Subbing off other companies

[Justaman.com]

Hello everyone I’ve been setting up my company since January and now fully operational, I’m getting 2 days of work per week now and I’m at the stage of thinking to buy/lease a truck chipper and storage to keep them safe. 
 

to go forward I’d need to sub of other company’s to maintain a profit and whilst I build up my own customer base, without name dropping there’s a few obvious companies that do this in the area I’m based , south east of England. 
can anyone give me a rough figure on what type of money I could get a day for doing this. 
I’m estimating £400 - £800 

 Also can anyone give me any insight on how they coped working for other companies 👍 

much appreciated. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Justaman.com

[doobin]

£400-800 for what? A man and a chipper? Cloud cuckoo land I’m afraid mate. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by doobin

[Clutchy]

4 hours ago, Justaman.com said:

Hello everyone I’ve been setting up my company since January and now fully operational, I’m getting 2 days of work per week now and I’m at the stage of thinking to buy/lease a truck chipper and storage to keep them safe. 
 

to go forward I’d need to sub of other company’s to maintain a profit and whilst I build up my own customer base, without name dropping there’s a few obvious companies that do this in the area I’m based , south east of England. 
can anyone give me a rough figure on what type of money I could get a day for doing this. 
I’m estimating £400 - £800 

 Also can anyone give me any insight on how they coped working for other companies 👍 

much appreciated. 

 

I understand why you want to do this, and we have done it as a company in our first couple of years and its terrible, especially if you are on price. If you're referring to a big tree company in shenley with a few council contracts, then good luck 

 

You will be on price and subbies get given the 'return list' which is all the work the main gangs directly employed handed back for one reason or another. Most common reason - can't do it for that money, f that send it back 

 

Or its over a major road where it needs TM which they won't pay for and so on. More often than not, its underpriced hard work. 

 

Unless you have a relationship with the owner, you will struggle hard. Even if you do, you would be hard pushed to do much more than £350ish a day before being full and that's likely doing 5 reductions on medium sized trees. So you need to be fast too. 

You also need to be able to withstand 30 day payment terms with some of them, which I assume you will struggle with? 

 

Your compliance on some subbie work needs to be bang on which again, you probably don't have

Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear, but good luck.

[Justaman.com]

1 hour ago, Clutchy said:

 

I understand why you want to do this, and we have done it as a company in our first couple of years and its terrible, especially if you are on price. If you're referring to a big tree company in shenley with a few council contracts, then good luck 

 

You will be on price and subbies get given the 'return list' which is all the work the main gangs directly employed handed back for one reason or another. Most common reason - can't do it for that money, f that send it back 

 

Or its over a major road where it needs TM which they won't pay for and so on. More often than not, its underpriced hard work. 

 

Unless you have a relationship with the owner, you will struggle hard. Even if you do, you would be hard pushed to do much more than £350ish a day before being full and that's likely doing 5 reductions on medium sized trees. So you need to be fast too. 

You also need to be able to withstand 30 day payment terms with some of them, which I assume you will struggle with? 

 

Your compliance on some subbie work needs to be bang on which again, you probably don't have

Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear, but good luck.

Thankyou for your feed back, any advice is good advice unlike the pointless comment above 👍 

Im just exploring different avenues as I learn how to run a company, I’m currently paying around £600 a month in advertisements and that generates £3000 income , not profit a month but if I’m going to invest on a truck and chipper in this stage I need that to go up to £4500 a month. Other than heavily advertising can you recommend anything that I could try to do to gain another days work a week ? 

[Mick Dempsey]

I don’t want to be negative, but you’re not learning how to run a company, in real terms it doesn’t exist.

 

What exactly are you doing atm, Freelance climbing? Are you renting a truck and chipper?

 

I have a feeling that Duncan Banntyne might have a few choice words.

[jfc]

Hi Justaman,

IMO it's tough times to be starting a company, I'm doing OK but my plan for this year is to keep going as a business, income and profit will be a lower than previous years.

I started off small and kept overheads as low as possible, did a mix of trees, gardening, landscaping and mowing. I did a little subbying but only on climber day rate. After a year I got finance for a chipper and few months after a transit tipper. I had built up a bit of a client base and company name by then. I have gradually focused on trees/hedges and dropped most of the other work and no longer subby.

IMO you are already paying 20% of turnover for advertising, which is a lot.  I'd be very cautious about getting loans at present as work is patchy, but I am not really a gambling man.

In my first year I earned a lot less than I had as a subbie/employee I just sucked it up and put most profit back into the business, over time I have gradually got to earning a reasonable amount.

All the best.

J.

[maybelateron]

8 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

What exactly are you doing atm, Freelance climbing? Are you renting a truck and chipper?

Exactly the point - you've not said what (if any) kit you have, and what you can do yourself. Bit difficult to give furthter meaningful advice without this info.

[maybelateron]

3 minutes ago, jfc said:

IMO you are already paying 20% of turnover for advertising, which is a lot

Agreed entirely. I know it is easy to say as someone who has been trading for a good while (both jfc and myself, whose paths I think may have been similar) but word of mouth recommendation is so useful. I am very selective about what enquiries I actually quote for if they have come via my advertising, as I don't want to be the sixth quote for  a job some distance away.

[doobin]

5 hours ago, Justaman.com said:

Thankyou for your feed back, any advice is good advice unlike the pointless comment above 👍 

Im just exploring different avenues as I learn how to run a company, I’m currently paying around £600 a month in advertisements and that generates £3000 income , not profit a month but if I’m going to invest on a truck and chipper in this stage I need that to go up to £4500 a month. Other than heavily advertising can you recommend anything that I could try to do to gain another days work a week ? 

What’s pointless about my comment? You asked if £4-800 a day was realistic, I told you straight   

[Jon Lad]

22 hours ago, Justaman.com said:

Hello everyone I’ve been setting up my company since January and now fully operational, I’m getting 2 days of work per week now and I’m at the stage of thinking to buy/lease a truck chipper and storage to keep them safe. 
 

to go forward I’d need to sub of other company’s to maintain a profit and whilst I build up my own customer base, without name dropping there’s a few obvious companies that do this in the area I’m based , south east of England. 
can anyone give me a rough figure on what type of money I could get a day for doing this. 
I’m estimating £400 - £800 

 Also can anyone give me any insight on how they coped working for other companies 👍 

much appreciated. 

It's difficult to say whether £400-£800 is realistic because you don't say how long you've been in the industry before setting up in January, also what else you'd be bringing to the table in terms of kit and / or personnel along with the truck and chipper; to estimate what you might be able to charge.