Wood chip delivery software -- what do you think?

[durkie]

Hi there -- new to the forum, but have been following for a while.

We've been working on an app to help tree companies to find people close to them that want wood chips. When you load the app, it locates you by gps, and then shows you the 10 nearest folks that want chips, and then you can select any of them and get details on how many loads of chips they want, where they want it, how to get in touch with them, etc.

The point is to keep your driving time to a minimum, keep your crew working longer, and save you money on labor and gas. Those chipper trucks get pretty bad mileage, especially when full, and if you're a big enough company you wouldn't have to call the office to have them find you a dump site. Plus, everyone that signs up for chips with us agrees to thorough terms, so they can't sue you for cracking their driveway or having poison ivy in the chips.

But my point is not to sell yall on something, but to get your input: does this seem like something you'd be interested in? What about something you'd be interested in paying for on a monthly basis (especially if it's saving you money)? How much would you pay? What's something you really would want it to have? Or what is a bigger problem you have in your business?

Ultimately we want to build something that solves a real problem for your company, because we're trying to solve a real problem we have: we have a farm in Atlanta, and whenever we want wood chips we have to call up a million companies and it's a pain in the butt. We thought it'd be much better to be able to sign up once for chips and reach many companies, and we figured tree companies could benefit from this approach as well.

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

Thanks,
Craig

 

[stltreedr]

At the utility we dump free chips where and whenever we can. The problem with the free dump is that it is never where and when you need it. When working in an urban setting, you never have a free dump. In rural areas there are so many that you can't get to them all. Sounds like a cool idea, though..

 

[durkie]

Yep -- it's the urban tree companies that we're targeting since it's harder to find places to dump. It also seems like in rural areas you're driving a lot no matter what, while you might not have to cover as much ground near a city to get from job to job and the extra driving (and traffic) time from emptying the truck could add up.

Any interest in trying it for free and seeing if it could work for you?

 

[stltreedr]

Free is hard to beat...How exactly does it work, would homeowners have to sign up for the service? How are you marketing it to them? I could see it being useful if there were a ton of people signed up for it, but if you're only getting a couple leads a month you're just going to piss off the few people who actually sign up.

 

[durkie]

So, we ran afoul of the advertising guidelines. Now that that's cleared up:

I hear that -- if craigslist is working for you, then great.

We're trying to offer something better than craigslist: basically that you have to do as little as possible to get a good location to dump wood chips, wherever you're working.

Maybe you do it differently, but from what I've seen of local (Atlanta) tree companies that post on craigslist, they have to post on a semi-daily basis of which zip codes they're working in, they have to field responses (and weed out out-of-date ones), they have to find which ones are actually close to their job site, and they have to vet the requester/handle liability somehow.

We're offering to take care of that for you. We provide requesters that know you can't just empty half of the chipper truck, that the chips vary in quality, and they can't come after you if you damage the septic tank. We also let them manage their own request details, so they don't have to bother you about changing delivery times/address/phone number/whatever. (Per your question stltreedr, we find wood chip requesters by advertising with farms, schools, garden clubs and certainly craigslist. We also import existing lists of chip requests if you have them.)

We provide a clean mobile interface (you can see an example at www.chipero.com) that finds people closest to where you're working right-this-moment, and gives you everything you need to know about them in an easy to use layout.

Is it perfect for every company? From our experiences so far, definitely not, otherwise our job would be a lot easier.

But there are two types of tree companies that we are really hoping to make a difference for: companies that have a 3" tall stack of wood chip requests that the receptionist has to sort through and field calls from the crew; and small companies with a single chipper truck where the owner is the one giving you the estimate and the one showing up to do the job as well, and they got enough on their plate to worry about that additional detail.

Craig Durkin
Co-Founder, Chipero
www.chipero.com

 

[mikewhite85]

This is a really good idea. Will take a lot of effort to get it off the ground though.

 

[durkie]

This is a really good idea. Will take a lot of effort to get it off the ground though.

Thanks for the kind words -- if it's something you think could work out where you are, we'd love for you to try it for free for a while and get your feedback on it.

 

[treemandan]

Wood chip delivery software? Huh? What? Oh yer gonna have my back if I run over the septic? Ok then, I'll take two!

 

[imagineero]

I thought a couple of years ago of making a similar thing, but in the end I gave up and just kept doing craigslist. It works most of the time reasonably well, and I don't know that there would be much of an advantage unless you marketed it really well in a big way.

The hurdles (which you've no doubt already come across!) are misunderstandings about what mulch is compared to chip, how much a cubic yard is, access to yards, and contractors trying to dump crap.

From the tree company's side, you're only very rarely going to find someone willing to take more than 10 cubic yards. Which means it only works with small chip trucks. I find some people think they're getting that red died bleached steam cleaned wood chip, when they're actually getting mulch. Then sometimes you turn up and find the drive way too narrow, or a powerline that prevents you tipping. Or, they thought 10 cubic yards was about the size of a wheelbarrow, and they don't want it now. Time wasted.

For the people receiving the mulch, some unscrupulous contractors have burned a lot of bridges for legitimate tree companies. Used to be that guys were honest, but I've talked to a lot of people that used to accept chip (golf courses, schools etc) who don't want it any more because some tree companies have hidden crap in the chip. Stumps, palm, bamboo, weeds etc.

It's a nice idea though.

Shaun

 

[durkie]

Yep -- we've been working with several local companies to make sure all parties know what they're getting in to: when you ask for chips (not mulch), you're getting a LOT, and if you're a tree company, you can't dump logs/trash/branches etc. And we've got a data log of activity, so we can trace issues if something doesn't go right with a delivery -- if person wanting chips has a narrow driveway and they had to dump in his yard instead, or if the company delivering chips does something they aren't supposed to.

We actually had an issue recently where one of the people receiving chips through us emailed us frantically at 10pm saying "help! some tree company dumped a gigantic load of chips in my driveway, blocking me in and I need to take my kids to school in the morning." We looked in our records and saw that one of our customer tree companies had been there earlier in the day and made a delivery, but they had followed his directions exactly. The software noted their delivery and removed him from our list, preventing any other possible tree companies associated with us from knowing about him or making a delivery there.

It was only after we followed up with him with this fact that we found out that he had requested chips from several other tree companies that weren't working with us. He basically had no accountability or recourse to find out who had dumped in his driveway, and he had to pay out of pocket to get them removed.

 

[durkie]

Places to get rid of wood would be a good thing to add to the database.

That is a good idea. Just so I understand: you would want to get rid of larger log sections so that people can use it directly for lumber/woodworking purposes right? Would you be interested in trying to sell it to these people as well, or are you mostly just trying to move it?

 

[2treeornot2tree]

Do you just service Atlanta area or all over the country? Just curious, how many dumps sites do you have in my area. Zip 17601

 

[durkie]

Do you just service Atlanta area or all over the country? Just curious, how many dumps sites do you have in my area. Zip 17601

We've been working the kinks out in Atlanta, but are definitely looking to try it out in other parts of the country as well.

We don't have dump sites where you are right now, but that's deliberate -- we don't want to sign up a bunch of people expecting chips and then have nothing lined up to actually deliver them.

But I can set up an account for you, we can add in the places you currently dump chips, and we can work on building a bigger network of dump sites for you from there. Use it free-of-charge for a month or two and see if it's something that could work for you.

Would that work? If you end up not liking it, we respect that and all we'd ask from you is feedback so we can make it better.

Our goal is to make this an aspect of tree work that you guys don't have to worry about anymore: Pull up the app, find someone close by, drop off the chips, done.

Craig