Volume discount pricing?

[CKguy]

Almost all the work I do is 1 to 5 trees needing varying degrees of climbing and rigging. I recently had the opportunity to bid the removal of approximately 30 trees in one yard. Pricing them individually results in a pretty damn big number! Is that how you guys bid large jobs or should I be looking at it from a volume perspective? Thanks in advance for your comments or suggestions!

 

[Ryan'smilling]

For a situation like that (I'm not a pro tree guy by any means, but I do some contract tree work for a guy who has a tree service, and some custom tractor work) I try to figure out a day rate that works well for both parties. You have to know, or at least have a pretty good idea of how much your time needs to be worth. Or you can just take a guess and add a little .

I did some work splitting firewood at a friend's house. Between truck, trailer, tractor, splitter, saws and small tools, I had about $34,000 worth of equipment (what I paid, not necessarily what it'd sell for). I charged him $350/day for me and the machine. I think I averaged 3 hours a day or less on the machine, and only worked 8 hour days. I was happy and he was happy. Assuming you have insurance and some expensive equipment, your cost might be quite a bit higher. Figure out what it costs to keep the lights on, so to speak. In this kind of scenario, you have to add enough to theoretically cover replacing your equipment when the time comes. Then, add however much you want to make on top of that. I imagine there will be a number that is competitive from the homeowner's perspective and also seems appealing to you. If not, well that's okay too.

 

[ATH]

There are some efficiencies gained doing that many trees in one place...right?

How many hours will it take you to do them all? Multiply that by your hourly rate.

 

[CKguy]

Thank you both! I had similar thoughts so I need to think more about an acceptable daily/hourly rate. I just didn't anticipate the volume job being less $ than a small job. On the other hand, the solid weeks of work has some appeal as well.

 

[no tree to big]

Thank you both! I had similar thoughts so I need to think more about an acceptable daily/hourly rate. I just didn't anticipate the volume job being less $ than a small job. On the other hand, the solid weeks of work has some appeal as well.

Now dont under sell yourself. We do a lot of high volume work some jobs are easy 10 or 15 medium sized trees in a day cause they are all centrally located that's a 3k to 4k dollar price tag. Then we do those exact same trees but spread them out a few feet and it doubles the time because you now have to clean up several spots and do several setups, which all take time. That's now a 6k to 8k dollar price tag...

It might take you an hour and a half to do a tree start to finish but if you dont have to do 30 mins of final cleanup for each tree you are now at 1 hr. Example 30 trees 1.5 hrs each you are at 45 hrs 30 trees @ 1hr is 30 hrs that's a 2 day difference. Now depending on the size of the trees you may end up with a mountain of logs to haul out which can add a lot of time after the fact if you dont have a good way to haul large quantities of wood..

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[KingBeee]

You should always work on an hourly rate