I am a PE in Connecticut as well as an excavation contractor for over thirty years . Everything you said is absolutely correct. You do know your business. You just gained another subscriber.
I wish my school teachers did stuff like this in class, things that may help in life, not doing Romeo and Joliet that I'll never use, your a good teacher.
Your so right school needs to teach you real life stuff And helpful situations And to guide you into the actual life as human Not in plays, or poems, or foreign languages, or nonsense equations that only scientists in nasa use Unless you choose to learn about those things I really haven’t learned life tips and hacks or even helpful suggestions from school I think schools should teach you those things
That's because our schools are just government indoctrination centers for youth. It's sad that most people never get taught thos stuff and we are left to search in the dark. Thank God for people like this and youtube lol
Im just starting out in this industry have a bobcat and equipment, I love the fact how you actually describe how to do it, why you do it and how to estimate a job. I have not seen another contractor go into it this deep. This helps a lot to understand how to estimate a job. Its always a little iffy when you have never done this before and saving us from some major mistakes right of the bat :-) Thx mate.
@@matthewtolofson8889 Hey thx for asking. I moved on to other venues. Turned out there are too many contractors in my small town doing the same thing and are already seasoned with most residents. Tried a bunch of advertisements as well but hard to get customers. Im not sad though, had a fun learning experience that will last me a lifetime. I would say, if you have a chance to get these machines and have a passion to "Dig", try it out. The good thing is, even if you buy a machine for say 18k you can sell it in a year or two for 18k :) They dont loose much in value as long as you take care of it. Clean it, baby it and greasy it down :) I hope you and everyone else in the business is doing awesome, it is a fun business and rewarding.
Thanks for taking the time to make this Video Man, Currently an Operator in my Past Owned a Small Business , People do not want to Teach these things, Very awesome of you to take your time to make this Video, And break it down Where it can be Understood.
I really enjoy how you explain the amount it cost and you spend and how the profit works. another good thing you do is explain about the crown and how you get the correct loads. keep making these videos they are very helpful.
Excellent vid.....I used to underbid jobs and as I looked at what I was bidding I found that it literally cost me money to do work for others. Fact is that materials are expensive, fuel is expensive and labor is very expensive. I really like how you justified every step of your process so the customer could see what he's paying for. I have issues with not building in factors by which the customer can track your progress and material use. If I use less material I have already built enough profit built into the bid to add funds to my materials escrow. I always over build like you do and ALWAYS keep my word even if it costs me money. But over all this is a fabulous video.....thanks for the info.....
This video, the way you describe it the way you made it look like when you went to look at the job inspire me now I got my own excavator and have my own company god bless you brother
@Dirt money Stanley. I am a home renovation contractor that specializes is finish and rough carpentry services. Even though I don't do the same line of work as you. Estimating and customer/contractor relations are the same across the board. keep up the great vids. Your helping me get my business to the next level!
I develop estimates for reclamation in Kentucky. That's how we do it - break the activity down into hours and quantify it with a cost. Yes, we also call it guestimate! You can get very techincal and specific, but it's always a guestimate until the project is completed.
I know this is an old one, but I've watched a good amount of your videos over the past month. This fantastic tutorial is the one that made me subscribe. Great info for my startup, Thanks
Thank you. I’ve been searching for this information to work out how many tonne I need and you just showed me. So grateful I’m going to subscribe I think you’ll be teaching a lot more yet. Again thank you I’m so grateful
Exactly what I needed i'm a shovel operator just starting my own business great information and not long and boring at all...thanks...you have any videos on how to bid for trenches and such or is it just a flat rate of 105 per hour plus material
This helped a lot! I'm going into the excavation business from the aviation business and need all the help I can. (KIS) Keeping it simple worked for your proposal and your video. As an amateur in this field I completely understood the Business process that your portrayed. Thank you! and Mahalo!! From the Hawaiian in Guam....
Nice video... You are a Role Model as not many people are willing to take the time to teach others... I have only watched one of your videos but you covered the entire job from beginning to end. There is good money in these smaller one off private jobs. Keep up the good work.
I'll never do this in my profession but I've done stone, gravel and pacer driveways. Same concepts but I'm intimidated by those big jobs. Another impressive video Stan da man!
☼Tropical Detailing☼ As most companies grow so do the size of the projects they will take on. You may not be ready today-but you never know about tomorrow :)
Yea....exactly! I've done the work on BIG projects but one day may have that push to get a $15,000 project. The potential and skill is there....just put it to use. I'm open to expand for sure. Thanks Stan!
Thank you so much for your informative videos, I am a full time Supervisor at a Engineering company that specializes in Soil Engineering. I'm a state contractor as well and i have my own company, it's my first construction business and its overwhelming when it comes to bidding and estimating when I'm still a beginner but your channel has given me confidence and I'm learning things i never got the chance to learn, specially when you reflected to the one mistake you did at the commercial site. "its good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other peoples mistakes" ~ Warren Buffet
It's late in the evening. But, tomorrow morning I'm looking at this video and writing the formula down and framing it because I will be using it in the near future!
already had a general idea on the math never could understand how to make square yards into tons though but man u just answered so many of my questions thanks
I need to add some clarification to your video. First Stanley and everyone else. you need to do a "site analysis" as the video shows. However you need to look at existing grades. For example, the slope or grade of this lot naturally drains to one corner. So you don't always want a "crown". For those that don't know, 3/16 to a 1/4 of an inch in 10 feet will drain water. So you may want or need to check grades before you do your estimate. For example. in the project in the video, you may have to haul in clay spoils to create a crown in the center. Otherwise, cutting the outside edges will create standing water on the two-sides. If you have natural vegetation such as grass as it looks like in this video, remember that it was slow down the water and cause ponding in a heavy rain as the storm water tries to run through the grass. This would be true even if Stanley hauled in clay spoils to build a crown. So please be thorough, check natural drainage, existing catch basins and grades By doing so will save you time, headaches, and cost later on. Now let me also add some clarification to sub bases. Not only am I a contractor, I am an inspector for the Ohio Department of Transportation. Stanley makes it sound easy however he left out some major things that you all NEED TO KNOW! If you are grading for a parking lot or anything that is going to be paved, if you are NOT sub-contracting the paving, find out who is! Ask the owner, client, developer etc. The reason is simple, you need to grade it the same way it is going to be paved! It needs to be paved the same way it was graded! Why is this important? Say you are the grading contractor as Stanley was on the Menard's I think he said, who is doing the stone grade? Most big jobs like that someone is going to topo the site to check grades If the grade is off then it will cost the paving contractor heavily for extra asphalt. Asphalt is far more costly than stone! Stone is more costly than sub-base! The stone base or grade is to allow water to drain under the asphalt or concrete without soaking into the sub-base and making a soft spot. So the question will be who is paying for the correction??? The paving contractor will put it on the excavating and grading contractor.... YOU! Allow me to stress there is huge difference between landscaping and excavating! If you are doing ANY grading where there will be live load or traffic constantly driving on it or with heavy weights... trucks, forklifts, warehousing materials, do yourself a favor and compact the sub-base and any stone grades. If you don't own a smooth drum roller, RENT one! They are more than reasonable! This will seal the sub-base and stone to help prevent rain and storm water from soaking into the sub-base and creating a sub-base where you have to come back and do re-work. Stanley talked about driving a loaded dump truck around and around. That is called "STATIC ROLLING" We use this method to "test proof" the contractors work. There are tolerances for rutting. As far as compaction, there are a number of factors... the material type, moisture content and compaction. All of these must be just right to obtain "optimum compaction" For example if you are using a granular stone material such as #304 Limestone, if it is too dry, it won't compact! If it is too wet, again it will not compact! What Stanley is talking about is Proctor test is using a nuc gauge to test form moisture per material and the compaction required to obtain "optimum" or mimic mother nature. Tpyically this is going to fall between 96% to 98%. You can gain more as he stated, however, say you over roll it, then there is a point where you will lose compaction. So say you hit 104%, if you continue to try to compact it you could take your proctor back down below say 96%. So the rule or thumb is take your material and grab a handful. Squeeze it into a ball in your fist. It should not crumble! If so add water! It should also not squeeze into mush and come out between your finger. It should make a ball and leave a slight bit of moisture on you palm. It should break apart. It is somewhat hard to example but picture cookie dough. Not to wet or dry! If you have material to wet, you can dry it. If you have a dozer or a skid steer with a dozer blade angle your blade as far left or right and down on the down angle like a plow. Plow into windrows Allow to dry to where you see crusting. When you see this then you can roll it again. With a backhoe or excavator, use the teeth to rake the material. Allow to crust and repeat. Hope this helps and clears up some things!
Good video! I always say it's not rocket science and you help break it down pretty well for beginners in grading like me. Soil compaction was always pretty scary before for me, but I can see how it's not as scary as I originally thought.
Great vid. Some questions for those in the comments or even Stan if he even looks at these comments still: 1) You said you charge roughly $6 to get class 5 transported per ton to the site, and $8/ton for the class 5 itself. Say you're doing a job and a customer wants you to bring another 2 tons at the end. Would you really go to get 2 tons of class 5 in a dump truck or pickup/trailer for $20? How do we protect ourselves in these situations that don't make sense unless they're at a large scale? 2) How do you deal with clients who decide to go another direction and instead of signing you up for the whole contract, they only choose you for 1 small part. Even though you have profit and etc in all your parts, are you really going to go do one small part of the job for say $250, needing to allocate labour and equipment that could be doing something else and not get the rest of the contract? Doesn't seem worth it. For example, I'm making a quote right now to strip a lawn and level the remaining soil. I'd like to price it by the square foot, but then if I get on site and the client starts to nitpick about how I didn't do 2 square feet there and another 5 square feet there (if they didn't need stripping), just seems like you could get nitpicked to hell by customers and at the end of the day make way less than you predicted since there are only so many hours in a day to perform work.
One of the most important things to keep in mind during the bidding process is that multiple estimates from different contractors is what keeps everybody honest. I have seen two different contractors bid the same job with the first contractor coming in at $25,000 and the second contractor coming in at $50,000. The contractor that bid $50,000 very rarely wins any of our business now that we are always getting three or four bids on every job. It is fine that he charges more than most other contractors, but he is usually going to miss out on work when the customers are getting multiple bids. If someone does not get multiple bids, then they are taking a chance that they will be paying more than they could have paid.
A crowned area is a whole lot easier to get the water to roll away from the area . Don't know what the best gravel but I know you have to have it . That roll of fab will sure do a great job
I have a question about when you times the cubic yards by 1.36 to get 551 tons are you adding for compaction and water purposes? If not then I understand the 1.36 as the 1 to add it to the 408.33 cubic yards I’m lost at .36 bud please advise
Stan, awesome information on, well, EVERYTHING! I find your "Estimating" videos extremely beneficial. Have you done or will you do a estimating segment on DECKS? I wish I had someone like you as a mentor years ago. Keep up the amazing work. Thank you
Thanks for sharing your expertise through RUclips channel. I am running a small concrete pumping business and I learnt many useful tips from your videos
Hi buddy thx , your videos help me a lot, can you tell me how you divide numbers for exactly amount of material ,, i have a paver patio to do 40 L x 20 w how many tons of material do I need ? Thx
Now I know it's not a full engineered spec job. but technically you will have to add swell/compaction to your cubic yards on the stone if you wanted a true 6" of material. 22% swell can burn you too. You obviously mentioned how much stone you'll have invested and charge more of needed but customers always hate when prices go up.
AWESOME!! id like to know how to bid on foundations . will like form-sets and the make-ups for new sub-divisions. My husband and I have a business martins foundation. I feel he's not bidding enough on a foundation. does it varies on the sq. ft. of the foundation?
I learn alot from your videos and I love watching them there very full of learning I wanna start my own lawn care service and by doing that I've couht on how to do that from your videos
this is a very good video and more along the lines of how i expect a contractor to run his business for the customer. unfortunately i've dealt with a few contractors who've robbed myself and my family blind in work hours by dragging it out, as well as materials and incorrect estimates (ie. leaving the job unfinished and not taking it as a lesson learned). big jobs, $20-$50k. it's much easier to fudge your customer when you're going to be working there every day for 3 months. now, i get receipts for all materials purchased, receipts for any deliveries, and i show up on the job site nearly every day at random times to assess labor hours and progress. I shouldn't have to do this. i have my own career to focus on . but, i have to cover my ass as a legit customer, as much as any legit contractor would. seemingly every contractor wants to give me a general blanket bid, without breaking anything down. "oh we've done it for so long we know how to estimate." bull crap. I practically have to argue with them to break it down to a level i can appreciate, or i walk. half of them have never even produced a written bid in the manner you held up to the camera. i've received bids on fastfood napkins. I've had contractors turn down my $20k jobs because they didn't want to break down the costs, not because they were being shady, but simply because they were too lazy to do the office work. the lucky ones seem to have wives that handle these details. i remember one contractor went to the wrong damn house to begin excavation! he had actually sent his cronies the first day, rather than showing up himself to discuss the job in detail. regardless, you can't explain the details to your cronies over the phone monday morning and expect them to get it right. didn't say much to his 35years in the business. the main point is, you have to cover your ass, whether you're the customer or contractor, because there are too many bums on either side who would shut their mouth given the opportunity. court stinks.
I don't like Crown in the parking lot , it's not a road. 6 inches in the parking lot no way , you should talk to your customer and trying to put 8" in. or more. Because remember it's a heavy duty parking lot, you going to have big truck and heavy equipment every day . Do it ones and don't come back . Recommend a water truck, small grader, and smooth roller, trust me you will see the difference, them only the skid steer. I like your video how are you explain everything it just took me a minute everything you show instruction and everything and the job is a piece a cake for me I can do by myself everything step-by-step. But I can't do it what you doing how find a jobs like that, estimate. Bid, And all that. Thanks
The weight of a yard of #5 recycled material depends on the ratio of concrete to asphalt and whether it's compacted. Your bid specified compacted and that factor is closer to 1.39 metric tons / yard. The extra truck load should cover it.
Interesting to see how others break down bids. I do mine a hair but differently but i have a small crew and don't separate them often. My main work is asphalt but I do plenty of base and gravel work as well. But like I said I don't charge per price of equipment because I have it all with me each day, I do however charge for what I want profit wise per day plus material. Obviously bleach job is different and little driveways aren't a Wal-Mart parking lot but in between those 500k jobs, you keep your crew in work and make a little change as well.
I manage a hauling company that hauls dirt,gravel,rock,etc i was wondering how do you go on finding more excavation company or construction companies that need our service we've always been with a broker who finds us projects but lately they have been over pricing and we only work when they find us projects so if they bid too high we have no work. so i was wondering if you can help
The only thing that I could possible see doing differently is not calculating it at what it's going to be at the compacted depth. At work I've found that basecourse will compact almost like asphalt does. So if you want a compacted depth of 6 inches typically we'd lay it a 1/4 inch higher for every inch of depth. So for your 6 inches we would lay it at 7 and 1/2 inches. Then once its compacted it's pretty close to that 6 inches. Small jobs I'm sure it's not to much extra but we do a lot of big jobs and sometimes our formans or supervisor forget that or fail to acknowledge it and it ends up costing them thousands of dollars because they calculated for the compacted depth. Not what we have to lay it at to reach that compacted depth. Atleast that's how some of us calculate it and were usually pretty close if not right on the money.
Another great video, Stanley! I'm an office bum (unless it's 75 and sunny, then I find a reason to get out into the field) and I love the video shots you do from your office.
very helpful video thanks a lot looking forward to your others videos. I am a small contractor who does demolition and some grading but would like to tackle bigger grading jobs. Thanks again
Stan I want to thank you for doing these videos! You have taught me soooooooo much! How would you recommend that I start into an excavating business? I would appreciate if you would do a video explaining how to get into the business, from ground zero. Thank you sir and God bless you!
you wont get much work like this and even if you do you wont make money. You are placing 6 inches over the area if you didn't estimate enough its on you, you will get more work by convincing the customer of 6 inches no mater what, any mistake is on you, simple math and a phone call to the local material testing company will tell you the weight of material per yd3 at 95% compaction, always figure 10% over and put that in your pocket. Don't forget to overlap the fabric 2 feet if the job calls for 9 rolls bid and buy 10, take the left over to the next job. Heres an example for the people just out of collage, if the job calls for 700 feet of sewer pipe BUY 750 feet or two extra sticks if a labor makes an incorrect cut your coverd. You can still break everything down to the customer they like that but don't pass on your mistake to them,
I'm laughing at the idea that an area they clearly don't use much is presumed to be "solid" for high-volume, high-density traffic and heavily-loaded indoor forklifts just because they're only sliding around on it now. Smooth-surface indoor forklifts are short, narrow, have easily "upset" centers of gravity and their hard tires provide zero suspension and no capability for the tires to "bite" on any material that isn't nice, smooth, level concrete or dry asphalt. They are also very "dense" in that they concentrate a hell of a lot of weight into a very small surface footprint and onto four very small "contact patches" with their small, hard tires. Its very easy for a 6000-lb smooth-surface lift truck to have 3 or 4 times the ground pressure and loading of whatever surface per square inch as a 6000-lb rough-terrain forklift and their total weight with a load can be far higher despite the machine itself looking small by comparison. 6 inches of ANYTHING over an uknown surface of mixed rock/clay silt like that is a recipe for cracks, potholes, etc. People just don't know that on a pound for pound basis there is nothing on rubber tires that is harder on paved surfaces than a smooth-surface forklift. And that lumberyard had better be in a warm climate or the contractor had better put a nice slope on it to drain it, or come freezing rain/melting snow time they'll still be dead in the water trying to get smooth-surface forklifts to move material on that new pavement. Common sense is if you lack for traction with a forklift you're using the wrong forklift for the job.
Maybe you can be cellmates when the way he's thinking gets his dumb ass thrown in jail. Don't ever assume that just because someone pays you to do a job as an "expert" they have no idea what the job entails and can't do basic math, which is all it takes to figure out when you're being overcharged. Generally speaking, the "contract-it-out" crowd of business people and homeowners, etc. is composed of people who have done well enough for themselves in some aspect of business or another to be able to hire work done. And anybody who has ever run a business knows that "10%" is a really big deal when it comes to things like INVENTORY. Do you think someone who sells lumber isn't going to pay attention to things like VOLUMES and MEASUREMENTS and might know that if some CONTRACTOR comes in with a set of plans for a house and the total lumber called for in the plans is 1000 board-feet and the contractor orders 1100 board-feet, either the contractor is incompetent or crooked? You deal with mistakes and resulting material shortages when they occur. Not as a 10% "put it in your pocket" premium tacked onto the bill at any point. Marking up materials that are paid for by the contractor and then are "retailed" to the customer are a different story, and because the contractor has PAID FOR THEM and HANDLED THEM and TRANSPORTED and maybe STORED THEM, its an understandable cost of doing business. But a 10% markup on raw materials delivered to the jobsite in a truck might just raise some eyebrows, too. Not to mention you have to be an idiot to go online in this day and age and brag about and praise screwing the customer out of 10% of the material cost right off the top. What gets most con artists, crooked contractors and other "business people" who screw customers as part of their normal day to day business operations caught and busted? Bragging about it.
