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Basically, my 'tree guy' starts with stump grinding at £100. I don't know how small (or big) your van is, access to the job, your waste disposal costs incurred or how long it took you...
If it was around a half day- although I would have charged slightly more (plus VAT) and called it a full day especially this time of year as daylight gets short - then your probably not far out.
It took me about 1.5 days and waste cost about £130
Access is good though
That puts you on about £160 a day before business costs are accounted for. Personally I do grounds maintenance excluding tree work and I aim for £200-£250/day in labour alone, if I was to remove waste it'd be cost + 1hr labour and hiring specific tools would be cost+20%+ 1hr labour (for collecting them). If I was in your position I'd look at doubling your rates.
Cut Leylandii branches lie nice and flat but those trees obviously produced a lot of bulky waste. The small size of vehicle used, added to the time taken. Compared to a tipper type truck with high sides. This experience will have helped with costing out future similar jobs. Hard work but you made some money. I charged £100 the other day to remove one small dead dwarf pine about 12ft which was just trunk & branches with a few cones and needles left. Chainsawed off flat at ground level. The cutting was the easy bit. Disposal of the waste, not so much.Had to take from back garden to front driveway. That was 1 load on Hilux single cab roped down. Took around 2 hours in total including leaving all areas spotless except a bit of sawdust in the border, where the tree stood. Customer happy with job and price.
To be fair Rob I feel you did well to complete in 1.5 days .
Making a guess at Ten hours which equates to £37 per hour for fairly specialised hard graft especially the clearing up which you probably misjudged and I have myself more often than I would like to admit .
A small van creating more trips is to be expected which you have to factor in , a pain but manageable until you feel the need to upgrade .
These jobs are a useful learning curve
Realistically how much though ? I suspect you charged £50 a tree and calculated a spend on disposing of waste
I don't know the customers expectations on cost and how much you wanted the work and it is satisfying work but I would have quoted £100 per tree including waste if it was just one trip to the tip but £115 per tree on account of the Five trips
You also added value by taking the stumps to ground level .
You still made some money just a miscalculation ,easily done and certainly not a weakness as said just a learning curve .
Rob, we do a fair bit of tree work but we do have a 6 inch chipper which would have speeded the job up and reduced waste removal considerably guess we would have put a day on it so £450 plus vat plus £150 plus vat for grinding. On the face of it think you are too cheap.
Just re read this so £375 less £130 waste cost = £245 less roughly 25% tax and NI of £62 = £183, assuming 10 hours = £18 / hr . Far too cheap !
£160 a day gross is much too cheap I would say. We earn a good bit more than that even on maintenance days and tree work should pay more than regular maintenance in my opinion. Maybe try quoting higher in future and see if you still win the quotes.
Sometimes it's just better to let tree surgeons do the work, although you can do the job they are far more efficient and alot of the time able to dispose of the waste (woodchip) for free. Having a large tipper and a big chipper means this type of job is completed in a few hours.
By the time we work out a day and a half's money plus waste the tree guys are probably cheaper.
Youve got to be making your day rate at the end of the job... if you are up against tree surgeons you could probably double your day rate for the job.
I always look at it with a view as to whether it is a regular customer or a one off, one off gets charged a higher rate
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