Maybe I'm Too Cheap?

[logboy]

I was ready to tear down the mill last night at 7 when I noticed a 14' White Pine parked in front of it. Great, that log was supposed to be here on Saturday. So it was another night of sawing by head lamp.  I typically charge $35 per hour for sawing, $40 for planing slabs with the planer head or cutting slabs with the Lucas Slabber.  I zipped through the White Pine pretty fast despite spending 7 hours over a wood splitter earlier.  The lumber scaled out around 230 bdft.  It only took me about 30-45 minutes of actual sawing, the rest of the time was dragging boards and slabs out of the way.  With good logs, sawing 1" lumber with my Lucas I can easily crank out 400 bdft an hour, nearly double for 2."  If I charge $35 an hour and saw 400 bdft, that's only $.08 a bdft.  If I was to start charging $.25 per bdft and hit 400 bdft thats $100 an hour.

I ended up charging $50.  I added a bit for use of the Bobcat, fuel, setup, and making me saw by headlamp at 8 on a Sunday night. Even at that price its $.22 a bdft.  Am I too cheap on sawing?

[jdtuttle]

yep ;)
jim

[Magicman]

I do not believe that I could adjust my sawing rate based on one log.  I have sawed three days and turned out only 1900 bf, and then on another two day job sawed 7238 bf.  My last two day job was 3819 bf.

If the average is satisfactory, then I am happy.   

[logboy]

Magicman, I'm just using this recent job as an example.  For some reason this one spurred me to rethink my approach on what to charge.  On the plus side charging by the bdft gives me the ability to slack a little bit if I feel like taking my time.  But if I get into some gnarly wood that has been dragged through the mud, forcing me to debark it with an axe (as an example of time wasted), then I'm on the losing end.

I'm just worried that if I charging by the bdft and I charge a customer $100 for an hour they might think I'm out to rip them off. Maybe I should start sawing slower.  :D

[cypresskayaksllc]

Some customers know that youre not really making 100 per hour (fuel, maintenance, repair). 

[Bandmill Bandit]

One way that works for me is MBF per day compared against hours of work put in to get that MBF stack of good looking lumber.
If the MBF figure is higher I go with the MBF number. If the hourly number is higher I go with hourly number. On a good day i can average about 275 to 300 BF/hr. At $.30 a BF that is 82.50 to 90.00 an hour. I charge $90 an hour as a result of those numbers and I make sure customers under stand this when I start.

I also make sure they get a bit of demonstration from me on the quality of work I do to produce quality lumber for them, and I find reasons to give discounts or charge up for thing like a mess of a log pile filled with dirt and debris, metal etc. I always let them know that good help is worth a minimum of $10 bucks an hour and a nice clean, bucked pile of logs cuts their cost a lot. $10 bucks dont buy squat for labor in this region, but I most always end up with good help and I do allow a higher labor value when the help deserves it.    

Update note. Adjusted my rates to $.35 a bf or $100 and hour as of September 1st. Also adjusted my good helper discount to range of 10 to 15 an hour.

[zopi]

Seems like sawing prices go between twenty five and about fifty cents a board foot...alot of guys charge hourly for cleani.g logs or sawing logs under ten or twelve inches or so..or for sawing less than 4/4 nominal...figure in travel and set up fees...nominal close to home and increasing with mileage...
Most folks seem happy to pay a good price for good service..kick em an extra board and leave a neat clean worksite...little details like that add up to value in most folks' minds...of course there are some cheapskates out there who want everything cheap to free...hey, call me when he gets deported..or goes back to school... lol

[Ron Wenrich]

When I was marking timber, we charged a commission on the sales.  But, people with poor quality timber actually got their timber marked cheaper than someone with good timber.  The good timber subsidized those with the poor timber.

That relates to custom sawing where, if you charged by the bf, those with nice logs will get their timber cut in less time than those with poor logs.  So, the nice logs end up costing them more per hour than those with poor logs.  The nice logs subsidize those with poor logs.  Same goes for those wanting 2" boards over those wanting 1" boards. 

You could use that as a sales point for those bringing in logs, if you charge by the hour.  The per foot charges will be cheaper if they bring in nicely bucked logs. 

Its your business, so charge what you want.

[red]

checkout how a pro did it  www.tomssaw.com   he will be back real soon

[woodmills1]

I am at $70 per hr for regular onetimers and $50 for the good repeat customers

$34 for the second metal hit

works well for me and the 70 makes lotsa boards for the customer

[rambo]

I think your cheap. You offer a good service for a very reasonable fee. Don't feel guilty about that. Also, I think it is fair to charge for anything that will compromise efficiency. For example, a small log fee, or a large log fee, a dirty log fee.etc. All those terms can vary.

Here is why I feel so strongly about this. If you go to Lowes. A 1"x8"x8' of red oak is $35.00. There is a little over 5 bdft in that piece. Now a customer can have you mill them that piece for about $1.50 (assuming you charge .30 bdft).  Now, the customer pays another .30 a bdft for kiln drying. So he is up to $3.00. That is a $32 dollar savings over the big box store. So why feel guilty when you saved them that amount of moola???

And yes I realize it still needs to be surfaced, but isn't that the fun part :D

[Brucer]

Yes, you're too cheap.

In the rare case where someone has done everything right and enabled me to zip through a job in half the usual time, I will find and "excuse" to charge them less.

[zopi]

Yes, you're too cheap.

In the rare case where someone has done everything right and enabled me to zip through a job in half the usual time, I will find and "excuse" to charge them less.
Did an estimate for this gripy old bat awhile back, and she was such a pain that I jacked the estimate by a hundred bucks, a charge for putting up with her...turns out she was the sweetest thing to work with..so I dropped my price by a hundred dollars...she asked me why so cheap and I told her...she cracked up...apparently she was having a bad day that day...