Making a profit isn't illegal. Just saying like. ;-) Even if he "tacked" 110% onto the Bid price, that's his prerogative. It's called "Business". It's for the Customer to accept or reject. I'd be very wary of only tacking on 10%... 10% becomes a loss rapido. I'd be tacking on 25%.
im afraid estimates around NC are expected to be hard bids and we have to show our detail yet if we are short the clients will not pay any extra they just like to be able to compare numbers and where the low bidder is high in one catagory and low in 6 catagories they come back and say hey, you are way high in this one catagory and try to get you to lower your already low bid.
hey stanley can you please do a video on how to start a execovating buisness and what you first need becuse im a landscaper and window cleaner but i want to go into execovating
It was a very good video, I have an earthworks and infrastructure company, the fabric you are talking about, in the installation, how many people you used? thanks
+Rod Coslett One is a measurement of weight and the other of volume. This factor is important on how you purchase materials- by the ton or by the yard?
That was a very helpful video however I have a question. When it comes to class 5 ordering and bidding how do I take into consideration compaction. So let’s say for example me and my customer agree that I will install 10 inches of class 5. So I lay down 10 inches of class 5 but when I compact it that may drop too 6 or 7 inches due to compaction. How do I account for that in my ordering, do I order more to allow for compaction. Or do I just order enough for 10 inches and then just compact it and just leave it at 6 or 7 inches? What do I do. It would be good if you could make a video on this.
Hey Dirt Monkey, Great info!! Thx Small correction - "Linear" or "Lineal" when refering to a line. Lineal refers more so to a direct line of descent or ancestry. Sorry, I was a journalism major! lol
How much percentage do you usually upcharge for work or materials for it to be a fair amount? I am a new Septic Installer in my area and this is perfect for the work that I do
what is the fabric your using, the woven geo fabric I'm buying is way higher than that, like 360 per roll. coming from a tile distubitor not a box store like menards.
Stanley can I grade the roadbase with a mini excavator? People are asking me to prep for concrete pours for RV pads and I'd like to do it, but don't have a skid steer. The mini is a 9500 llb Kubota with an angle blade. I can deliver the roadbase OK (thanks for the calculation formula!!). I wonder if renting a skid will turn out better than using my own mini. Your thoughts? Thanks.
Thanks I was stuck on the cubic yards to metric tons. Now all I need is to figure how what's the best way to pay the hired drivers by the cubic yard or by the hour.
+William Head if you pay by the hour you're gonna get slow ass-dragging truck drivers. If you pay by the yard you're gonna get more loads in a shorter time.
Hey Stanley love your content just remember on conversation of yard to tons there are variables moisture content rock content I know you did Roadbase at point 1.3 up here in the Rockies our multiplier is 1.75 or 2.2 if it’s processed and wet Any ways man I have learned a lot from you I just started my business a year and a half ago and I have definitely referenced your videos for a few things
Excellent, informative video! I'm just getting in to estimating as a student. I'm trying to figure out the excavation portion of my project and I'm having a hard time understanding how to average out the existing and proposed elevations for the areas I want to estimate. Do you think you can help me out?
Thanks so much for the coaching!! Im debating on buying my first used skid machine, I keep getting calls for large jobs and have been passing them up. I think its time to jump into some bigger projects. Any suggestions on what size machine I should look to buy for light landscaping/ grading, harley raking, clearing snow, possibly running a brush cutter. Any insight is greatly appreciated!! Thanks Stan - Robbie
I am a PE in Connecticut as well as an excavation contractor for over thirty years . Everything you said is absolutely correct. You do know your business. You just gained another subscriber.
I wish my school teachers did stuff like this in class, things that may help in life, not doing Romeo and Joliet that I'll never use, your a good teacher.
Thanks!
You're*
Your so right school needs to teach you real life stuff
And helpful situations
And to guide you into the actual life as human
Not in plays, or poems, or foreign languages, or nonsense equations that only scientists in nasa use
Unless you choose to learn about those things
I really haven’t learned life tips and hacks or even helpful suggestions from school
I think schools should teach you those things
That's because our schools are just government indoctrination centers for youth. It's sad that most people never get taught thos stuff and we are left to search in the dark. Thank God for people like this and youtube lol
I'm wondering why your teachers taught Romeo and Juliet in construction class?
Im just starting out in this industry have a bobcat and equipment, I love the fact how you actually describe how to do it, why you do it and how to estimate a job. I have not seen another contractor go into it this deep. This helps a lot to understand how to estimate a job. Its always a little iffy when you have never done this before and saving us from some major mistakes right of the bat :-) Thx mate.
how did your business turn out??? hopefully thriving!
@@matthewtolofson8889 Hey thx for asking. I moved on to other venues. Turned out there are too many contractors in my small town doing the same thing and are already seasoned with most residents. Tried a bunch of advertisements as well but hard to get customers. Im not sad though, had a fun learning experience that will last me a lifetime. I would say, if you have a chance to get these machines and have a passion to "Dig", try it out. The good thing is, even if you buy a machine for say 18k you can sell it in a year or two for 18k :) They dont loose much in value as long as you take care of it. Clean it, baby it and greasy it down :) I hope you and everyone else in the business is doing awesome, it is a fun business and rewarding.
In business 4.5 years. I learned alot from this. Thanks Dirt Monkey.
Thanks for taking the time to make this Video Man, Currently an Operator in my Past Owned a Small Business , People do not want to Teach these things, Very awesome of you to take your time to make this Video, And break it down Where it can be Understood.
You Rock Bro!!! Your time is greatly appreciated, even if the people who disliked the video don't think so....
I really enjoy how you explain the amount it cost and you spend and how the profit works. another good thing you do is explain about the crown and how you get the correct loads. keep making these videos they are very helpful.
Excellent vid.....I used to underbid jobs and as I looked at what I was bidding I found that it literally cost me money to do work for others. Fact is that materials are expensive, fuel is expensive and labor is very expensive. I really like how you justified every step of your process so the customer could see what he's paying for. I have issues with not building in factors by which the customer can track your progress and material use. If I use less material I have already built enough profit built into the bid to add funds to my materials escrow. I always over build like you do and ALWAYS keep my word even if it costs me money. But over all this is a fabulous video.....thanks for the info.....
