Portable milling the miles add up

[backwoods sawyer]

It is that time of year to run all the numbers and take care of all the office work :
I use an asset monitoring service and while going thru the spread sheets found a breakdown of the total miles and mill hours.

During the last year it showed we put 1,258 hours on the mill, which matched the readings from the hour meter. Seems I have been slacking only averaging 6.5 hours a day, (Lot of four hour days plus travel time)

The mileage on the sawmill showed 9,883. That averaged out to 95 miles per roundtrip, our farthest travel to a milling site was just under 600 miles roundtrip.
The mileage on the truck for the year is about double that.

Our production numbers are good but still a year's worth of production only amounts to about 15-20 hours production in a larger production sawmill. :

Been a busy year and we have seen a good portion of the state in the process. Upcoming milling jobs have us going from California to Washington and from the coast to the east side of the Cascades. Will be loading up this evening to head out early in the morning on another milling job that will add another 200+ miles to this year's tally :new_year:

[Magicman]

It sounds like you and your helper are and will be busy.  I am proud for you.   

[MAI]

GREAT!   Keep it GOING.  Hopefully all the numbers add up to $$$$$$ in your pocket.

[backwoods sawyer]

Finished up all the office stuff about noon and had another customer call in from Brookings, he is ready to go but needed a site eval to go over how and where to deck the logs, had another site eval over on the coast and another down in Grants pass, so made a couple phone calls then headed out to take a look at all three. It was a 350 mile round trip, stopped and picked up oysters while on the coast, nice warm sunny day for a drive down 101 and back up Smith river to I-5. We put quite a few miles on the car as well over the last year as we like to take two rigs when we stay out of town for a few days. 

Yep Little Jo has picked up sawing and the rest of the operation, and we both the enjoy hardwork and traveling.  ;)

[m wood]

Camas Valley must be easy to come home to.  I lived down the hill in Winston in my teens and twenties, working for the produce farmers...ahhh, good memories :D
mark

[terrifictimbersllc]

Finished up all the office stuff about noon and had another customer call in from Brookings, he is ready to go but needed a site eval to go over how and where to deck the logs, had another site eval over on the coast and another down in Grants pass, so made a couple phone calls then headed out to take a look at all three. It was a 350 mile round trip, stopped and picked up oysters while on the coast, nice warm sunny day for a drive down 101 and back up Smith river to I-5. We put quite a few miles on the car as well over the last year as we like to take two rigs when we stay out of town for a few days. 

Yep Little Jo has picked up sawing and the rest of the operation, and we both the enjoy hardwork and traveling.  ;)

How do you deal with the cost of such site visits?  Do you limit them to jobs of a certain size, charge for them, just consider it a good business practice or what?  I know a site visit is very valuable, mostly to the customer, but I don't price my work to cover these and driving is already my biggest expense.

[Magicman]

As a general rule I do not make presurvey site visits.  I have had some surprises, but I have never failed to be able to saw a job.   I said "general rule" which means that there are exception based upon what the customer says or prior knowledge of the customer.

I visited one suspect sawjob this week and advised the customer that his Pine logs had rotted and would yield no usable lumber.  The trees were beetle killed and the logs had been on the ground for a year.   :-\

A new customer called last night.  He is ~75 miles away and specifically requested that I come and look.  It will be a sizable job so a visit will be nice.  He offered to buy lunch.   

[backwoods sawyer]

What I like about doing a site eval with a new customer who has a lot of questions is it gives us a chance to go over all the details of their site and hear all the questions, wide open flat land is not the norm around here.

This afternoon I brought the mill down off a mountain in four low, In talking to him on the phone there was no mention of a long, steep, windy, red clay, goat trail.
He had questions about what he needed to do to get the logs ready. The site eval let me know that we needed a good stretch of dry weather to get the mill into and out of this site. He called me last week and told me the honey bees are flying, and the road is dry. So I made time for him on the weekend.

I do a site eval on about 1 in 4 milling jobs, some are months outs, I like to take a day and go for a drive and do several in one trip, the mill is not sitting there running so no pressure to get to work, and it gives the customer plenty of time to explain what they want, me a chance to ask questions and for them to absorb the whole process.   On milling day they stand a better chance of being ready.

I do not charge for site evals in the county, for reference Douglas County is the size of the state of Connecticut, And Winston is the nearest town with more then a gas station and post office, I don't charge mileage when milling in the county either. I consider this my part to the shop local concept. If they are outside the county or way over on the other side of the state 300 miles out, I charge mileage to move the mill in, and charge a flat rate of $40 per 100 miles for the eval, some customers request the site eval so they can be ready and save on the number of hours at the end of the job. This also lets me take different routes. Google maps don't always show the "Best" route.

m wood
I picked fruit for brossi, worked in the feild at Burks but most of my farm work was for jack laurence,  good times

[Peter Drouin]

No one want's to drive, [ unless you like it]  :D but for a new customer you have to sometimes. I had a repeat customer and I get there and the logs are a mess : I will look at the customer and tell them I will cut their mess by the hr, where the last time it was by the bf. Had one guy did not think that was right. So I told him to fix the mess and I started back to the truck . He asks where I was going. I told him I would be back when I have time, that I was going to the next job.
He thought I was going to stand there and wait. :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
See what It was, he knew better. A new customer I will give them some slack. But someone that knows better just pith me off  :D ;D

[m wood]

Backwoods; yup, I knew of Lawrence and I would work some for brossi too.  But I lived on Dave Burks farm from '80 to '83, I could thro a peach (cuz I lived in an orchard) and hit the blue fruit stand :D.  Small world!  I see we're the same age, whew ???, we probably threw some tomatoes at each other.  BUT, Camas Valley is Gods Country...love it up there!
mark