as a arborist, personally money seems to elude me( and I am not along, we always seem to do the harder work with the lesser pay) in the last two years I have gotten a crash course in life finances. and want to take a minute to open this up and maybe we can all benefit. something that I realizes is for some reason I was really good a creating a really low paying job, convincing myself it was a good idea then promptly hiring myself. and rarely was it the case my actual job that paid so lousy, Im not talking about under bidding work. for example. a charge out rate in this area is 75-100 bucks a man hour. when I had my own truck, my truck did not care if it was working or not, so it should have been working all the time right? so if I was to run a 2 man crew, that is 150-200 a hr. when all the dust clears, I was making a sizable hourly rate. but I would get stupid. when I wanted to update gear I would look to see what I could make. for example, I can weld ok, I mean I should not be working on a oil derrick, but I can get it done. so I look at tree stuff and see a port wrap is 120 bucks. YIKES, for that little welded up piece of pipe??? so I parked my truck drove down to the metal shop, picked up the metal for 20 bucks and came home, had lunch, go out realize my welding rod got wet, so I run down to the store and pick up some of that, come home and weld up a port wrap looking thing, and of course I decide to make it "better" . but Im done with it by 2pm. and I saved myself 100 bucks! what I now realized is what I really did was created the worse paying job I had since high school and I hired myself. First my truck was not running, so that was my really nice hourly rate not happening, my insurance did not stop, my advertising did not stop and my truck payment did not stop. all of those things are based on that 150-200 a man hour rate. which I was then getting 70 for the day. what I was doing instead I was spending 20 bucks in metal, 10 bucks in new rod, 10 bucks in fuel to go get it all , and I spent 6 hours, and that is only if I don't count the 2 hours the night before, being wigged out by the 120 price port wrap, deciding I was gonna make one then designing it. so now my savings just in materials is about 70 bucks. and if you want to get picking only more stuff will get added to this list.
imagine if I did that every day! had to pay insurance, had to make truck payment, had to pay advertising, and I only brought in 70 bucks a day! 70 dollars a day, i could have taken a job at wendy's and made that.
reality is what I did was shut down a 150-200 dollar a hour operation for a day and spent the night before not playing with my kids or hanging out with my wife. and I "saved" 70 bucks.
so when all the dust settled, I would have 130 MORE dollars, a real port wrap as apposed to my made up deal, a brand new rope to do with my real porta-wrap, AND I would have provided another days work to my guy or guys. and the biggest part is,…. I would have not have given up my family time/personal time/ golf time/ hunting time ect.
for the port wrap thing to have made sense financially I would have had to been able to weld that sucker up from start to finish will all time accounted for in 25 min or less. as in including all the time thinking about it, the time not looking at them on line, picking up the metal, prep and actually doing the work, then admiring my work. I bet I spent 25 mins afterwards with a beer playing with it.. . it took me longer than that to start this thread.
any thoughts?
imagine if I did that every day! had to pay insurance, had to make truck payment, had to pay advertising, and I only brought in 70 bucks a day! 70 dollars a day, i could have taken a job at wendy's and made that.
reality is what I did was shut down a 150-200 dollar a hour operation for a day and spent the night before not playing with my kids or hanging out with my wife. and I "saved" 70 bucks.
so when all the dust settled, I would have 130 MORE dollars, a real port wrap as apposed to my made up deal, a brand new rope to do with my real porta-wrap, AND I would have provided another days work to my guy or guys. and the biggest part is,…. I would have not have given up my family time/personal time/ golf time/ hunting time ect.
for the port wrap thing to have made sense financially I would have had to been able to weld that sucker up from start to finish will all time accounted for in 25 min or less. as in including all the time thinking about it, the time not looking at them on line, picking up the metal, prep and actually doing the work, then admiring my work. I bet I spent 25 mins afterwards with a beer playing with it.. . it took me longer than that to start this thread.
any thoughts?
