doobin

Indeed. Averaged out that suggests there must be a few 10k days in there! I consider myself to be very much on a 'jam' job if I invoice £2.5k for two men and a digger. I usually get one of these a month and it's always down to using machinery to do what would take labour much longer, as well as buying materials by the lorry load and then invoicing them at normal rates. How did you arrive at that figure? I haven't looked back at the numbers posted in the thread, but I know @Clutchyruns a pair of two man teams. £1250 per team per day is more realistic- still very high to do every day but more realistic.

I think it's about this time in life that you realise quality of life is important too. I can relate to the OP at that age.

If you put it back into the business it’s there in machinery etc. not all black and white. Honestly, if you want to be wealthy, it’s less of a gamble trying to get into banking than tree work. Or there are other trades which are much more scalable if business is your forte. I doubt very many tree business owners are on 90k a year for two teams. Far too many other two team businesses are willing to do it for less. So you either need big investment in machinery, or luck/an in to the big jobs. It sounds like you are heavily reliant upon turnover. That’s not a great place to be in a recession. Plenty of businesses expand very quickly, but disappear even faster.

They sure do. I saw the light with the Multione, the Sherpa is just for little jobs but even then it more than pays it's way in labour savings. Actually, if anything, the Sherpa saves more money. The Multione gives you another, more efficient way to do tasks that you'd usually machinery for, such as a digger and dumper. The Sherpa saves actual labour, and therefore cold hard cash.

I'm actually working on a prototype if you wanted to give it a test? I've taken the cone splitter and glued a pack of baby wipes to the tip. If nothing else, it will certainly focus your mind on smooth operating!

Any firm that realises how loaders can speed things up will already have their own in my experience. The others just think '£400? I can have three brash monkeys for that!' To be fair, £400 is a bit steep of a subby rate for a machine that costs £12-15k and runs on ten litres of unleaded, whilst also fitting in a Transit van for the journey to site. I have a pretty good Sherpa setup and the finance is £280 a month. If I use it once and pay the operator and that's the same as getting you in for a day- but it's always there when I need it for any job, no matter how small. £400 is more like basic 2.8t digger and grab subby rate- £30k outlay, 30 litres a day diesel and needs a thirsty truck rated to 3.5t tow capacity plus trailer to haul it. I'm not knocking you, if you need to earn that then that's absoloutely fair enough and you should always shoot for the stars. Just don't expect many trade takers.

That makes it a lot harder unfortunately. Rates will be astronomical if indeed he can help you. When I was looking for a 2.7t digger, I found a nice Kubota at a reasonable price- £12k from memory. Finance on that at much 'riskier' rates would have worked out at £50 a month less than the brand new £27k Bobcat I bought at their subsidised 0% finance. Have you looked at the economic climate currently? Now is not the time to be buying secondhand, possible unreliable kit at used-car-finance-rates with a base rate higher than we have had for decades. Seriously bud, think again. If you are sure you want to start your own firm now, I'd go with a micro chipper and old transit or LDV owned outright. £1500 for the new chipper and £3k for the old truck. You might work a couple more days a month (to get the job done) than you would with a 6" tow behind, but you wouldn't have that financial noose around your neck in a recession. Have a look at the wee chipper thread- what you will find (if you are smart) is that doing things a little differently can be just as profitable. Another option would be peer-to-peer lending, but again- high interest rates.

Shall we just say that it's 'personal preference'? 😆 Both have pros and cons. Big open spaces, the brash grab will be best. Trying to drag it down the side of a house- log grab. But why drag down the side of a house and mess up the render etc when you can take a mini chipper in, deal with the brash and then carry the rings out in the grab (of either type....) and the chip in the bucket. How do you plan to integrate a grab into your work? I'm honestly not biased- if you go back through this thread you will find pics of both a log grab and a bucket grab on the same narrow access job. I preferred the bucket grab, but I have both.