+Jacob Lasader Sounds like we have a lot in common :)
This video, the way you describe it the way you made it look like when you went to look at the job inspire me now I got my own excavator and have my own company god bless you brother
@Dirt money Stanley. I am a home renovation contractor that specializes is finish and rough carpentry services. Even though I don't do the same line of work as you. Estimating and customer/contractor relations are the same across the board. keep up the great vids. Your helping me get my business to the next level!
I develop estimates for reclamation in Kentucky. That's how we do it - break the activity down into hours and quantify it with a cost. Yes, we also call it guestimate! You can get very techincal and specific, but it's always a guestimate until the project is completed.
I know this is an old one, but I've watched a good amount of your videos over the past month. This fantastic tutorial is the one that made me subscribe. Great info for my startup, Thanks
Awesome, thank you for the support Josh !
Thank you my brother , I been enjoying your videos over the years . Thank you for sharing your helpful knowledge and making a difference.
Best ! Andy
Thank you. I’ve been searching for this information to work out how many tonne I need and you just showed me. So grateful I’m going to subscribe I think you’ll be teaching a lot more yet. Again thank you I’m so grateful
Exactly what I needed i'm a shovel operator just starting my own business great information and not long and boring at all...thanks...you have any videos on how to bid for trenches and such or is it just a flat rate of 105 per hour plus material
“You deserve to make money on every component of the job” amen brother. Well said.
This helped a lot! I'm going into the excavation business from the aviation business and need all the help I can. (KIS) Keeping it simple worked for your proposal and your video. As an amateur in this field I completely understood the Business process that your portrayed. Thank you! and Mahalo!! From the Hawaiian in Guam....
Hey thanks a lot Leroy , best of luck in your new business!
Ya know I’m just a machinist but I watch you cause I like toys like this! Your business advice is fantastic!!
Thanks and thank you for watching !
Nice video... You are a Role Model as not many people are willing to take the time to teach others... I have only watched one of your videos but you covered the entire job from beginning to end. There is good money in these smaller one off private jobs. Keep up the good work.
I appreciate you passing along your knowledge; thanks for posting!
That's appreciated, thanks for watching!
Man this is a great breakdown video! Please do a few more of these!
I'll never do this in my profession but I've done stone, gravel and pacer driveways. Same concepts but I'm intimidated by those big jobs. Another impressive video Stan da man!
"paver" (nicolock)
☼Tropical Detailing☼ As most companies grow so do the size of the projects they will take on. You may not be ready today-but you never know about tomorrow :)
Yea....exactly! I've done the work on BIG projects but one day may have that push to get a $15,000 project. The potential and skill is there....just put it to use. I'm open to expand for sure. Thanks Stan!
YOU ARE A GREAT TEACHER. I'M TRYING TO BREAK INTO THE BIZ AT 71, I MAY BE AN OLD F**K, HOWEVER, I WILL DO IT SOMEHOW!!!
The break down on your quote is very helpful to see makes quoting seem less daunting!
Thank you so much for your informative videos, I am a full time Supervisor at a Engineering company that specializes in Soil Engineering. I'm a state contractor as well and i have my own company, it's my first construction business and its overwhelming when it comes to bidding and estimating when I'm still a beginner but your channel has given me confidence and I'm learning things i never got the chance to learn, specially when you reflected to the one mistake you did at the commercial site. "its good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other peoples mistakes" ~ Warren Buffet
Build profit into every portion. Got it thanks Stan.
It's late in the evening. But, tomorrow morning I'm looking at this video and writing the formula down and framing it because I will be using it in the near future!
The. Compression compaction is a great way to compact you made a very great Point .
Thanks Jason
Very Good video Stanley. I just realize spent my whole day watching at you. I learned a lot. Thant you so much.
already had a general idea on the math never could understand how to make square yards into tons though but man u just answered so many of my questions thanks
That's great Jorge, thank you !
I need to add some clarification to your video. First Stanley and everyone else. you need to do a "site analysis" as the video shows. However you need to look at existing grades. For example, the slope or grade of this lot naturally drains to one corner. So you don't always want a "crown". For those that don't know, 3/16 to a 1/4 of an inch in 10 feet will drain water. So you may want or need to check grades before you do your estimate. For example. in the project in the video, you may have to haul in clay spoils to create a crown in the center. Otherwise, cutting the outside edges will create standing water on the two-sides. If you have natural vegetation such as grass as it looks like in this video, remember that it was slow down the water and cause ponding in a heavy rain as the storm water tries to run through the grass. This would be true even if Stanley hauled in clay spoils to build a crown. So please be thorough, check natural drainage, existing catch basins and grades By doing so will save you time, headaches, and cost later on.
Now let me also add some clarification to sub bases. Not only am I a contractor, I am an inspector for the Ohio Department of Transportation. Stanley makes it sound easy however he left out some major things that you all NEED TO KNOW! If you are grading for a parking lot or anything that is going to be paved, if you are NOT sub-contracting the paving, find out who is! Ask the owner, client, developer etc. The reason is simple, you need to grade it the same way it is going to be paved! It needs to be paved the same way it was graded! Why is this important? Say you are the grading contractor as Stanley was on the Menard's I think he said, who is doing the stone grade? Most big jobs like that someone is going to topo the site to check grades If the grade is off then it will cost the paving contractor heavily for extra asphalt. Asphalt is far more costly than stone! Stone is more costly than sub-base! The stone base or grade is to allow water to drain under the asphalt or concrete without soaking into the sub-base and making a soft spot. So the question will be who is paying for the correction??? The paving contractor will put it on the excavating and grading contractor.... YOU!
Allow me to stress there is huge difference between landscaping and excavating! If you are doing ANY grading where there will be live load or traffic constantly driving on it or with heavy weights... trucks, forklifts, warehousing materials, do yourself a favor and compact the sub-base and any stone grades. If you don't own a smooth drum roller, RENT one! They are more than reasonable! This will seal the sub-base and stone to help prevent rain and storm water from soaking into the sub-base and creating a sub-base where you have to come back and do re-work.
Stanley talked about driving a loaded dump truck around and around. That is called "STATIC ROLLING" We use this method to "test proof" the contractors work. There are tolerances for rutting. As far as compaction, there are a number of factors... the material type, moisture content and compaction. All of these must be just right to obtain "optimum compaction" For example if you are using a granular stone material such as #304 Limestone, if it is too dry, it won't compact! If it is too wet, again it will not compact! What Stanley is talking about is Proctor test is using a nuc gauge to test form moisture per material and the compaction required to obtain "optimum" or mimic mother nature. Tpyically this is going to fall between 96% to 98%. You can gain more as he stated, however, say you over roll it, then there is a point where you will lose compaction. So say you hit 104%, if you continue to try to compact it you could take your proctor back down below say 96%.
