dummies guide to pricing?

[Czlowiek Drzewo]

I dunno I think a tree firm ought to be pulling in £1000/day with 3 people in a team with the right equipment. Then again they need to be doing £1000 worht of work to get it in the first place. I know I have in the past.

 

Having said that at the moment the work is hard to find so I'm now happy with less equipment and two of us to be pulling in £4-500ish a day but were doing half as much work. And then of course how much work have I got - Not very much maybe it's me getting it wrong.........

 

the prob is that lots of compnays have unimogs and stuff on finance..and need to make there high monthly bills. I look to make couple hundred a day ..sometimes i make 100. sometimes i make a loss. ..but if you got the work why price to get it..price what you think its worth to you.

[skyhuck]

..but if you got the work why price to get it..price what you think its worth to you.

 

I don't get this

[skyhuck]

This is an interesting topic, IMO.

 

How do you guys estimate the size of a tree??

 

Does any one measure trees a breast hight??

 

I am not great at estimating tree size, often when I get to a job, that I have priced, I find the tree is much bigger than I thought.

 

Fortunately they are just as often smaller than I thought.

 

The trees location seems to really influence how big it appearers to be, IE, if it is surrounded by other large trees it seems smaller.

 

I am also often surprised by the size of limbs, once I climb up to them, is it just me?? or do others find the same??

[ukminch]

I just guess, but it's useful to have reference points such as houses, lampost etc that you can use to gauge it. I think that I will always balls up quoting be it in my favour or the customers favour, and think that's true of most people. As long as it works out ok in the end its ok though.

 

I also now tend to overestimate as I've burned myself to many times in the past. Also means I do less work for more money.

 

R

[Mesterh]

This is an interesting topic, IMO.

 

How do you guys estimate the size of a tree??

 

Does any one measure trees a breast hight??

 

I am not great at estimating tree size, often when I get to a job, that I have priced, I find the tree is much bigger than I thought.

 

Fortunately they are just as often smaller than I thought.

 

The trees location seems to really influence how big it appearers to be, IE, if it is surrounded by other large trees it seems smaller.

 

I am also often surprised by the size of limbs, once I climb up to them, is it just me?? or do others find the same??

 

 

Nope not just you mate!

 

I often get up there and think, hmmm yeah well I was just gonna drop this in one but not now.

 

If its a bit of a nasty one (usually not size of tree but access)I usually think the day before that it is a monster!

 

Alot of the time though once I get into it it aint half as bad as what I imagined, although there have been a few times when I have thought BUGGER.

[combined tree services]

i do alot of work for a large company and have set up a system based on size classing ie dbh (size classing) it work relatively well as ther is no need to price every job individually , whether its felling , reducing , thinning lifting or formative work there is a set price unless the job has exceptional circumstances attached . as for pricing in general i think alot of the formulas are based on the age , size and financial status of the company - meaning every company prices in its own way . i think the trick is to sit down and work out your expenses and what the minimum your willing to earn is , then from that you can factor in how much you feel you can make on top of that on each individual job . ie your minimum daily income is £100 a day and you are pricing to take down a large beech taking severall days with high risk involved then you will want to factor in a higher proffit margin to than you would on a simple crown lift on a small sycamore . obviously the requirement of more equipment for the larger job would inflate the cost of the job further

[ukminch]

You wanna share the prices that you've agreed with them. I did a similar thing for a client, took absolutely ages and ended up getting two jobs out of them before the sold up to another company. So I never found out whether the pricing really worked.

 

R

[ukminch]

By the way thats quite cheeky so I understand if you don't. R

[combined tree services]

i would share the prices with you all but think it would be a bit foolish to give some of my competitors a helping hand . but what i would say is i would not do such a thing unless i had a binding contract with them , its really simple to set up , if you wanna talk it through feel free to pm me . maybe someone like skyhuck or swb or bob will be able to shed some more light as well , they do have a fair few years on me and alot of experience than me tbh

[moorcrofttreesurgery]

just starting out so learning as i go. some days you do good some days you dont.i lot of jo public just dont seem to realise the the dangers of the tree game and the price of all the equipment.priced a few jobs lately and nearly every customer has said you can sell the logs of the tree which really makes me laugh.nowt as strange as folk