You guys know what you are talking about. I'm on the same page.
The big problem for me in this place would be alien to most people on this board. This is San Diego, and this place is a turd bowl for businesses like tree services.
For one thing hiring illegals is the norm here. At one time I thought I would be practically hung for hiring them. Now I feel like I could hire crews and crews of them, and nobody would say a thing. It's that accepted here, and that is the majority of the competition in the business.
The illegals don't expect much pay because they don't expect much anything like educations, home ownership, retirement, etc. Businessmen are all for that here, and I don't see them getting too far without the illegals here.
Another thing is they are illegal, so they can't sue anyone if there is an accident. That means 40% workers comp fees don't have to be made at all. That is huge plus there was taxes to think about.
I thought I'd be able to make workers comp payments, but I found out it is impossible to unless you are commercial. The commercial competition is different and their pricing is all different. If you are in commercial, you know. There are hoards of owners that aren't licensed and bonded, and they get business because of their low prices.
So with hoards of hacks pulling at their pieces of the market, and the consumer market expecting to pay next to nothing for tree work because border hoppers are available to every contractor by the truck load ("and they should be cheap" says the market), this all makes merging into the market as a legitimate tree service impractical. Impractical because of the costs to merge legit. I have yet to see one legit merger that is not commercial working with initial access to capital funds.
I heard a guy from around here say there is no money in residential; just commercial. There's lots of commercial properties that have trees that need care in the San Diego region. The region is a business megalopolis. The individual resident costs here are so high that HO's have minimal personal money to afford anyone except illegals and illegitimate ops. On top of that they are well learned in dealing with illegals not legitimized businesses. If your legit with those legit prices, they act like you are a ghost from that old country called the USA.
After years of reading these boards, I got the idea that any guy with the capacity to work hard and work well with customers and workers could merge right into the market as a tree service everywhere else in North America. If he couldn't work hard and was bad with people, he couldn't make it work. I've heard of them starting from $0 one year and having a full equipment lot the next year. That is unheard of year, and now I know.
The tree business is different in other places than here. My best summary about this place is that you need a lot of start up capital and credit to begin the tree service and not profit for 5 or 6 years. I hear referrals are really big elsewhere, but here advertising is necessary to fill the work weeks. That costs money and takes somebody's time to manage right.
I shut down all of my insurances and license to work for who is already merged into this market. I simply don't have the privilege of capital access to do it the right way here, but I did learn trucks loads about the tree man's business in the last several years.
