Hours charged for tractor work

[Hard Knocks IV]

By the clock hour,customers understand that easily.Big outfits charge for the time a machine is on a job whether is in use or not.

 

[Darrellq]

How much per hour do you generally charge say for a 50 HP tractor with standard bucket?

 

[paulsharvey]

How much per hour do you generally charge say for a 50 HP tractor with standard bucket?

So, there's two answers; 1 is right but hard; 2nd is easy but wrong.

Right way is to figure your operating costs including depreciation on everything used, your hourly pay check+labor burden; and then profit. Keep in mind, just your 'donation to the overlord is going to be 20-50%, with both parts of SS and income/medicare. Also need to figure Overhead, maintenance, transport,

Wrong but easy way; would be say; 3.1x your day job rate; and see how that works. If your too busy, increase that rate.

Anyways; if you weed out the bottom 20% (guys charging $35/hr) and top 20% prices around here; somewhere between $80-120/hr.

If all yiu do is pay yourself a good wage, it's not really a successful business, it's just a self employment. Basically; if you can't throw a well paid hobo in the seat, and still make money, your not really running a successful business.

 

[sixdogs]

When using a tractor to do work for other people and charging by the hour my understanding is the hours are measured by the hour meter on the equipment versus the wrist watch.
What say you ?

So, if you go to work and spend time on coffee breaks, staring out the window while tapping your pencil or talking with co-workers, we can deduct those hours from your pay?

Workers get paid by the hours on the watch. Machinery hours are recorded for maintenance purposes.

 

[black1970]

An engine hour is 100,000 revolutions of the crankshaft.

 

[paulsharvey]

Keep in mind, the winning jobs have to pay for the cost to walk/bid/ect the loosing jobs too. I feel that not walking a job, or even just Google earthing it, is a Bad move. My feeling is you should walk every job, before committing to it.

 

[LouNY]

So, there's two answers; 1 is right but hard; 2nd is easy but wrong.

Right way is to figure your operating costs including depreciation on everything used, your hourly pay check+labor burden; and then profit. Keep in mind, just your 'donation to the overlord is going to be 20-50%, with both parts of SS and income/medicare. Also need to figure Overhead, maintenance, transport,

Wrong but easy way; would be say; 3.1x your day job rate; and see how that works. If your too busy, increase that rate.

Anyways; if you weed out the bottom 20% (guys charging $35/hr) and top 20% prices around here; somewhere between $80-120/hr.

If all yiu do is pay yourself a good wage, it's not really a successful business, it's just a self employment. Basically; if you can't throw a well paid hobo in the seat, and still make money, your not really running a successful business.

Quite the definition of a successful business, and not much respect for a talented craftsman in any trade.

 

[LD1]

I try not to bill hourly if its pretty straight forward work.....like mowing, or leveling a pad. I try to quote a flat price for the job. Then you dont have someone watching you like a hawk to see if you are "milking the clock" so to speak....or squabbling about a rounding your time 5 min one way or the other.

But when doing hourly......you can either do machine hours or total hours. IF you do machine hours only.....obviously you have to have a higher hourly rate to cover your travel, load/unload, refueling, etc.

But for me....when doing jobs that make it tough to quote a flat price (like coordinating with other contractors....like an electrician or plumber that I have to wait on to backfill a trench I was hired to dig).....or like digging stumps which can either be easy or impossible....lol.....I do work hourly. And my price is $100/hr from the time I leave my house til the time I get back to my house.

The ONLY exception to the above is when I am doing work for people I know/friends. Because sometimes a 3hr job turns into 5hrs with a few beers, shooting the chit, etc. I cant in good conscience bill a friend $100/hr for having a few beer after the work is done

 

[HAR]

Just make sure how the hour meter on the equipment runs.
For example some tractors only count hours at full PTO speed.

Good point. A few years back, I noticed that with my little B7300, when letting the grand kids use it to learn to drive it. I would set it up to run low RPM's while they maneuvered around obstacles and did forward and backward turns, and so on. Afterwards the hour meter had not shown anywhere near the time that they had spent driving. Some time I just might try and keep a record of such an event and see what actually happens.

 

[LD1]

How much per hour do you generally charge say for a 50 HP tractor with standard bucket?

Its all regional and what your local market will bear. Also depends on how good of an operator are you. IF all you are focusing on is loader work.....a skidloader will work circles around you at probably not much more per hour.

I dont do alot of loader work. My tractor work is mostly limited to bushhogging.....or aiding in work I do with the mini-excavator. But also do a fair bit of driveway grading and stone spreading.

Also depends on if you have a modern HST 50hp 4wd that is way more capable than a 1970-something 2wd with loader.

Buy my MX5100 is $100/hr from the time I leave my house til the time I get home. Same for my Bobcat 334 mini-ex