Price adjustment

[McCormack]

I charge $0.20 per bf for portable sawing of softwood logs. Someone is dropping off some logs for me tomorow to saw for them. He hasn't asked a price yet.for him bringing the logs to me, I'm just wondering how much I should offset my price to be fair. thank you

[Kirk_Allen]

I charge the same rate regardless of where I am cutting.  If they bring them to me then I dont have a set up charge.

I have also learned that I needed to set some parameters.
Logs over 30" -additional charge
Logs under 8" - additional charge
Logs over 18' - additional charge
Logs under 7' - additional charge

I also established a minimum charge for cutting regardless of BF.  This had to be done for the Suburbanights who wanted their Giant Maple log  cut up (8" DIB 10'long).  

[FiremanEd]

WOW Kirk,, that was some GIANT maple! Hope you managed to get it sawn in one day...  ;D


Ignorance is a blessing for such urbanights!!

[Bibbyman]

We don't do ANY mobile sawing and charge about the same and maybe a little more than the mobile sawyers in our area.  Why?  We do all the log handling, sawing, offbearing, stacking, and have the slabs and sawdust to handle.  The customer brings logs, takes home lumber.  Some don't even take the logs off'n the trailer – just park the trailer and tell us how they want their lumber sawn.

Of course,  we don't have set up fees – but then again,  we're always set up.

[VA-Sawyer]

I charge $ .30 per bf. for all sawing. I also charge $ 1.00 per mile one way for travel and initial setup. If they bring the wood to me then they save the travel charge.  Kirk ...I would be interested in what your rates actually are. If you don't want to make them public then please send a PM.
I raised my rates from $.25 to $.30 back in Feb. when the fuel prices jumped so much. It didn't seem to hurt business at the time, but this summer has been very slow. I haven't heard complaints about the prices, I'm just not getting many calls at all right now.  About 1/2 of the new people I've cut for this year were refered to me by previous customers, and the other 1/2 came from advertising. Over 50% of my customers have used me more than once for sawing. About 25% of the time I get a pretty nice tip when they pay me. I think my customers are happy with my work. I had one customer this summer that I wouldn't saw for because he refused to sign the contract. He said he didn't have any specific problems with what the contract said, it was that he just didn't sign them. That was a first for me.
I can't seen to be able to get a real handle on this slowdown. Not sure if it is seasonal ( people not cutting much wood during the summer ) or due to all the wet weather or just people don't feel they can afford to risk the money in these hard times. Dropping my price may help a little in the last case, but I don't think it would make much difference with the other two.
My lack of long term experience in this industry is a real hinderence at times like this.  Any suggestions out there ?
VA-Sawyer

[Gilman]

You asked questions to be answered and first thing you get is two more questions!

You mentioned that you gotten 1/2 of your busines through advertisements.  Where and what types of ads did you post? I haven't heard a word from my paid ads and have heard from others in my area that they didn't have much luck either.  (not trying to be confrontational at all, just would like to hear what worked for you.)

I'm also curios about your experience with the refusal to sign a contract. I'd like to see your contract either private or on the FF. Also if they had a specific problem with one aspect or just signing their name in general?

[kentuckyboy]

I charge the same price at my place or on location. I justify this by explaining to the customer that they don't pay a set-up fee, they don't have to provide an offbearer, they save their time, and they don't have a mess to clean up.

[Cedarman]

VA-sawyer brings up the age old problem of what to charge. Too low and you leave money on the table. Too high and you lose customers.  What are others in the area charging? If on good terms with fellow mill owners, find out how they are doing. Ask some of your old customers what value they perceive in their lumber.  How do they decide whether to have their logs custom sawn or to just go buy some lumber?  There are problably a lot of other questions to ask to figure out the right price. Take all this into account, set your price.
( And then still wonder if you are too high or too low, and if the lull is something you did or outside your control)

I found with our lumber sales, the right price seemed to be when a few customers said we were too high, but a good number said they were happy.  We ask them how they feel about our pricing.

