Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

[MossRoad]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

What was his reasoning???

 

[bob112]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

The local septic inspector made me put this in a septic pump line. If you wanted a freeze, choke and break point all in one lick it was mission accomplished.View attachment 679355

Love to know his reasoning! That is ridiculous! That appears to be a pressure dose? We luckily have a really good inspector here that has common sense. If dosing, that effluent should be well filtered before it is ever pumped.

Appears to be a backflow device? pump line is lower than dose lateral?

 

[4570Man]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

The idea was an anti baclflow device but there’s already a check valve at the pump so it couldn’t backflow without it.

 

[rademamj1]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

Do to your equipment size, your going to need a minimum amount of work to justify hauling and transport. Perhaps turnkey bids are best, and anything less than a $7,000 job is not good enough for bid response.

Land clearing with hydraulic mulching on a tracked skidsteer make good money here in Texas. Typically charging between $1200 to $1500 per day for each machine. From what I have seen, they often go days without work, before a job comes in that could keep them on the job 10 straight days. Work like everything is highly weather dependent, and these machines can clear 2-5 acres per day. This has been one of the best years for land clearing operations. One guy I talked to paid off his entire $125K investment in just 5 months.

 

[bob112]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

Yeah, I realize what I have is not ideal for some jobs but we need it here for what we are doing and was trying 'not' to become an excavation company.....lol I guess that could change but there is still some work I would not want to do such as putting my machine down in a mud hole or extreme land clearing. Skidsteers are very versatile and we will probably grab one at some point. Always need one around here.

I did look at a few vids referenced previously and that guy appears to do a lot of pond work. At this point, I am just trying to 'open the channels' so to speak, and see what comes up. I think it will be hard to spot jobs without jingling some of my commercial contracting contacts. They won't touch a job for less than 6 figures so there might be a little they can push my way.

I had to explain to a guy the other day that only bid 'per job', not by the hour because IMO, that is not a good way to do business unless there are other variables. You can't always know how easily stumps will come out but you can bid a job based on time with extensions as needed. All too often I have seen guys quote 'per hour' and show up with a much smaller machine and just rack the clock up. That is not fair to me if I can do it faster.

Even in one of those vids, the guy was fixing a pond that he was undercut on by a large margin. The land owner got what he paid for, but I think it illustrates how important it is to detail and document the work beforehand. Owner wanted a 40ft wide dam, and he got 8ft. That is substantial. Where was the oversight on that job?

I also don't appreciate a client breathing down my neck by the hour. I have learned over the years that I prefer to work for professional clients. In my other businesses, people that don't even know what they want brings a gray layer to the party, but they seem to pipe right up afterwards with "well I thought you were going to......"

As with the project I just visited, my experience told me this guy needs more than just a parking area. The whole commercial acreage is in a flood plain and I could not identify where the water would even go. I recommended that if I end up on that job, I need to evaluate and design master drainage plan BEFORE any parking. To make it worse, it appears drainage may have to go through a neighboring property to drain. Having worked with municipal storm sewers plenty, I can say people seem to dismiss proper drainage. See so many homes where it is obvious there are issues, but they are ignored until a basement wall cracks and leaks, or a basement floods. I have been fortunate enough to build on my dad's wisdom in looking at water movement before a project begins.

 

[GLyford]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

One of the other things that the "Letsdig" guy does is go in and fix other people's messes...low bidder takes a job, gets in over his head and either leaves something underwhelming vs. what was promised, or just completely leaves when they realize the job will cost them more than they are asking. He comes in, does what the customer actually wants, and goes the extra bit to make something that not only functions but looks nice.

He doesn't do his own machine hauling for the larger excavators (there are 4 different ones he runs), he contracts that out. He has a dozer, mini ex, grader, and roller that he will haul behind their dump truck. He also has an articulated site truck that is used either to move dirt or clearing debris. There is one other guy in the company, and they sometimes hire on a 3rd. So sometimes there is a ground man, a dozer guy, or a truck driver, other times it's just one guy hopping from machine to machine

If you have a similar machine and experience, it sounds like you could be doing similar things in your area with the pond install/cleanup, clearing, and site prep jobs. The question then is, how many others are already there working in the market space where you are? If it's already fairly saturated then there isn't a lot of point to jump in the middle. If it's growing like crazy and everyone is sitting waiting for guys to show up then getting in to get a piece of it sounds like a good idea.