You don't want a start up loan. You want asset finance secured against a chipper. This will be relatively easy, although rates may not be great currently. Start up loans are high risk- you could spunk the load on advertising and have nothing to show for it. Asset finance is much easier, as the loan is secured against the machinery. Try Peter Benton at Purely Finance. He dealt with my first machine, and I've used him multiple times since. I'm sole trader, not LTD- it makes no odds when talking asset finance for business.

Finally off for the last few days, however it’s forecast to be down to just above zero next week. Thank god for the sawmill, we’ve burnt so much more wood this year than last.

A customer with a a house is much easier to enforce judgement against than an ex employee with no assets save their car. You’d end up being paid something stupid like £30 per month after a lot of effort! Higgins do a pretty good scare-o-gram. I remember one dodgy builder of my own- sent me a message saying ‘I’ll pay it this afternoon- call off the dogs lol!’ No good for serial non payers however.

Have you ever done that, and managed to enforce judgement? I think your skillful in in hiring the right people to start with!

If you are going down the route of working on your own, the 4-in-1 bucket is brilliant (on a Multione at least but same principle) for clearing up a windrow of rakings, on grass, with no damage. So when you see the light and buy a bucket, buy that one!

They're not silly money, they are specifically scaled down and built for strength whilst staying lighweight with optomised geometry. I thought the same as you, but as soon as the forks arrived I could see why they are £700.

I think you meant to suggest just running the loader up the ramps into the truck that you used to unload it when you brought it to the job? 😉

Yup, dig up the clients garden Mark, pile it up next to the truck. Then you can run up it to load your bags. Finally, put the garden all back as it was. Job jobbed! Oh wait. That’s not a good idea. I mean, you don’t even have a bucket grab, it’ll take you ages to dig it up with the log grab! 🤣

Was that the one at Alton?

You should be able to tilt the bed to a certain extent to lower the feed hopper.

Got the old girl MOTd last week for the first time in a couple of years. Was gobsmacked when the battery still had charge, and even more so when she started after ten seconds of turning over. good ol Honda. Then I went out and treated myself to something a bit newer and faster. To my mind, both are the prettiest things on two wheels. I love the look of them. I still have the old BMW F650 Funduro in the shed if anyone down south is looking for a cheap ride for summer.

Are we missing the obvious here? If it doesn't move with the assistor rams disconnected then the main lift linkage internally must have an issue. If it has one, obviously. Mine is just external rams.

It came with front links and pto- with a little bit of modification the front links found a home on mine!

Well I put her through the workshop, and got her delivered. Full filters and fluids change, sealant in the tyres, the works. Gotta be honest, I'm really impressed with it. Drives lovely, loader lifts a reasonable amount and comes off easily. Without the loader it's a superb grass cutting machine. The tractor has 2800 hours, which is a savage amount for that size machine. However it seems looked after- the pedal rubbers and floor mat have to have been replaced at those hours. The hydro transmission is strong and pulls you back instantly when you let off the pedal. The deck I think must have been used once! Does a lovely cut. He's chuffed to bits with it- give it a month to get used to it and he will want to sell the old JD. Just waiting on the ‘can I borrow such and such for the linkage’ calls 🤣

God loves a trier, but you my friend, you're special!

To be fair, it was cheap before I looked at it, and luckily I was the first to arrange to view. He was a decent guy, and we agreed an a fair price below the already cheap price in order to cover the cost of repair once I pointed out the issue. I had hoped it would be a £600 rebuild of the pump rather than a replacement motor, but that's life! I'm actually pleasantly surprised that the motor is 'only' £1400'. It'll owe me £6k with the motor and the time spent on it, it'd make more than that if I sold it. Like I said, it was really to stop @dumpertelling me I needed one! 😆 (he might well be right, I won't know until I get it out to work!) This baby for £15k with 6500 hours and servo controls was the real bargain of the year. Gave her a full fluids and filters change yesterday, replaced the sliding pads. Just a few bushes and pins to turn up and fit then she'll be grand. three different people are asking 26k plus vat for similar year models with stick controls and twice the hours.

Have you found, freed and tested the knob that controls the rate of linkage drop? This will stop it descending.