[raycon]

I seldom mill off my property but around here the going rate is $65/hr with a setup fee.
The mill owners charging that rate have the LT40 supers or hydraulic mills. If there milling at 150-300 bdft/hr   puts the bdft cost at $.20-.40bdft range.
Only one guy I know charges by the board foot and runs a 100% manual mill.
 Visited a couple of tree services over the last couple of weeks. They all owned mills as well Lucas, Woodmizer, Timber Harvester models. Each yard had a 100 logs ready to mill with no one to sell wood to. A couple had kilns and edgers. All were scheduling time for a firewood processor to come convert the logs to fire wood. I get the feeling if someone offered market value for the equipment 50% of the tree services  I visited would sell there mills.
I put an offer on one of the woodmizers which was tentatively accepted. Will find out in the next week or two for sure.

One issue I see around here is the lack of kilns the two that I know of that service the public ask $1 a bdft for that service. Whether or not they get that is another question. So the log owner may be at $2+ bdft for milled,planed,kiln dried when its all said and done. I wonder if the lack of drying and secondary services(planing, molders etc) in an area deters the homeowner from bringing in a mill?

[VA-Sawyer]

Gilman,

Don't sweat it. I didn't read any confrotation in your question at all. It just sounded like you felt your ads didn't pay off.
I had two things in my favor when I started this business. First, Isabel went through in the middle of Sept and we started ops at the end of Oct. People were looking for help with all their down trees. The second thing that helped was Shirley is a bit of an artist. She drew up an ad with two beavers in the foreground and a log on ground. It really stood out when scaning the paper. I heard a lot of comments about being the "guy with the beaver ad", that told me the ad was being seen. Only problem was a lot of people that called were looking for someone to take down their trees.We ran the ad in the local paper which covers the county pretty well. I haven't placed any ads in the larger paper that covers a larger area. Their prices are quite a bit higher and I would end up traveling a lot further to those customers.
We recently started a redesigned ad in the local paper. It includes a drawing of a sawblade and no beavers. It has a better explaination of what we do. So far ( three runs) it has produced only one call. A fellow looking for me to take down 2  trees... go figure!

My contract reads pretty much like the samples here on the Forum. Customer said he just didn't sign contracts. If he had stated a problem with something in it, I may have considered doing the job without one. It was his refusal without an acceptable explaination that made Shirley and I decide to pass. I have cut for other customers without a contract, but it was normally because I forgot to get the signed copy in my hands before setting up the mill. ( I usally leave the contract for them to read and sign whenever I go out to bid on the job. )
Does this answer your questions ?   ;)
I'm still looking for answers,
VA-Sawyer

[VA-Sawyer]

Wow, while I was writing a response to Gilman, I got two more replies.

Cedarman, I haven't yet had a customer complain about my price being too high. Does that mean I should be thinking of raising instead of lowering ?  ;D  I think you hit the nail on the head. Set the price best you can and then keep wondering if you got it right !  

Ray,  we don't have much secondary processing around here either. I have had a few potential clients say that they would use me if I could provide Kiln-Dried lumber. I have gotten a little more serious about working on my solar kiln lately. The business side of things is always the harder for me to figure out. I can get the job done, it's just making it pay off that I have problems with.  :D
VA-Sawyer

[Gilman]

I don't think us NW's are going to get much business from a huricane so we'd better take some other rout. :D

Sounds like you timed your first ad run perfectly.

Thanks for the input.

[Kevin_H.]

We charge the same board foot price for logs brought to us, we do drop the set up fee. but most of the time if we are going portable we drop the set up fee for anything over 1000 bf. anyway.

We also raised our prices this spring when the fuel began to rise, we went from 20 to 25 cents a board foot. we tried to keep the lower prices for our repeat customers, but recently raised them all.