So the rule or thumb is take your material and grab a handful. Squeeze it into a ball in your fist. It should not crumble! If so add water! It should also not squeeze into mush and come out between your finger. It should make a ball and leave a slight bit of moisture on you palm. It should break apart. It is somewhat hard to example but picture cookie dough. Not to wet or dry!
If you have material to wet, you can dry it. If you have a dozer or a skid steer with a dozer blade angle your blade as far left or right and down on the down angle like a plow. Plow into windrows Allow to dry to where you see crusting. When you see this then you can roll it again. With a backhoe or excavator, use the teeth to rake the material. Allow to crust and repeat.
Hope this helps and clears up some things!
I love geniuses
I'd love to be your apprentice. You'd give Albert Einstein a run for his money.
Very informative. Thanks for adding this.
Very informative sir can I have your email or whatsapp contact number. I am new in the industry
You sir are a legend. Thankyou
Good video! I always say it's not rocket science and you help break it down pretty well for beginners in grading like me. Soil compaction was always pretty scary before for me, but I can see how it's not as scary as I originally thought.
I do need to get back to work! great comprehensive brake down of the estimate! people ask me this all the time!
Thanks Brian !
Ps you kinda look like Jeffrey donavan from burn notice
I just subscribed, I find your channel very interesting and informative even though we are in different industries. Keep the good work up.
Great vid. Some questions for those in the comments or even Stan if he even looks at these comments still:
1) You said you charge roughly $6 to get class 5 transported per ton to the site, and $8/ton for the class 5 itself. Say you're doing a job and a customer wants you to bring another 2 tons at the end. Would you really go to get 2 tons of class 5 in a dump truck or pickup/trailer for $20? How do we protect ourselves in these situations that don't make sense unless they're at a large scale?
2) How do you deal with clients who decide to go another direction and instead of signing you up for the whole contract, they only choose you for 1 small part. Even though you have profit and etc in all your parts, are you really going to go do one small part of the job for say $250, needing to allocate labour and equipment that could be doing something else and not get the rest of the contract? Doesn't seem worth it.
For example, I'm making a quote right now to strip a lawn and level the remaining soil. I'd like to price it by the square foot, but then if I get on site and the client starts to nitpick about how I didn't do 2 square feet there and another 5 square feet there (if they didn't need stripping), just seems like you could get nitpicked to hell by customers and at the end of the day make way less than you predicted since there are only so many hours in a day to perform work.
How do you break down and figure the hourly cost for different equipment
That’s very interesting for my small business. I’m learning. Thank you !
Stumbled on your channel. Love it. Thank you
Happy you’re here 👍
One of the most important things to keep in mind during the bidding process is that multiple estimates from different contractors is what keeps everybody honest. I have seen two different contractors bid the same job with the first contractor coming in at $25,000 and the second contractor coming in at $50,000. The contractor that bid $50,000 very rarely wins any of our business now that we are always getting three or four bids on every job.
It is fine that he charges more than most other contractors, but he is usually going to miss out on work when the customers are getting multiple bids. If someone does not get multiple bids, then they are taking a chance that they will be paying more than they could have paid.
Gonna GC my new house, I’m gonna wanna see all the material on site before the job starts per the contract! If you don’t use it I’m keeping it!!
A crowned area is a whole lot easier to get the water to roll away from the area . Don't know what the best gravel but I know you have to have it . That roll of fab will sure do a great job
really cool these aren't behind a pay wall. I'm watching this while thinking about my painting business. very applicable
Thank you for watching!
I love your videos. I started a tree company and hearing some of your business philosophies are very helpful. Keep up the great videos
Thanks Derek! 👍
I have a question about when you times the cubic yards by 1.36 to get 551 tons are you adding for compaction and water purposes? If not then I understand the 1.36 as the 1 to add it to the 408.33 cubic yards I’m lost at .36 bud please advise
your videos are amazing!!! you help out so many people!!
Stan, awesome information on, well, EVERYTHING! I find your "Estimating" videos extremely beneficial. Have you done or will you do a estimating segment on DECKS? I wish I had someone like you as a mentor years ago. Keep up the amazing work. Thank you
Great to hear! I'll keep that in mind. Thank you 👍
Is it a bad thing to put type R landscape fabric on top of sand before installing pavers
Thanks for sharing your expertise through RUclips channel. I am running a small concrete pumping business and I learnt many useful tips from your videos
In a previous video you made you said all of your bids are lump sum and now this one you’re saying don’t do lump sum bids. Which is better?
Hi buddy thx , your videos help me a lot, can you tell me how you divide numbers for exactly amount of material ,, i have a paver patio to do 40 L x 20 w how many tons of material do I need ? Thx
Now I know it's not a full engineered spec job. but technically you will have to add swell/compaction to your cubic yards on the stone if you wanted a true 6" of material. 22% swell can burn you too. You obviously mentioned how much stone you'll have invested and charge more of needed but customers always hate when prices go up.
Good point.
Is that Think and Grow Rich sitting on the top shelf of your desk? That book has helped me tremendously with business and setting goals
Awesome content!! We have a grading contracting business in CA and I am delving into this part of the front office. Great video.
Thank you Blake!
Your videos are nothing short of awesome. I wish I could come work for you just to learn. Thanks.
Nice coyote.
Haha great! I'm glad
Ford 6000 tractor
AWESOME!! id like to know how to bid on foundations . will like form-sets and the make-ups for new sub-divisions. My husband and I have a business martins foundation. I feel he's not bidding enough on a foundation. does it varies on the sq. ft. of the foundation?
