Hi all,
I havnt been on here for a while, just very busy life with busines, fire brigade and family, 7 days a week reletness !
We have just purchased our bigesst evry machine, i'm a little nervious but also very excited indeed. A ransomes 2130 cylinder, 2010 year, a little over 1000 hours.
We have been asked to price the outfiled of a loical criket club with a little over 5 acre. what your opinon on pricing as i do think i've slightly over priced it, and knowing criket clubs dont have a pot to pee in. However im not doing it for nothing with a 14k machine, wages, diesel and travel cost, not matter how powerfull and quick the machione is.
Ive priced it at £150 for 1 cut per week and £225 for 2 cuts in a week. For some reason i'm thinking they may be looking at £50 - £80 per cut....Are they for real - 5 ac at that price. Any advice would be massively appriciated.
Regards
Andrew
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Replies
Hi Andrew
If you look at the spec for Ransomes 213 Highway they quote 2.7 hectares an hour cut this equates to 6.21 acres so on that basis your field is little over an hours work. However it is heavily dependant on the length of grass longer grass will be slower to cut. If you are only cutting one cricket outfield it could be around 5 acres in area but may be less. I would suggest you need to allow say two hours at most, we use a larger mower to cut our cricket outfields an charge our customers around £85 per cut. I don't know how far you are travelling to get to the cricket fields this would also need to be accounted for. I would have thought the figures you have quoted are too high and the figures they are expecting are too low, so £80.00 to £100.00 would be my response.
Cheers
Thank you for your reply above - our new machine will be the 2130, and not the older 213 model.
These are my re evaluated costings -
I do a cricket outfield/ other sports pitch that’s almost the same size at 5.5 acres.
cost is coming down to what the other are charging locally.
Be careful round the edges to start with until you get used to the size of the machine as the pivot pins bend really easily:)i charge £85 per cut and that’s at least weekly sometimes twice a week. Same price per cut regardless as it still takes the same time as with minimum weekly you will be going flat out speed wise anyway (mine is the parkway 2250plus which is essentially the same machine but bigger front wheels and 10 inch cylinders) for reference I sometimes get the local Big contractors to cut for me if I’m short on time and I still make small amount after paying them! They are way too cheap but I won’t say on here how much and who as it’s not fair really
Oh and it takes about an hour and a quarter because you have lots of turns due to the square
Nervous and v excited at the same time, that gives me a little confidence that I priced it at £80 1cut and £150 for twice a week.
Getting the machine on Monday week with 4 hrs training from a ransomes and Hayter ex employee.
Two other bits of advice re the Ransomes.
dont leave you foot on the mow switch as it can cock up the on off valve (that’s in very basic terms. It can make it work the wrong way if done too often as in off when cutting unit
on floor and on when raised!) and if your is the 4wd remember it’s only 4 wheel drive in forwards and don’t press the diff lock footswitch if you can help it and if you do DO NOT turn the steering wheel!
This is really a question about what equipment is used. There is a 4.5 acre playing field near me that the District Coucil cuts for the Parich Coucil. They use a tractor and rotary deck gang mowers. 13 cuts only per year [mowing season] and they are charging £57 per cut. I think that is madness. Okay, you might be very quick with that type of machine, but the purchase price, servicing/maintenance and repairs will be costly. I reckon they are using £100,000 worth of gear, so how can they charge so little.A smaller machine may take longer but will cost far less to buy and maintain. I would think that a full service on a 2130 including cylinder grinding [new bearings of course] would be over £1000. If a hydraulic motor/pump fails it will again be very very costly.
I mow one 4.8 acre field [with quite a few obstacles] using a John Deere Z535M [48inch deck]. Bought new, with discount for £4990. On a good day I can mow it in 2 hous and twenty minutes. I charge £120 based on 16 cuts, but will probably do 15 cuts, so really £128 per cut. This is part of a much larger contract where it is charged at a yearly rate divided by monthly payments, so not dependant on number of cuts. Some smaller parts are priced much higher, Part of this same contract is a one acre field that is £80 per cut which takes one hour [or less] including some strimming. So swings and roundabouts.
At £120 per cut I feel I have undercharged slightly, but more than make it up on the rest of the contract. It also makes a difference as to where you are in the Country, as prices seem to vary quite a bit from region to region,
On a 2130 as I know the cost for these. Grinding can be expensive or cheap if you know the right people!
my cylinders are £180 per grind for the 3 plus 3 blades at £30 so £270 for cutting units.
then a filter pack at £85 plus some oil.
Main dealer I can see a bill of £500-600
hydraulic oil change is about another £100 at 600 hour intervals(I’m not 100% on that as I do at year end regardless as I do about 400 per year
How much fuel do you guys use to cut the 5 acre fields? To me, £60-80/hr using £10k worth of machine is a poor rate and not something I'd want to get into! You've also got trailer and servicing costs to factor in.
It works out at an average of £3 for fuel in my case
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