So far we have had no complaints about the price increase.

So Far...

[Kirk_Allen]

VA,
We offer either an hourly rate ($60.00) or by the BDFT ($.25) Their choice prior to cutting, with additional $.05 for BDFT for quarter saw.  Our minimum charge is $100.00 with a $25.00 set up fee.  If the mill has to be relocated during the cutting an additional $20.00 is applied.

The items outlined in my post generate an additional $.05 BDFT.  I have also had to include in our contract that we reserve the right charge by the hour for what I call waste logs.  I have had some folks bring the tops to some old red Oaks that must have had 8 main branches on it and trying to move those types of logs simply eat up the clock and your liucky to make #4 grade.

I have not had a single complaint yet and continue to get great tips ($50.00 - best so far) and great refererals.  I have done ZERO advertising.  

[VA-Sawyer]

Thanks Kirk, sounds like pricing isn't my main trouble. I'll have to keep cooking my brain on this.
VA-Sawyer

[Cedarman]

I look at my business as a balancing act with three balls.
Logs to saw.
Equipment to do it.
Marketing what we processed.
It is rare that all are in harmony.
Too many logs versus not enough logs.
Customers want planing, buy planer. Customers want dried wood, build drying room. Customers want peeled posts, get peeler. Customers want trim, buy moulder. Customers want 8 x 12 x 24 foot beams, tell them good luck and point them to western red cedar. Excuse to visit wood shows to look at more equipment.
Phone rings too much. Phone doesn't ring, pick it up to see if it is working.
Lots of work to keep everything balanced and pricing is one of the ways to help balance.
Need more logs raise price.
Just how much secondary processing do we really want to do.
We need to have that marketing plan. Prices too high or too low. Do we need to work on sales?
Oh, what action to be in the sawdust business.

[Bruce_A]

VA;  If you really want more saw work, let the mill break down and commmit to another type of employment.  People will beat your door down with work when you don't have time to do it.

[Frank_Pender]

I have been sawing lumber for about 13 years. ;D I began charging $ .14.5 cents per bd. ft. and I am now at $.24 cents per bd.ft. for Douglas Fir as well as other such soft woods.  From there the price goes up on the various hardwoods we may have in the area.  My highest fee is for Cedars as they are the roughest on the shanks and teeth due in part to the fiber structure of the wood.   :'( That fee is $.28.5 cents per board foot.   So. 5.5 cents over 12 years, is that then a what %  increase?  ??? Does it meet the general costs of liveing over that period of time?  I do not know, but I am having fun, spending money, doing more secondary processing and handling and still having fun.  8) I just turned down a house job a few days ago, as I did not want to get into a big cutting job for this Fall.   I turned over the potential job to Loren in hopes he gets to do the job.   ;D

[sigidi]

T'riffic info guys - especially for a fella' pretty new to this.

Do you all charge a set-up fee for mobile milling?
What about different timber species, different price for all of you?
What about slabbing, is this charged out at similar rates?
What's the best kind of marketing you've found, local area papers or word of mouth?
How long have you folkes found before $'s start coming in?

I undertand there's a few q's but I know you guys are all up to it ;)

[Kirk_Allen]

T'riffic info guys - especially for a fella' pretty new to this.

Do you all charge a set-up fee for mobile milling?
What about different timber species, different price for all of you?
What about slabbing, is this charged out at similar rates?
What's the best kind of marketing you've found, local area papers or word of mouth?
How long have you folkes found before $'s start coming in?

