38 Special Grinder

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You have an awesome niche market, Brian.

I'd love to just climb, and sell myself with the bucket when I get it. Although it would be extremely hard to just cold turkey stop doing a complete tree job though. "Sorry ma'am, we've been working for you for five years, but now I just run joysticks". :lol:

One truck would be nice, imagine how clean it would be!
 
I still do tree work for customers, I just don't pursue it. The little nickel-dime jobs get passed along to others (who then owe me favors) and I cherry pick the better jobs for myself. Just yesterday a referral call resulted in a nice $2200 front yard removal. :D

And to stay on topic, I have a great stump sub who sends me lots of work and hooks me up with various tree companies who need a bucket truck. One hand washes the other.
 
Mariposa stump grinder....................


termite-11.gif
 
I sub stumps out, but thats about to change. I didnt have enough demand for them for the first few years in business. I see it more now. I sub them to a guy that usually leaves a few bucks in it for me, but if I continue to see the demand I have been seeing, Im going to start doing them again.
 
When I have a mini, the 38 special is probably how I will roll. I know I can sell the stump grind once I have the gear. But it is more last on the list. I think I get maybe 2-3 requests for grinding per year that I refer out. And out of the ones I refer, less than 50 percent ever have it done. This means that I will sell it as part of the removal price. Assumed sale.
Would be nice to have a couple days a month just grinding crap, boring as it may be.
 
What's the possibility to tell the sub that you need more money, whatever that means regarding if they bid more and/ or take less?
 
Brendon, hope it makes sense to keep this thread more geared toward your machine question, and have a general grinding thread that might be easier to find via Search later for general stumping discussion.
 
Skwerl said:
I don't like anything about tree work except the cutting. I don't want to grind stumps, drag or chip brush, load logs, rake the yard, go to the dump, manage employees or deal with customers. I don't want all the money off the job, just the easy money.
Click to expand...
:thumbup:;)8)
 
I found that I lost atleast a few jobs by subbing stumps, as I was always straightforward with the customer that I would be subbing their stumps out. Some people don't like that and all of my main competitors were offering the service in house. That combined with the fact that the guy that I was subbing them to was doing a crap job and wasn't reliable lead me to get the universal/38 special. I would never do stumps if I could've figured another way around it.
 
I wouldn't mention I was subbing the stumps out until I'd finished the takedown. I don't need the client telling me how to do my job.

BUT, the guy you're subbing out to had better be a pro. He's gonna be connected with your name, after all.
 
Yah, honestly I just felt sorta cheesy not mentioning that it would be a different company handling the stump. Maybe my own thing I know, but I felt lik it wasn't full dis-closure or something. Also than it's sort of my responsibility to make certain the guys insurances are current and all that so I'm not inviting a potential liability onto a clients property.

I don't often ever grind a stump myself now, that stuff is delegated. Lol.
 
I just tell them that my stump guy will take care of the grinding after we remove the tree. Never been a problem and I'm fortunate to have a first class stump guy.
 
That there is the difference. Not many independent grinders locally, mostly only tree services that grind as well. This guy I had used was not showing when he was supposed to, tearing stuff up accessing and whatnot. It was a disaster so I kind of had to do something myself.
 
How you tell the customer might make a difference. When you have sold the job, you can say, "Great, I'll go ahead and notify our stump grinding man that he needs to schedule it". Making it sound like a matter of course might smooth out any ripples in the layman's level of scrutiny. Pave over their fears, so to speak.
 
I kind of get the impression that people might be a little more private up here. Sometimes when people phone me for a quote I can tell they feel hesitant to give out their address. Lol.

I seal the deal on lots of work I think by mentioning that it will be myself and my crew returning to do the job, not just a bunch of randoms that work for me.
 
The stump grinder guy is just another employee (of sorts) and not any of the customer's business. He's not random.
 
Look at it this way, Squish, it's good practice for when somebody in the Mexican drug cartel wants you to do their trees. It's understandable that they don't want just anybody running around the grounds.
 
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