Here's my underbidding idiots story of the month. We're still working on cleanup and trimming from january's ice storm, and a guy in my area, who we know, called us for a bid to trim 14 trees on his rental property, plus 2 removals, and also trim damage from 6 large oaks in his front yard, trim a few more smaller trees, and remove two more trees on his home property. One of these was and old, 90% dead white oak, 36-40" and 40+' tall.
The six large oaks in his front yard would have been very difficult and time consuming to trim, as they had much breakage, and few or no good tie ins above much of the breakage. Much easier for a bucket truck or lift than a climber.
When I stopped by to formulate a bid, another guy was there, looking at the trees. We knew that the customer was cheap, even though he's fairly wealthy. (Owns multiple properties, and a large herd of cattle.)
After I spent 45 minutes, and deciding that if I bid how long those oaks were going to take, I'd never get the bid, I decided to try and compete with what I though the bucket truck crew would bid.
The rental property was no problem. I had it at $1800. His home property I had at $2000, and that was pretty low. I would have liked to price it at $3200.00.
I called my partner, who knows the guy better than I, and he said "There's no way in hell he will pay that". "Yeah, I said, thats how I feel too."
I told the customer that I couln't really compete with the bucket truck crew's bid because of how long the oaks would take climbing, and declined to give him a bid.
Last week, a crew was in to do the job. My partners dad lives a couple hundred yards away, and he kept an eye on the crew, just for something to do. They spent four days total, first 2 days with 8 guys, and 2 bucket trucks. Then two more days with 4-5 guys and a chipper and chip truck. I'm guessing they had a minimum of 70 man hours in the job.
All the trees were hacked and whacked. I don't think I saw one lateral cut, and I'm pretty sure if they cut at any nodes it was pure luck. Many cuts were torn out from the lack of an undercut. The second day of the job, the property owner was pulling around one of the bucket trucks with his tractor, because it had broken down. Pony engine for the boom. I have no idea how they took it out when they were done. They knocked out the power, my partners dad was out of power for 4-5 hrs, along with several other houses on that road. I don't know exactly how they did that. About 6-7 feet of trunk is still laying in his front yard from the large oak removal. I guess they didn't have a saw big enough, or one that would cut straight enough to block it.
My partners dad had asked the owner how much all this was costing him. Turns out, nobody was happy in the end. The owner paid $1600, and thought the guys were highway robbers. I'm sure the crew didn't do too well either, with four days of fuel use, 70+ man hours, and a broken bucket truck, for $1600.
I'm just glad I declined to give him a bid. Some people are great to work for, and expect good work for a good price. Having and idea of which ones are good to work for and which aren't makes it easier. If we hadn't known he was cheap ahead of time, we'd have insulted him even after taking $1200 off what we thought the job was worth.
Fair tradeoff for him. He pays 1/3 of what good work would cost, and gets his trees wrecked even worse than they were after the storm. I'm not to worried about that tree company sticking around for long....they won't be able to afford to, and theres no way people will be happy with their work if they charge more. Pure hackery. Its the trees that suffer.