I learn alot from your videos and I love watching them there very full of learning I wanna start my own lawn care service and by doing that I've couht on how to do that from your videos
Metric ton? In CA we use ton. ((Ft x Ft x Ft)/27)x1.8 for caltrans class Il road base.
this is a very good video and more along the lines of how i expect a contractor to run his business for the customer. unfortunately i've dealt with a few contractors who've robbed myself and my family blind in work hours by dragging it out, as well as materials and incorrect estimates (ie. leaving the job unfinished and not taking it as a lesson learned). big jobs, $20-$50k. it's much easier to fudge your customer when you're going to be working there every day for 3 months. now, i get receipts for all materials purchased, receipts for any deliveries, and i show up on the job site nearly every day at random times to assess labor hours and progress. I shouldn't have to do this. i have my own career to focus on . but, i have to cover my ass as a legit customer, as much as any legit contractor would. seemingly every contractor wants to give me a general blanket bid, without breaking anything down. "oh we've done it for so long we know how to estimate." bull crap. I practically have to argue with them to break it down to a level i can appreciate, or i walk. half of them have never even produced a written bid in the manner you held up to the camera. i've received bids on fastfood napkins. I've had contractors turn down my $20k jobs because they didn't want to break down the costs, not because they were being shady, but simply because they were too lazy to do the office work. the lucky ones seem to have wives that handle these details. i remember one contractor went to the wrong damn house to begin excavation! he had actually sent his cronies the first day, rather than showing up himself to discuss the job in detail. regardless, you can't explain the details to your cronies over the phone monday morning and expect them to get it right. didn't say much to his 35years in the business. the main point is, you have to cover your ass, whether you're the customer or contractor, because there are too many bums on either side who would shut their mouth given the opportunity. court stinks.
A time lapse on this job would be awesome, (if follows through)
DawnPatrol Will do!
hey man I really appreciate you for breaking these concepts down
I don't like Crown in the parking lot , it's not a road. 6 inches in the parking lot no way , you should talk to your customer and trying to put 8" in. or more. Because remember it's a heavy duty parking lot, you going to have big truck and heavy equipment every day . Do it ones and don't come back . Recommend a water truck, small grader, and smooth roller, trust me you will see the difference, them only the skid steer. I like your video how are you explain everything it just took me a minute everything you show instruction and everything and the job is a piece a cake for me I can do by myself everything step-by-step. But I can't do it what you doing how find a jobs like that, estimate. Bid, And all that. Thanks
The weight of a yard of #5 recycled material depends on the ratio of concrete to asphalt and whether it's compacted. Your bid specified compacted and that factor is closer to 1.39 metric tons / yard. The extra truck load should cover it.
Interesting to see how others break down bids. I do mine a hair but differently but i have a small crew and don't separate them often. My main work is asphalt but I do plenty of base and gravel work as well. But like I said I don't charge per price of equipment because I have it all with me each day, I do however charge for what I want profit wise per day plus material. Obviously bleach job is different and little driveways aren't a Wal-Mart parking lot but in between those 500k jobs, you keep your crew in work and make a little change as well.
I manage a hauling company that hauls dirt,gravel,rock,etc i was wondering how do you go on finding more excavation company or construction companies that need our service we've always been with a broker who finds us projects but lately they have been over pricing and we only work when they find us projects so if they bid too high we have no work. so i was wondering if you can help
Does the crowning have to be within a certain degree since there are forklifts operating there?
The only thing that I could possible see doing differently is not calculating it at what it's going to be at the compacted depth. At work I've found that basecourse will compact almost like asphalt does. So if you want a compacted depth of 6 inches typically we'd lay it a 1/4 inch higher for every inch of depth. So for your 6 inches we would lay it at 7 and 1/2 inches. Then once its compacted it's pretty close to that 6 inches. Small jobs I'm sure it's not to much extra but we do a lot of big jobs and sometimes our formans or supervisor forget that or fail to acknowledge it and it ends up costing them thousands of dollars because they calculated for the compacted depth. Not what we have to lay it at to reach that compacted depth. Atleast that's how some of us calculate it and were usually pretty close if not right on the money.
Thanks for the input on this Kyle!
Great info, Watch all your stuff. Like your no bullshit approach.
Another great video, Stanley! I'm an office bum (unless it's 75 and sunny, then I find a reason to get out into the field) and I love the video shots you do from your office.
very helpful video thanks a lot looking forward to your others videos. I am a small contractor who does demolition and some grading but would like to tackle bigger grading jobs. Thanks again
Of course, glad I can help. You're welcome and I hope my future videos help you out as well.
Stan I want to thank you for doing these videos! You have taught me soooooooo much! How would you recommend that I start into an excavating business? I would appreciate if you would do a video explaining how to get into the business, from ground zero. Thank you sir and God bless you!
Awesome. But overwhelming at the same time. Trying to learn all this
You can do it!
you wont get much work like this and even if you do you wont make money. You are placing 6 inches over the area if you didn't estimate enough its on you, you will get more work by convincing the customer of 6 inches no mater what, any mistake is on you, simple math and a phone call to the local material testing company will tell you the weight of material per yd3 at 95% compaction, always figure 10% over and put that in your pocket. Don't forget to overlap the fabric 2 feet if the job calls for 9 rolls bid and buy 10, take the left over to the next job. Heres an example for the people just out of collage, if the job calls for 700 feet of sewer pipe BUY 750 feet or two extra sticks if a labor makes an incorrect cut your coverd. You can still break everything down to the customer they like that but don't pass on your mistake to them,
Rusty Young I like the way you're thinking
I'm laughing at the idea that an area they clearly don't use much is presumed to be "solid" for high-volume, high-density traffic and heavily-loaded indoor forklifts just because they're only sliding around on it now. Smooth-surface indoor forklifts are short, narrow, have easily "upset" centers of gravity and their hard tires provide zero suspension and no capability for the tires to "bite" on any material that isn't nice, smooth, level concrete or dry asphalt. They are also very "dense" in that they concentrate a hell of a lot of weight into a very small surface footprint and onto four very small "contact patches" with their small, hard tires.
Its very easy for a 6000-lb smooth-surface lift truck to have 3 or 4 times the ground pressure and loading of whatever surface per square inch as a 6000-lb rough-terrain forklift and their total weight with a load can be far higher despite the machine itself looking small by comparison. 6 inches of ANYTHING over an uknown surface of mixed rock/clay silt like that is a recipe for cracks, potholes, etc. People just don't know that on a pound for pound basis there is nothing on rubber tires that is harder on paved surfaces than a smooth-surface forklift.
And that lumberyard had better be in a warm climate or the contractor had better put a nice slope on it to drain it, or come freezing rain/melting snow time they'll still be dead in the water trying to get smooth-surface forklifts to move material on that new pavement. Common sense is if you lack for traction with a forklift you're using the wrong forklift for the job.
