Work vs life

From day 1 the phone got answered between 8 and 5 Monday- Friday. Turned off otherwise. My "free estimates" are 9-3 as well. When covid hit and the kids were home I started taking Fridays off too, crew still works though. I've always got a project though, just non business usually outside my work hours.
 
I worked way more a few years ago. Now I wood like to help people more then " work". If what I'm doing just turns into a "job" I wood rather do something else. Sorry I'm a delinquent poster folks. There is a bunch going on.
 
I'm starting into a second 3-week summer staycation.

Good to take a break from work, especially a mental break, just having done a bunch of hazard tree removals.

Ready to enjoy the good weather having fun.
 
This job really shouldn’t impinge on your personal life unless you let it.

Trees will wait, turn off the phone, answer messages when you like.

I get home and listen to messages or read emails, if I’m not in the mood i will leave it for the night and reply in the morning.

Apart from a tree sitting on a house it’s almost never an emergency.
 
Mick! said:
This job really shouldn’t impinge on your personal life unless you let it.
Click to expand...

Do the tree job.

Then Maintenance. Billing. Appts. Estimates. Emails. Scheduling. Some repairs.

Sub out administrative/bookeeping/accounting.

Personal life is duly impinged upon, imo.
 
Reason #03 I don't want to own a business. To "be your own boss", you trade one guy that signs your check for customers, employees, and the government. "Clocking out" at a sensible hour is a rare luxury.
 
It's pretty arbitrary :^D I used reason #06(I think) in a different thread, and I wanted to create the illusion that I actually numerated all the reasons I don't want to own a business. I haven't put that much thought into it, but there are a lot of reasons I wouldn't want to own one. /Maybe/ a retirement business that's just me working when I feel like it, but for anything "legit", I haven't seen much in the way of small business ownership that looks appealing. I guess you get more of the money if you're successful, but it was truly earned. Not much "free" money out there. You gotta bust your ass to get it.
 
A good climber gets about $30/hr, no? You aren't gonna be buying islands for your personal homestead, but that's decent money, and you can walk away any time.
 
Im trapped in a viscious cycle. As you all know Im sick and tired of running a tree business. However I have heavily invested in equipment so we can be as profitable as possible. At this point I have never made as much money but at the same time shit keeps breaking down and emergency jobs keep coming up so I am stuck working 7 days a week again and thats without even thinking about Ropetek.
Last week Brutus blew out a drum bearing which is unavailable till the end of September. EGR cooler on the big chip truck started leaking so Im waiting on that. Stump grinder broke a bearing housing. Small wheel loader head gasket is bad so Im replacing the motor as it has over 8000 hours.
Luckily I have the big chipper (570) and a backup C6500 chip truck so we were able to keep on trucking.
Just bought an old grain truck with a 21' aluminum dump body and tandem rears, should be hear by the end of the week.
Im eyeing another crane for $90K as all we do is crane work and my crane (which I love) is old and is sure to break down here soon.

Like I said you just get sucked in and its hard to get out.......
 
2 thoughts-

*Love to hear some details about the 90K crane you are looking at.

*Of course we all fully can relate to the feeling of being stuck or trapped but actually it can be argued that you are far from stuck. You are making every choice every day that is keeping you in the situation you're in. You are making a fortune so therefore you don't need to take all the emergency jobs that keep you at work 7 days/week. And you insist on only using old equipment because you are frugal and a mechanical genius capable of keeping old stuff in service, but of course it is all going to break down much more often than young or new stuff.

Knowing your current crane is a 40t and that you have no intention of downsizing, and knowing how much cranes cost, buying a 90k$ crane is probably just going to provide another older back up machine that will perform like all your other gear- very productively but with low reliability.

I'm just trying to say that if you are feeling extremely overworked, it's probably because ultimately that is how you want it to be, and when you get truly sick of it you will change things to improve the work burden.

It can be really hard to step back and take a breath when you are locked into the heat of the daily battle, bullets whizzing by your head on a regular basis. Meeting the daily challenge is addictive. But stepping back is important imo, whether by taking a vacation, or taking some time to do your hobby, or whatever it is that you gotta do to step back and do something besides work.

Making megabucks comes at a price.
 
Okey dokey.
I mean firstly it’s just trees, not teaching kids, healing sickness, killing bad guys or catching wrongdoers. You’re not playing with peoples lives, there’s no emotional toll to be taken from the job
Secondly you can just turn work down or put a stupid price on it, no one is forcing you to do any job unlike say médecine when someone needs your help you have literally taken an oath to help.
Thirdly it’s kinda fun, at least it has to be or we wouldn’t be on here swapping stories and photos.

Now the other stuff, pricing, maintenance etc. I hear you, but really that’s just part of the job, get someone else to do it or be a little less punctual with you replies to enquiries.

I guess what I’m saying is any pressure is put on us by ourselves, no one else is applying it.
 
I agree with your post Mick.

Getting more to the point you made earlier, how many hours per week are you spending having this fun?

If it's much more than 40 hours, then it is apparently impinging on your personal life.
 
To some degree I agree with Mick. However as we all know when you have a large backlog of jobs the customers start getting bent out of shape about you not turning up sooner. Also I find myself feeling like with Fridays job which was for a return customer we are pretty much the only company that can respond next day as we have our own crane. Theoretically it shouldnt influence me but it does. I feel obligated to help them out of a potentially catostrophic situation. Obviously I charge a premium for that service but I still feel pressure to get er done.

Cory I will start another thread about old equipment and its virtues
 
If you are charging well into the high end of things, then that solves many, many issues.

Backlog pressure can definetly be tough to deal with but hopefully you're screening problem people out early by telling them on the high end how long they'll have to wait. That too can be tough to do for fear of losing good jobs but you already have too many good jobs lined up so it doesn't matter.

When I was insanely busy during covid, I would get very weirded out about passing on a good sounding, local job. But I had to repeatedly remind myself that if I'm not working on that sweet high end job, I'll be working on a different sweet high end job so it really doesn't matter which sweet high end job I'm working on as long as I'm working. And I even had to do that for some fairly good customers. A few of them got someone else, some didn't do the work, and approx 50% of them waited ages for me.

Again, high prices are key.
 
Had a nice little break, road trip to Pittsburgh zoo with the kids and lady, followed by 2 days and 1 night at Splash Lagoon water park in Erie, PA.
Annual shutdown at the plant, and with the weird swing shift, 40 hours of vacation equals 12 days off.
Might go work on a big dead ash on Tuesday. Girlfriend’s nephew is chomping at the bit to work the ground for me. Hopefully I don’t gotta raise my voice. Patience patience patience.
 
How old is nephew? Do you foresee problems due to temperament or anything?
 
He’s 17, and he’s helped us with some stuff, mostly moving, his family runs a little goat farm and he does a lot of work there. Seems like he’ll do most anything in reason I ask of him, but needs to be told to do it. That’s ok. I just need someone to keep stuff off my ropes and maybe a little lowering.
 
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