Here are a few other channels with similar content but working on slightly different parts of the biz, some of what they work on (ponds, site prep, etc.) overlaps, some not. It's interesting to see what parts of the business works best for each and their mix of equipment. Some seem to work mostly direct for customers, other seem to mostly work on subcontracting the dirt part of other general contractors larger operations. For the guys doing a mix of large and small (or hard to access) jobs, having a mix of sizes and types equipment seems to help with their flexibility with how they approach the work.
DigginOK
Elite Earthworks LLC
Dirt Perfect

 

[Frankenkubota]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

And a dump truck...

And liability insurance.

I've owned a number of businesses. The liability and associated insurance costs can be, imho, over whelming. Just turn on tv. There are boo koo lawyers ready to sue anybody for anything, don't matter what, why ,who, just how much$.

Commercial ins much higher that home owners. And then your employee hurts himself and baby, that opens the flood gates. Your employee might end up emotionally disturbed and all that counciling. .

If you need a helper, an employee, good luck. I know, i know, there are wonderful employees out there, I had a couple, good luck.

Litigation........ should you get sued, some lawyer is gonna crawl up there for 6-18 months and brother, it starts to hurt. Then the other guys lawyer crawls up there and after, 18 months, you settle out of court, almost always. The guy that sued you loses and you lose.....hmmmmmmmm who's the winner?

It can be done and good luck and i respect anyone for trying a new venture, i sure did. But somehow try to protect yourself from legal actions that could put you under, they cost me my career!

I'd rather have shingles than deal with lawyers, at least in their arena !

 

[MossRoad]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

I have a brother-in-law who has intermittent work. So in his spare time, he decided to start doing small concrete jobs like sidewalks and patios. One of his very first customers was unhappy with something and started threading to sue him just about 1/4 way through the small job. So the next day he went in with a jack hammer, removed all of his work, told the guy "no charge" and that was the last time he did concrete work for hire.

 

[Deere Dude]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

I have a brother-in-law who has intermittent work. So in his spare time, he decided to start doing small concrete jobs like sidewalks and patios. One of his very first customers was unhappy with something and started threading to sue him just about 1/4 way through the small job. So the next day he went in with a jack hammer, removed all of his work, told the guy "no charge" and that was the last time he did concrete work for hire.

Had a close mason contractor friend something like that happened to. I went over to his house for a party and he had maybe 5000? 12x12 insulated concrete blocks on his lawn. I asked about them and the story goes, him and his three contractor sons began putting up a commercial warehouse in Wisconsin. They put 6' deep footings and block up to ground level and began the walls. They were up about 10' in a big area and the owner would come across the street from the restaurant every day and criticize the work; joints , mortor used and just complaining about everything. Finally he had enough and figured the owner was going to pull a fast one as far as paying so he said to the workers, "Okay, lets take it down." They pulled out everything above ground and took it home. I didn't ask if he was paid in increments such as a certain amount for work completed.

 

[EddieWalker]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

... One of his very first customers was unhappy with something and started threading to sue him just about 1/4 way through the small job. ...

As a contractor, meeting clients to see what they want done is always the first step in bidding the job. I'm not just looking at the job, I'm deciding if I want to work for them, and then I'm trying to figure out if they will be a good client, or a pain in the rear to work for. One of the biggest red flags is when they start telling me about suing the last guy, or how many people that they have taken to court. While I agree that a bad contractor should be held liable for a bad job, there are a lot of bad clients out there that are impossible to satisfy and it's not worth the headache to deal with them.

 

[bob112]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

A lot of negative stories here guys! I think I have had enough experiences through other businesses to vet people. Despite all the negatives, I have never really had a bad customer. Probably because as mentioned above, if I sense they are just looking to screw someone, I instantly get "real busy and can't do the job right now"....

I think one of the reasons I don't run into too many issues is I am rarely the cheapest and I don't want to be. Not to toot my own horn, but I am usually smarter than my competition and try to use my melon to some advantage. As well, with my dad and prev const co, we built PGA level golf courses. In short, you have no idea what precision is until you are grading out an 1/8th in sand for a putting green. I think that is the part that frustrates me though. People bid cheap because I find so many that are happy with "cheap", but I focus on customers that say "I want it right"..... They we do business and I am always looking for that comment from the customer that they are blown away. In many cases it was cleaning up the street after some work, or in one case, brooming out a garage after we tracked some mud in. These small things stand out.

 

[MossRoad]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

As a contractor, meeting clients to see what they want done is always the first step in bidding the job. I'm not just looking at the job, I'm deciding if I want to work for them, and then I'm trying to figure out if they will be a good client, or a pain in the rear to work for. One of the biggest red flags is when they start telling me about suing the last guy, or how many people that they have taken to court. While I agree that a bad contractor should be held liable for a bad job, there are a lot of bad clients out there that are impossible to satisfy and it's not worth the headache to deal with them.

I imagine after doing it for years, you can usually tell who's gonna be unpleasant to work for. That comes with experience. My brother in law always worked for contractors and never had to deal with the business side. It was a bitter lesson. I wish he would have stuck it out. It could have turned into steady work that he was good at.

 

[MossRoad]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

A lot of negative stories here guys! I think I have had enough experiences through other businesses to vet people. Despite all the negatives, I have never really had a bad customer. Probably because as mentioned above, if I sense they are just looking to screw someone, I instantly get "real busy and can't do the job right now"....

I think one of the reasons I don't run into too many issues is I am rarely the cheapest and I don't want to be. Not to toot my own horn, but I am usually smarter than my competition and try to use my melon to some advantage. As well, with my dad and prev const co, we built PGA level golf courses. In short, you have no idea what precision is until you are grading out an 1/8th in sand for a putting green. I think that is the part that frustrates me though. People bid cheap because I find so many that are happy with "cheap", but I focus on customers that say "I want it right"..... They we do business and I am always looking for that comment from the customer that they are blown away. In many cases it was cleaning up the street after some work, or in one case, brooming out a garage after we tracked some mud in. These small things stand out.

A lot of people don't realize the money is in the details. Also, "good enough" drives a lot of folks VS "perfect". Some accept good enough. Some will pursue perfection all the way to the poor house. Some find the happy medium. When I do things for myself, I'm frequently satisfied with good enough. Doing things for other people, and my employer, I'm only satisfied when they're satisfied and always strive for perfect unless told otherwise.

 

[grsthegreat]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

i do work for a guy up here that specializes in septic systems. 95% new work on his end, and i only help out on new systems. i told him flat out i wont work on running systems, as my health is too important for me. no working around those stink pots for me. he has 2 excavators and a hydraulic hammer also. Truck and dump trailers. he trucks in sand and gravel as he has no dump trucks.

His machines are no wheres near 27 tons. the trucking fees on that size machine will suck unless you have a dump and trailer. He brought in a 30T machine to swing in a 1000 gal concrete septic tank that was traffic rated (had to lower over a hill) and needed a tractor trailer with lowboy trailer to deliver. makes a good living and is always backlogged in work. lots of interacting with health department and alot of government BS to deal with on his end. the high end systems that they require here next to a lake are so complicated most guys just dont bid them. were talking 2 1000 gal septic tanks, a sand and gravel recirc pit to help breakdown solids and a 500 gal holding tank. multiple pumps, a recirculating drip field, automatic backwash, filters, etc.

i told him when i retired to find a new electrician. i have sent him 3 companies, and all have quit. i ended up having to finish their installs.

i hope the systems in your area dont involve these complicated systems.

 

[bob112]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

Our installs here range (as required by officials) range from the cheapest gravity system, up to advanced treatment units with sprinklers and chlorination. A typical install will require at least a single 1500gal tank, if not 2, 1000gal tanks. I don't think people understand why the tanks are that size and it has to do with time...... Time for bacteria to do the job, but with an active system, the 'time' factor is reduced substantially. The other factor is non-biodegradables that must be pumped periodically. Much of that comes from washing clothes and people misusing the system.