Maybe you can be cellmates when the way he's thinking gets his dumb ass thrown in jail. Don't ever assume that just because someone pays you to do a job as an "expert" they have no idea what the job entails and can't do basic math, which is all it takes to figure out when you're being overcharged. Generally speaking, the "contract-it-out" crowd of business people and homeowners, etc. is composed of people who have done well enough for themselves in some aspect of business or another to be able to hire work done. And anybody who has ever run a business knows that "10%" is a really big deal when it comes to things like INVENTORY. Do you think someone who sells lumber isn't going to pay attention to things like VOLUMES and MEASUREMENTS and might know that if some CONTRACTOR comes in with a set of plans for a house and the total lumber called for in the plans is 1000 board-feet and the contractor orders 1100 board-feet, either the contractor is incompetent or crooked? You deal with mistakes and resulting material shortages when they occur. Not as a 10% "put it in your pocket" premium tacked onto the bill at any point. Marking up materials that are paid for by the contractor and then are "retailed" to the customer are a different story, and because the contractor has PAID FOR THEM and HANDLED THEM and TRANSPORTED and maybe STORED THEM, its an understandable cost of doing business. But a 10% markup on raw materials delivered to the jobsite in a truck might just raise some eyebrows, too. Not to mention you have to be an idiot to go online in this day and age and brag about and praise screwing the customer out of 10% of the material cost right off the top. What gets most con artists, crooked contractors and other "business people" who screw customers as part of their normal day to day business operations caught and busted? Bragging about it.
Making a profit isn't illegal. Just saying like. ;-) Even if he "tacked" 110% onto the Bid price, that's his prerogative. It's called "Business". It's for the Customer to accept or reject. I'd be very wary of only tacking on 10%... 10% becomes a loss rapido. I'd be tacking on 25%.
Stanley has been in business for 33 years and has built him self a multi million dollar company.
I dont think he needs your advise
Just out of curiosity, do y’all ever do any utility work? Drainage or irrigation?
This is the same way I do my bids. Spot on
Thanks Jeff !
Just wondering if you calc a compaction factor on the class 5 purchase volume.
im afraid estimates around NC are expected to be hard bids and we have to show our detail yet if we are short the clients will not pay any extra they just like to be able to compare numbers and where the low bidder is high in one catagory and low in 6 catagories they come back and say hey, you are way high in this one catagory and try to get you to lower your already low bid.
hey stanley can you please do a video on how to start a execovating buisness and what you first need becuse im a landscaper and window cleaner but i want to go into execovating
It was a very good video, I have an earthworks and infrastructure company, the fabric you are talking about, in the installation, how many people you used? thanks
Nice video! Why is it important to convert the cubic yards to metric tons? Is due to the compaction? I would think either measurement would work.
+Rod Coslett One is a measurement of weight and the other of volume. This factor is important on how you purchase materials- by the ton or by the yard?
What is the filter fabric for and do you put it down after the gradeing is done ?
Thank you in advance
That was a very helpful video however I have a question. When it comes to class 5 ordering and bidding how do I take into consideration compaction. So let’s say for example me and my customer agree that I will install 10 inches of class 5. So I lay down 10 inches of class 5 but when I compact it that may drop too 6 or 7 inches due to compaction. How do I account for that in my ordering, do I order more to allow for compaction. Or do I just order enough for 10 inches and then just compact it and just leave it at 6 or 7 inches? What do I do. It would be good if you could make a video on this.
Stanley?
I think you meant that's our minimum amount. Love what you do Stan you the man.
interesting that you will up charge if short on bid but will not deduct if over bid.
Hey Dirt Monkey, Great info!! Thx Small correction - "Linear" or "Lineal" when refering to a line. Lineal refers more so to a direct line of descent or ancestry. Sorry, I was a journalism major! lol
How much percentage do you usually upcharge for work or materials for it to be a fair amount? I am a new Septic Installer in my area and this is perfect for the work that I do
+Aqua clear 1 Every job is different. My hourly rate is $125 per hour for an excavator.
what is the fabric your using, the woven geo fabric I'm buying is way higher than that, like 360 per roll. coming from a tile distubitor not a box store like menards.
+wcracer7 Its road fabric- from a landscape supplier
Can 1.36 be used to convert the measurement of known cubic yards to metric tons for any type of gravel or just class 5?
Stanley can I grade the roadbase with a mini excavator? People are asking me to prep for concrete pours for RV pads and I'd like to do it, but don't have a skid steer. The mini is a 9500 llb Kubota with an angle blade. I can deliver the roadbase OK (thanks for the calculation formula!!). I wonder if renting a skid will turn out better than using my own mini. Your thoughts? Thanks.
It will take longer but you can grade with he mini. Use what you own.
Thanks I was stuck on the cubic yards to metric tons. Now all I need is to figure how what's the best way to pay the hired drivers by the cubic yard or by the hour.
+William Head if you pay by the hour you're gonna get slow ass-dragging truck drivers. If you pay by the yard you're gonna get more loads in a shorter time.
Thanks, I think my best bet is to just bite the bullet and buy some trucks, but in the meantime I will take your advice.
Hey Stanley love your content just remember on conversation of yard to tons there are variables moisture content rock content I know you did Roadbase at point 1.3 up here in the Rockies our multiplier is 1.75 or 2.2 if it’s processed and wet
Any ways man I have learned a lot from you I just started my business a year and a half ago and I have definitely referenced your videos for a few things
What are you calling class 5 material? Crush an run?
Thanks man. Seriously I always feel like a lone cannon in my business. Great explanation.
Excellent, informative video!
I'm just getting in to estimating as a student. I'm trying to figure out the excavation portion of my project and I'm having a hard time understanding how to average out the existing and proposed elevations for the areas I want to estimate. Do you think you can help me out?
+leo alvarez Thats called a balanced site- where you get the cut and fill to equal out.
Thanks for the great video. BTW how many times have you read the copy of Think and Grow Rich that's hiding behind your white board?
Do you ever use machine control systems? Or consider subbing out the takeoff?
Another great video, Thanks! Who's brand of laser do you use for setting crowns are double slope lasers necessary?
I go through various lasers-can't remember which brand we are currently using.
If you are ever in the Va area let me know I’ll take you to lunch certainly have a lot to teach and I’m trying to learn
THANKYOU, PRETTY SLICK W YOUR BIDDING. I LIKE HOW U BID IT W THE FABRIC
Thanks so much for the coaching!! Im debating on buying my first used skid machine, I keep getting calls for large jobs and have been passing them up. I think its time to jump into some bigger projects. Any suggestions on what size machine I should look to buy for light landscaping/ grading, harley raking, clearing snow, possibly running a brush cutter. Any insight is greatly appreciated!! Thanks Stan - Robbie
Robert Dubois Any medium sized skid loader will work. Once you have the equipment and skills-you will continue to get calls.
Thank you great info after appreciate the honesty and advice in making money on every component of the job