Tilling gardens for money?

powerstroke444e · Mar 17, 2011

CALL BE FOR YOU DIG in IL its 811, most cable tv, power and phone drops around here are not very deep and makes for an expensive garden when you ball up 50foot of cable on the tiller.

Johndeere3720 · Mar 17, 2011

CompactTractorFan said:
Can you even trust your family and friends???

Depends who they are. Certain people more than others. With my family I can do tractor work for most of them without any problems.

Car Doc · Mar 17, 2011

I have a little bigger tractor than that and I use a 6' KK2 and my minimum charge is $60 out to about 10 miles from home and that an hour after. I am somewhat flexible with my regular folks on the "after" if its not more than 20 minutes. :thumbsup:

Once your new customers see how good a tractor tills a garden they will can you back in fall also there is no way anyone can compare it to a walk behind in price or quality of work or time spent.

All my folks are happy as they can be they say I am cheap compared the the back breaking work it could be if they rented one and did it themselves.

Just a word of caution- I did a church garden last year....and they didn't mention this because...the person that knew about it....wasn't aware someone else...had hired a tiller to come in....I tilled up a 440v fiberglass power distribution box for the underground service for the church that was handily buried out in the yard at ground level and was at that moment covered up with 12" of compost they had spread around for me to till in lucky I felt it and stopped fast enough.

Fact I have 2 to do this weekend one I break new ground and one regular customer thats $120 for 2 horrible hours playing with my toys. hahaha

Reg · Mar 17, 2011

freddyr said:
Must be a heck of a deep tiller!:laughing:

Errr, no.
Look around, if the garden is between the house and the pool there is a very good chance that there is cable very close to the surface.
People will run all kinds of stuff very close to the surface, even ON the surface and in a few years it sinks in. It might have been routed AROUND the garden area, they might be asking you to extend the garden another 20 or 30ft in exactly the wrong direction. DO quiz them on stuff like this.
Then ask what they haven't told you (-:

I've had a few close calls with gas lines too, apparently those are not required to be below the frost line.

Do call digsafe, or whatever it is called in your area, at least for the stuff that is SUPPOSED TO BE THERE (-:
You still have the risk of informal stuff and it is a fair bet that THAT stuff won't be properly fused or grounded - so you might also be at personal risk.

CompactTractorFan · Mar 17, 2011

freddyr said:
Must be a heck of a deep tiller!:laughing:

Not really...I ran over an electric line that was less then 2" underground...:confused3:

ashdump · Mar 17, 2011

CompactTractorFan said:
Not really...I ran over an electric line that was less then 2" underground...:confused3:

Yeah, code IIRC, is a spade and a half deep for electric. However, DIY'ers usually go the easy route and just scratch a notch out in the dirt.

I would hope that if a fella was to hit a buried utility with a tiller he wouldn't be liable (because if regulations were followed, utilities would be buried much deeper than a tiller could grab). I imagine you'd probably be stuck with the damages though. The good guy seldom wins anymore.

One thing that would be obvious is a propane tank. Especially if you are tilling between it and the house or an out building. There could likely be buried a shallow copper gas line.

timswi · Mar 17, 2011

The other issue, beyond liability, is equipment damage. My BIL was tilling a garden for someone and grabbed a concrete block with the tiller and bound the PTO shaft and blew out his PTO and some misc gears...Cost around $1800 to repair( they had to split the tractor)...An expensive garden that one was.

Don't know why the shaft clutch didn't prevent this, but it happened.

Haywire · Mar 18, 2011

I read someplace that you have to break the clutch free of paint and storage goop by lowering the tension on the plates and making it slip till it smokes when new or it won't work when it needs to. Something like that may have happened.

Ian

CompactTractorFan · Mar 18, 2011

ashdump said:
The good guy seldom wins anymore.

Ain't that the truth...

CompactTractorFan · Mar 18, 2011

ashdump said:
One thing that would be obvious is a propane tank. Especially if you are tilling between it and the house or an out building. There could likely be buried a shallow copper gas line.

Our neighbor has a gas line in one of his flower beds; it is literally right under the mulch. He put up signs so nobody would walk over it...