What would you charge?

[LT100]

My son is home on summer break from college and is looking to make some extra money to fill in around what his summer job generates. I own a log splitter and a couple saws. We heat our home primarily with wood so we understand what goes into it. He is offering to come to your house with his splitter and cut, split, and stack wood. This is directed towards home owners that typically have had trees taken down or they have come down in storms. We are not dropping anything standing. What do you think would be a fair hourly rate for that? We live about 25 miles south of Boston so it’s all suburbs.

 

[unclemoustache]

You could charge by the hour or by the face cord. I would recommend the latter, since that would encourage him to be productive and would be a set price for the customer.

Since a face cord sells for $80-$100, I would recommend something just under that.

 

[farmer steve]

$50 an hour. More if farther than 10 miles from home. Stacking would cost more. Tell him good luck.

 

[capetrees]

logs on the ground, I can cut to length, split and stack a cord of wood in about 3 hours with a gas splitter. The home owner owns the wood already so bringing your own splitter, saw, gas and travel expense in his truck, $50/hr seems about right. Full cord costs the owner $150 or so. If it takes longer, so be it. So long as the owner sees him working all the time and getting it done, if it takes 4 hours, so be it.

 

[samhop]

most people think ------
1- that there splitter is faster than it is.
2- that there is more wood on the ground then there is.
3- that they can buck-um, hack-um, haul-um, split-um stack-um and rack-um faster then most.

Professional project planers know that the time to complete any job is underestimated buy more than 30% and still don't take that into consideration resulting in actual completion time being 60% more then estimated.

think about it cap.

 

[dogfather]

The yellow brick road (to the Boston suburbs) is not paved with cord wood, nor can anyone realize any profit from the undertaking unless there is a wood processor involved. He'd be better off cutting lawns, and offer the saw work as an "extra". Trust me, I tried that road.

 

[LT100]

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. This is a lot tougher than I thought going into it. At first it seemed like using my equipment & tools for smaller jobs he could make some decent summer cash on the side. We’re going to float an ad on a local Facebook page and see what comes back. I’ll keep you updated.

 

[Okie]

Trees already down!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is not really a good thing and if in a dozer pile even worse.

I cut my own firewood and do my own mowing. He would be better off if he contracted mowing lawns.
Not as many, ticks, snakes, chiggers, Poison Ivy/Oak and mechanical eq involved.

But he will learn so let him do what he thinks is best.
Sometimes you just have to learn by experience.
AND
sometimes experience is all I have.

 

[Stihl Learning]

I was doing this for a while, I would charge $95 for the first hour which covered travel time and gas, and $35-40 for each additional hour.

 

[cantoo]

Couple guys offer firewood processing near me. Cord King CS 20-30 Model 44 with operator is $120 per hour. Another guy has a Cord King Model 36, he is $90 per hour for processor and operator and you load it. If he provides loader it's $150 per hour. Couple Bells machines are from $100 to $150 per hour. I don't rent my processor out it just isn't worth it.

 

[FrugalFirewoodDad]

most people think ------
1- that there splitter is faster than it is.
2- that there is more wood on the ground then there is.
3- that they can buck-um, hack-um, haul-um, split-um stack-um and rack-um faster then most.

Professional project planers know that the time to complete any job is underestimated buy more than 30% and still don't take that into consideration resulting in actual completion time being 60% more then estimated.

think about it cap.

Excellent advice.

 

[LT100]

Since my son is back at college I thought I would share what we learned from his wood splitting side jobs this summer. We ended up splitting just a little under twenty cords of wood ( not face cords)
Estimating how long a job will take is tougher than you think

Some wood on the ground is just too far gone. Better to be honest with the customer than split a bunch of rubbish and charge them.

This was a great year for poison ivy.

We settled on charging $40/hour for the splitter and the labor. A well written ad on your towns Facebook Yard Sale page will light up your phone And keep you busy for a couple weeks. A second ad with only slightly changed wording got us another wave of jobs. There are tons of small 2 and 3 hour jobs where people are looking for exactly this.
Thank you to everyone that shared their thoughts with my initial post. I wanted to come back and share how it went and if anybody want to copy what we did, I’d love to share how we managed it,

thanks,

 

[dboyd351]

Since my son is back at college I thought I would share what we learned from his wood splitting side jobs this summer. We ended up splitting just a little under twenty cords of wood ( not face cords)
Estimating how long a job will take is tougher than you think

Some wood on the ground is just too far gone. Better to be honest with the customer than split a bunch of rubbish and charge them.

This was a great year for poison ivy.

We settled on charging $40/hour for the splitter and the labor. A well written ad on your towns Facebook Yard Sale page will light up your phone And keep you busy for a couple weeks. A second ad with only slightly changed wording got us another wave of jobs. There are tons of small 2 and 3 hour jobs where people are looking for exactly this.
Thank you to everyone that shared their thoughts with my initial post. I wanted to come back and share how it went and if anybody want to copy what we did, I’d love to share how we managed it,

thanks,

So did he feel it worked out well charging $40/hour?
Be interesting to hsar if he would do it again at that rate of pay.

 

[sean donato]

So did he feel it worked out well charging $40/hour?
Be interesting to hsar if he would do it again at that rate of pay.

Especially if he's claiming taxes on it at the end of the year. $40 hr isn't much once the tax man is finished with you.

 

[LT100]

So did he feel it worked out well charging $40/hour?
Be interesting to hsar if he would do it again at that rate of pay.

I think he was happy with the money he made. He worked hard for it. In fairness, I helped him a couple times so he had a little bit of a tail wind. This was intended to be a fill in source of income over the summer break In addition to his summer job. I don’t think it has long lasting prospects to be any regular job. I wanted to set him up to earn some cash so he would have money while he’s off at school. Next year his situation will change so I don’t think this will even be possible.
Moral of the story, is we had the tools, we tried something that was new to us. He came home dirty, sweaty and tired with cash in his pocket at the end of the day. It’s not a full time job, but it fit his needs, along with a bunch of local home owners, so it was a win for all parties.

 

[TheJollyLogger]

It's like that old Mastercard commercial, experience and lessons learned: priceless.

Kudos to both you and your son.

 

[dboyd351]

Glad to hear it. You are a good Dad. You provided him with the necessary tools and encouragement and he learned the value of hard honest work and making a success of himself.
I guarentee he will spend that money much more carefully and with more consideration for it's value than if you had given it to him.
Excellent lesson learned!

 

[MechanicMatt]

LT, now change your oil so your splitter continues to give you years of service

As a son that borrowed many a tool from his pops, we don’t always treat them as good as the guy who paid for them….

Now that I’m the guy paying the bills, my oil gets checked all the time on every piece of equipment I own.

 

[LT100]

Solid advice! Oil change and new hydraulic filters are on top of my “to do” list now. Thank you.