I appreciate all of the feedback and cautions so far...how about the good stuff? What do you guys like about the business? Or is it all misery, liability, and poverty?
If you don't have the big equipment it's all misery...
do you plan on being out on the crew or just sitting back in the office/doing estimates? How are you going to estimate the work when youve never done it before? What kind of mechanical/fabrication skills do you have? Can you fix your own **** when it breaks or is it going to the shop?
If you have zero climbing experience that means you are relying you whole operation on your climber if you can find one. Climbers are picky sensitive creatures! You must treat your climber like a king or he'll leave, a good climber can have a new job by the end of the day if he decides to leave.
How much money are you planing to invest in this? Do you have a place to park your equipment, a shop, dump sites?
If you don't want to spend money from the start your gonna get a bunch of broke down crap and your life will suck. If you spend some coin and you get a bunch of nice stuff that is more reliable and higher production it makes things way easier. It also is higher risk if u fail, but it also will increase your chances of success. At an older age your body is less forgiving for you to learn and do it the hard way. you are also less likely to keep employees if you are doing it the hard way.
What are you planing on as a business model? What is your initial investment?
We did 1.2 million this year, it took a lot of money to make that million and after insurance fuel and payroll the company made jack crap. We have 4 owners that are on payroll that take about 60k home if you offered any of them 100k a year to get out of this they'd take it in a heart beat. If you can sit in an office somewhere and make that kind of money do it it is the best option.
You also don't just start a highly profitable tree service out of knowwhere it takes time to build a customer base and get your name out there. This is also where the quality of your trucks helps. A potential customer sees you working you have nice trucks they are more likely to call you and trust you. If you have a bunch of rusty crap the only people who r gonna call you are the cheap bastards.
Most folks that have profitable companies are guys that were climbers for years that went out and started there own show. These people knew everything there was to know. Just like many other industries, knowledge means money. They had the knowledge so they made the money they didn't have to pay someone else to come into the company to use his knowledge to make them money...
Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk