DN22 Gardening

steve, whats the approx cost of the us trip? sounds like a good plan

my bro was stationed out there when he was in the army. liked it so much he's built a place near Chetamal ??? ( think thats how you spell it) he says theres loads of work out there for tree fellers...all of $25 belise per day ( about 50p i think) hoping to get out there this year.

don't know about the legality of it matt, but i can guess what any insurer would say in the event of a claim !!!!!!!!!

we've been thinking for a while about getting a shredder. conifer hedge cuttings are our biggest problem and its not the safest thing pushing them into the Jensen hopper

hi, our road towable splitter is powered by a porta pack off ebay £250 (including the gun) its mounted on a Peugeot rear sub frame from the local scrappers (£50) including a couple of usable tyres. the spool valve and ram we ended up buying new from a local Hydro engineers. just about copes with dried euch...just

hi all, we've got about 80 ton of rings to log up, all arb waste they're all in crates drying nicely and we've got a petrol log splitter on a trailer thats lets us do about 1 and half to two cube an hour ( two men). Anyone know of a machine that'll go on the back of the tractor that will split rings of up to 36" dia. either a large splitter or processor that we can pile em in and miraculasly, nice split logs come out the other end..... thanks in advance, dave

My AYA and a dead rabbit confuses the £$££ out of them

hi all, we're probably among the smaller companies on here, so bare with me. if someones got info to share that'll make us all safer, more efiicient, and hence more profitable then i'm all for it. (Isn't this what arbtalk does ??) If all the objective is, is to produce a sticker for our trucks that'll inform an appathetic Joe public that we know what we're doing, why don't the AA promote the NPTC ?? If i know i'll be quoting against the numerous local cowboys i'll produce my certs, and insurance docs, and try to get the client to ask other contractors to show theirs. AAteccie quotes the new scheme as being a 'mere' £500 +vat (£600) a year. if you factor in the time it take to get approved the cost would be significantly higher. I can imagine, for the larger co.s that have dedicated office staff, asking for 3 or 4 hours a week isn't such a big deal. For the one man bands, 4 hours a week is about half of my free time !! At the end of the day, probably 80% of our jobs are won on price. Not what scheme we're in. As much as we try and educate away from lopping and topping, if thats what the client wants for his trees then so be it. Who are we to TELL a tree owner what they can and can't do to said trees. Rant over Thanks :blushing:

lifes way too short to be counting logs..... besides.... my lads'd have to take their boots and socks off after 10 !!!!!!

tom, don't let this lot get you down. suck in your guts, pay a decent climber whats required to get the job done, even if it means you're working for nowt. and learn the lesson. don't let clients rule you. Its your staffs life thats in your hands, if you need to start at 8.00, tell the client that. if they don't like it..tough. you walk away from the job.

depends on the client. we have a farmer who gets it for nowt a garden center who give us £20 worth of plants per load private customers, depends on how far we have to travel usually between £20-£40 per transit load

whereabouts are you ?

cheers guys, 4 of us did the lot in two days, but the second day was an easy one. one of the benefits of working on larger sites is the availability of large machinery. the very nice jcb driver moved the 12 ton of top soil wherever we wanted it the very nice forktruck driver moved the timber to wherever we wanted it gave em both £20, everyones happy :biggrin:

brilliant. definately hire it again. even on the compacted hardcore, it managed to break it up enough for us to get it out with the spoons one for the shopping list

well, i can honestly say i've never sat in one place, read 30 odd pages of text, laughed so much, and been told to "SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH" so many times... my eyes are sore i've laughed so much

trust were the same with me when i tried to renew one of the caddy's quoting £500 plus tried all the internet searches, direct line........£1600 bare in mind we've got full no-claims on all vehicles ended up paying £320 after playing with 'Go compare' i was leaving the 'your best quote' field blank. when i put in £300 the prices dropped hugely :confused1: no...i couldn't figure it out either

and after pics. you'll have to excuse the photo's, David Baily i'm not

as promised pics of job. finished today. could have completed in two if it wasn't for the hold ups before pics

thats what our vicar said the other day

bang on with the price miker. used a wheeled hydraulic auger from Brandon tool hire. She struggled with the harder made up ground, but flew through the holes on the decent stuff. Recomend it to anyone. Jobs being held up by ground workers now. they've fitted a fibreglass pumping chamber 1200mm higher than the turfed area its sat in the middle of Can't fit the fence till the chambers lowered, can't turf till the fence is in, stood down. Cursing now, as i was going to include 'standing time' in my original quote but forgot. DOH !!!!!! I'll put pics up when she's done

forgot to say we're NOT the cheapest, we do a cracking job, for a decent price. one hotel on the edge of our area even put our rates up after i mentioned that we may have to give the contract up due to rising fuel costs.

when we started with commercial contracts we bought a s/hand ride on off fleabay. Cost us £300 and lasted 4 months !!! but that four months throughout the summer made me enough to buy a better mower. we usually give a day rate, say, two men, tools (inc ride on if needed). give them the hours you'll think it'll need, and the price to suit. when you're sending your quote include ALL extras, one of our hotels does weddings, so we've given a price to send a man with a vac to clear up confetti another has a spa, so, depending when they have treatments we may have to wait to cut certain pieces so we included a quote for 'waiting time' (we dont wait much now ) NEVER work for nothing !!!! you can be sat at home and earn that :thumbup1:

we're at that point now big j. i'm averaging 90hrs a week atm and this is supposedly our quiet time !!!!! starting a pressure job on wednesday, some turfing and fencing on a new ASDA, GOT to be finished by Sunday evening or £5k a week (or part thereof) penalty clauses !!!!!!!! the following weekend we're dismantling a large Yew in a doctors carpark, again got to be done on a Sunday when they're closed. As above, i always take at least a day off the week after and take the wife somewhere and spoil her, making sure the customer pays heavily for it....

got our accountant coming on thursday to discuss this very issue. done a few large jobs this winter and are VERY near the threshold, also nearly lost a £8500 job coz i had to include the VAT i pay on materials in my price talking to few successful business men i know, the general feeling is i should go LTD dread to think what adding vat will do to the domestic side

cheers guys the fence is only a temporary one for a new ASDA thats being built so it'll be coming down in 12 months time thinking of hiring a wheeled auger as its all hardcore digging ive ordered the gear from travis perkins £7 per 4x4 post 78p per f/edge board and £1.05 per mtr for the 3x2 not bad really