone by so I tend to buy a lot of crisp things secondhand. But still have a huge stash of hardware except biners. Need biners.
 
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