What shocked my family member is after I built remediation devices into the system, there is no odor! We have an inspection port so I can see flowline in the laterals and there is zero odor when that cap is removed.

When I started my learning, I went all the way to municipal level treatment plants to understand the process and this has driven my ideas. Anaerobic digesters are common for the first stage, followed by very aggressive aeration and agitation, but that can bring wastewater into acceptable BOD levels within hours of entering the plant. In many cases, the effluent is simply sprayed onto a rock bed where mother nature finishes the job.

We have a lot of people around here building on only 1-2 acres and have no foresight about the wastewater. Basic systems here generally require a minimum lot size to allow enough room to build a completely new system if ever needed. This is why advanced systems are required on some lots. No room! Or they have next to no percolation and no room for a lagoon either.

I think I just get frustrated with both the officials and home owners. Officials require maint contracts just to install a filter! I realize why, but it detours home owners and their system will eventually fail as a result. Home owners will avoid every expense they can. I think old gravity septics will become a thing of the past because something as simple as a tiny aerator can double the life of a system.

I had to explain this to my family that the soil should never stop "taking water". Yet, word on the street is lateral fields "wear out and stop taking fluid"....What gives? That black sludge in the pipes and surrounding area is NOT your poo! That is waste from bacteria. Aerobic bacteria don't do that! I will have to see if I can find pics.....lol

Attached is a lateral in FULL failure. This system now runs clear! I can see the white bottom of the pipe at flowline. This recovery process cannot be achieved in a few hours though! I guess it could be that my efforts should be towards fixing these rather than new installs, but I won't do it cheap! There was premium fecsue and irrigation over this system so digging the whole system was the last option. I had to rely on my own confidence because no one believed it could be fixed.

 

[two_bit_score]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

A lot of people don't realize the money is in the details. Also, "good enough" drives a lot of folks VS "perfect". Some accept good enough. Some will pursue perfection all the way to the poor house. Some find the happy medium. When I do things for myself, I'm frequently satisfied with good enough. Doing things for other people, and my employer, I'm only satisfied when they're satisfied and always strive for perfect unless told otherwise.

You can have 'Quick, Good or Cheap'. You pick any two.

 

[Frankenkubota]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

A lot of people don't realize the money is in the details. Also, "good enough" drives a lot of folks VS "perfect". Some accept good enough. Some will pursue perfection all the way to the poor house. Some find the happy medium. When I do things for myself, I'm frequently satisfied with good enough. Doing things for other people, and my employer, I'm only satisfied when they're satisfied and always strive for perfect unless told otherwise.

I was in sales but one of the engineering mgrs and i were buddies and he had a heck of a time managing engineers. He used to say, perfect is the enemy of good enough.

 

[bob112]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

I was in sales but one of the engineering mgrs and i were buddies and he had a heck of a time managing engineers. He used to say, perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Ironically I fit that statement to the letter as an engineer with the perfection flaw. I have had to train myself for "good enough". I also manufacture aircraft parts in my other business so that seems a good fit for my issues....lol I sometimes am the one cussing about ridiculous tolerances knowing some rookie engineer made the drawing with no understanding of how it gets made.

I thousands of these little plastic thingies over the years and we have always fought the tolerances due to the material. Thickness of +/-.0025". I later found this to be a mundane door handle part. End user said +/- .015" would work just fine..... But.....we have to build (and quote) per the drawing.

 

[JethroB]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

I was in sales but one of the engineering mgrs and i were buddies and he had a heck of a time managing engineers. He used to say, perfect is the enemy of good enough.

In accounting for 25 years I strived for perfection in reporting profits or losses. My last CEO at a smaller company would roll his eyes to this and say, Just round it to the nearest $100,000. I learned to like him.

 

[two_bit_score]

Re: Man with an excavator here. Considering doing a little "for hire" work.

I was in sales but one of the engineering mgrs and i were buddies and he had a heck of a time managing engineers. He used to say, perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Perfect> Fine> Good> Good Enough> Tolerable> Poor> Unacceptable> Terrible.