Have you run the lines? Better do that first to see what you've got.
I ran a crew here in east central Illinois for a coop for 3 years and it was an experience that leaves me never able to bid a clearance job....I would be too high...every time...deliberate.
We were on an hourly rate, which has its pitfalls for the client when there is more out there than meets their eyes. That's often the case, but we busted our rear daily. I would just flat run through boys, felt bad, but the gm just laughed and said I'd be lucky to keep 1 in 10. Once he was gone things fell apart slowly...company wise, companywide, it didn't affect me for the longest time, but it finally came down to it.
Nevertheless, by then I had a good rapport with the coop and my old gm had a company of his own. Basically, when I resigned from the one company the coop sent them packing. They had already burnt their bridge in more than one way.
I could write my own ticket now with my old gm, I could be an employee, or sub it, whatever. My gm calls me up to ask about bidding because we are going to firm bids on 5 circuits for one year. I knew the budget and I knew the circuits and the best you could do on them apiece...on the average, money wise, time wise verses what was really out there.
Our clearance parameters were 10ft above and 4x4 sides and beneath on primary conductors, 3 ft dia on service drops, triplex secondaries...to the meter. I often took more, and once I had a vermeer 1400xl with a winch, I took alot more. These insufficient parameters are what has the coop in trouble up here. You can imagine what I would come across and the time consumption it would require to correct it.
He had the circuit maps from the coop that had been run by the system forester and I had to interpret them for him over the phone. He was supposed to run them, but didn't have the time. He was adding up "P"s for primary, "S"s for secondary (service drops), and "PR"s for Primary Removals. He thought that meant per tree. A P, or an S, could mean one branch on one tree, or 4 days’ worth of work on 100 trees that the last company skipped at one location.
I told him that he would just have to come and run the lines to see for himself the gravity of the situation that I had burned out man and machine on to get an idea of what a truly fair bid would be. Suffice it to say that some other sucker is out there right now trying to figure out how to get the government to bail his azz out, because we went our separate ways to make our own money. And rightly so.
So, good luck, really. My advice to you is to run the lines, figure the best and worst case scenario, find the average and double your bid. If you win, you might win, if you lose, you win for sure.
Also, equipment, you better have a solid bunch of late model trucks and high production chippers, and the best men to man them. Proven men. While we are talking men, the three man crew is the worst idea since white bread....can it. Get a four man crew (two climbers), a bucket and a large chipper, and a one ton chip dump or mini forestry package and a small chipper. Consider a grapple loader that can run a fecon head. Nevertheless. This four man crew plus said equipment gives max production, versatility, and contingency. I will never set foot on a ROW with my name on the door without this configuration. By the hour, firm bid, by the linear foot, mile, doesn't matter. I shared this concept with my old gm, and like he said, cut the hitch off the bucket truck. I wouldn't go that far, but it carries the idea very well.
In fact, I would put this four man crew up against any two, or maybe even three, 3 man forestry bucket crews, circuit for circuit, year in, year out. That’s not arrogance, just good math. That is how archaic and inept the average 3 man bucket crew really is, especially in any rural environment.
I’ve also got some ideas when faced with a lot of row crop agriculture that might be apparent, but this is the general concept.
Are the power companies somewhat to blame for the situations facing their systems, you bet, but we’ve got to start figuring out what the hold ups are on our side of the fence. We need more money, and they need more bang for their buck. Until they figure it out from the top on down, I could care less, it’s all just good money after bad.
I don’t know if any of this helps you or not, but just realize that from your post you leave us with a lot of variables. Without running the lines, and knowing exactly what you and your men can do with man and machine, we are at a loss for any numerical input I should think.
A search on this sight might get you some basic three man crew figures, but it’s all relative. We have bigger trees here, but an average 10 hour day might land us anywhere from 24 to 60+ trees on the average depending on size, accessibility, and density, with any number of removals mixed in. I was always pushing the limits though and eventually bought a one ton dump and talked the company out of an additional chuck n duck as a “back up.” The one ton was my “crew truck.” So I was compensated for that. We got work done though, often had to argue with my home office to defend my tree counts.
The old gal was Missouri (pronounced: “misery”) defined, and looked and sounded just like granny(Irene Ryan) on the Beverly Hillbillies. “Now Ryan, I know there is no way you did 80 trees in one day, what hav ya and what not!”
“Well, come on up here and count em for me then.”
Anyway, Good luck to ya, I’m usually busy just doing 1 to 5 trees a day and making in one day what used to take me all week…on the average.