[DR Buck]

I have found that most customers cringe when you quote $65 to $75 per hour. But, when you quote 35¢ per board foot, it's OK.   I can easily mill 200+ bf per hour.   That's at least a $70 an hour rate.   Most jobs I turn around enough to average a $100 per hour rate once I start the job.  This allows me to factor in travel and setup time without actually having to quote this time to the customer as a separate cost, something they see no return for.  At the end of the day I average close to $80 per hour on most jobs.   In 7 years my lowest converted to hourly rate has been $45.

This is why I like a board foot rate.

[metalspinner]

Here is why I feel so strongly about this. If you go to Lowes. A 1"x8"x8' of red oak is $35.00. There is a little over 5 bdft in that piece. Now a customer can have you mill them that piece for about $1.50 (assuming you charge .30 bdft).  Now, the customer pays another .30 a bdft for kiln drying. So he is up to $3.00. That is a $32 dollar savings over the big box store. So why feel guilty when you saved them that amount of moola???

Because the customer has other expenses involved in the log.  The cost and time of harvesting and transportation, then the time in caring for the lumber afterwards and drying losses along the way.  Milling is just one of those expenses - of course you know that already. ;)

In the end, it's probably cheaper to just go to the store and buy lumber.  But, for all the different reasons we love sawdust, we drag logs out of the woods or backyards and have them custom milled.

Edit:  The kind of customer that would bring logs into a sawmill would probably never buy that red oak board at the bigbox.  We all know those boards are incredibly inflated in price and marketed to the poor sap that doesn't know any better. :D

BTW, I think your too cheap, too. ;)

[woodmills1]

I took one cut through the middle of a 3.5 inch maple 3 days ago  guy paid $1000 for it


what do I owe you he says....nothing says me


gave me 60 bucks

[DR Buck]

I took one cut through the middle of a 3.5 inch maple 3 days ago  guy paid $1000 for it


what do I owe you he says....nothing says me


gave me 60 bucks

If I'm reading this right, you can send that guy down here to me.   I've got 27 acres full of 3.5 inch maples I'll let him have for $250 each.   I'll even load them.  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[Bibbyman]

We saw by the board foot except on a rare occasion where we just split a log or put a flat on something.   

We started out years ago at .20/bf and got a lot of complaints that we were too high.  We soon went to .25/bf where we've been up until this July.  I got to pressing Mary to go to .35 cents for custom sawing.  I don't really want to custom saw and I think we burn up a lot of time dealing with all the eccentricities of the customers.   She reluctantly agreed on .30/bf and has started applying that charge.  No one has complained.

We've been custom sawing all week.  We got one crusty old curmudgeon that brought over the ugliest load of junk – all sap rotten, hard, rough and poorly trimmed.   He has been over here every day and hung around for an hour or more on the pretext of giving us instructions on how he wants his logs sawn.  Yesterday's visit was to change the instructions on one log.  Now he wants so many 2x4s and at least 3 1x18s.  It's hard to make a living dealing with ol'farts like this – by the board foot or by the hour.

Then we also had a guy bring over five red oak logs on a gooseneck trailer and leave it parked.  We sawed out over 1500 bf out of these five logs and put it right back on his trailer in a few hours of actual work.  It took is most of the day with interruptions – one being the ol'fart mentioned above.

Too high or too low?  It depends on your neck of the woods,  how much competition you have, your customer base, and the services you provide.   I think a lot of part-time and hobby mill guys don't think about all their investment, overhead and return on their time.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

Thats a hard question to to come up with a quick and easy reply too Mate ;)  :D ;D  down here you would be hard pressed to get a bloke with a Lucas for less than $88 an hour for custom milling these days .It all comes down to what you are happy to saw for at the end off the day Mate  ;) ;D I charge by the hour for one off jobs and thats at about the $100 per hour mark roughly but I do throw in abit of free time and do not charge for travel also for regular customers if its pine its about $.30 a bft fresh or clean hardwood is about $.40 a bft and  for the recycled rubbish I saw quite regularly its more like $1.00 a bft but it is slower sawing and alot harder on myself n the mill and they tend to be spasmodic with what they are doing and have wasted alot off my time over the years its still good paying work when the do come through ;)

Bibby brought up most small operators do not factor in replacement costs on their equipment theres an easy way off doing this and Ill do it based on a 10-30 mill with slabber and attachmets that comes in at around $22 grand replacement value you can get 4 to 5000hrs plus easy out of a Lucas without having to worry about too much parts wise as far as major components goes if you look after it and you work on selling mill and buying a new one take the $22000 divide by 4000 = $4.40 an hour that mill times that by 1.5  if you are paying off the mill then in theroy you should be able to pay off that mill in that time and have the cash there to buy another one and sell the old one and still have a fair bit left over after you sell it   ;)

Add to that say $4.00 an hour for gas $2 an hour for saw maint if your in average sawing $4 per working hour for your truck and maint thats based on working within 20mi at $.40 a mile fuel n maint and $100 a week truck payments

so all in all with things being pretty padded your cost structure is roughly 16.60 an hour imput costs minus insurance costs so thats like 4.5 to 6.5 cents a bft depending on your production not counting you labor now you ar charging $35 and I would personally charge more if it was myself over there  ;) say round that 16.60 upto $25 for the business and give yourself $20 to $30 an hour and call your rate $45 to $55 an hour ;) Also think with portable sawmilling and even stationary sawmilling people are not only paying you for the mill they are paying you for your Skill and your ability to saw their logs into what they want at their place Mate  ;) ;D 8)

To the same token If you wanted to charge $.20 cents a bft on what your average is you would be bringing in about $60 to $80 odd dollars an hour with the Lucas Mate ;) 8)

Regards Chris