I undertand there's a few q's but I know you guys are all up to it ;)

Sigidi:
1. Yes - $25.00
2. Yes - $.25 bdft for most hardwood, $.30 for White Oak, and Hickory, and $.35 bdft for Osage Orange
3. No, Slabbing is minimal time and I don't charge for that.
4. Word of mouth is still the best advertisement.  Second would be, if your mobile, eat your lunch while sitting on the mill in a parking lot of a local restaurant.  I can always get a customer or two over lunch and that leads to more after the first cutting we do for them.
5. Money came in first cutting job 8)  How long before a profit?  Lots of variables for that one.  Looks like this year I will show a good profit, but still working on creating some expenses to offset that.  Like my new shop for processing 8)

Kirk

[Minnesota_boy]

1.  No, I never charge a setup fee.  I probably should, but I have plenty of competition here and while the other guys park their mills for weeks at a time, I only park mine when the weather gets too bad.  I almost always have sawing to do.  I give up $$ for the setup fee, but keep $$$ coming in all the time.

2. I charge the same for all species, but reserve the choice to not do a job if there is no money in it.

3. For slabbing jobs, I scale the logs and charge by that scale.  When sawing lumber I usually get more lumber than the log would scale, but when cutting slabs, there is no edging to be done, saving me time.

4. Word of mouth is the only advertising I have done since the first year I got the mill. (1996)  I do a good job at what the customers feel is a reasonable price, so they talk.  I have some that I go back to over and over.

5. The dollars come in as soon as I finish a job.  It took me a full 2 years to pay off the mill, but by then the jobs became more frequent and my volume per hour had gone up as I had learned the short cuts.

[oakiemac]

I charge $25 setup fee and $.25/bdft for custom sawing, No setup fee if logs are brought to me.
I have found that there is not much call for mobile sawing in my area. So far this year I have only done about 3 mobile jobs. I do have 2 big ones coming up this fall. I would have "starved to death" by just counting on the mobile sawing.
I have found sawing then selling green and kiln dried lumber to more profitable and more to my liking than mobile sawing. I have a full time job besides milling so when I can find a few hours here and there  then I go to the mill and saw. If mobile sawing, then I'm on the customers schedule and need to find an empty day or two to do the job.
The down side to selling lumber is marketing, finding logs, dealing with customers, finding logs, and more marketing. But I also find it more rewarding.
VA-sawyer, if you are slow right now try hooking up with a big production mill and saw their old logs into cants/boards before they go bad. I just hooked up with an outfit that has hundreds of logs that have been in their yard for a long time and they want me to saw cants for their pallet mill. I will probably do this all winter long. The owner said that I have about a years worth of work to do!

[DR Buck]

I've been charging $.25 bdft since I started sawing in February this year.  I've had no complaints about price, although I lost one job to someone that did it for $.15 bdft.  

I recently established a minimum fee of $200 plus mileage to go on site.  This is to cover the single tree suburbanites mention in a post above.  If I hit the 800 bd ft point then I charge $.25 bdft.

I charge $1.00 per mile one-way travel fee and no initial setup charge.  $25 if I have to move the mill to a different location on site.

Of course, like others, I charge for blades broken by foreign matter in logs.

VA Sawyer,

I only saw on weekends, and have more work that I can handle.  I've been turning down some jobs recently to give myself some free time.  

As far as advertising goes, the local newspaper story on my milling (mentioned in a prior post) worked wonders in getting me started .  But since then I have been targeting the people with trees.  I have a flier and business cards posted in all the farm supply stores and feed mills in three counties.  Also have one of the local fixed mills referring me to the suburbanite customers.

[neslrite]

    I get $60/hr to saw and $1.00/mile oneway travel and set up, I get 1/2 of my customers from advertising in the local Reminder newspaper 1/4 from the Website and 1/4 word of mouth.
    This is my 3rd year in business and I have had about 15 repeat customers.
    Ray,
  We will be offering kiln dry service starting this winter, my Dad bought a nyle and we should be able to run about 3000bf in it.
  We started the site work for the building today and the trees come down tomorrow 8), I will post pics .
Kevin  
  

[neslrite]

I forgot to mention,
   I have 1 hour minimum.
    About 1/3 of my work is suburbanites, they tend to be the most fun because they look at every board coming off the mill like it is gold.
Kevin