How to price wide slab planing / sanding services

[stanmillnc]

Been getting more inquiries lately for large slab flattening services on customer supplied wood. How do you guys with large planer / sanders charge for this? By the board foot? By the amount of passes, or time it takes to process? Obviously, the bigger the slab, the harder it is to handle and something really wonky takes many more passes than relatively flat stock. I want to make sure I'm fair and competitive, but also concerned about payback for this expensive machine - 43" Timesavers two head planer / sander. Thanks!

[Den-Den]

By the hour would be simple and fair.  A hour / minute counter on the power circuit could provide documentation.  By the pound of material removed would be easier for the customers to understand and also fair but would require some effort to measure with reasonable accuracy.  With either you might want to add a set-up fee.

[Ljohnsaw]

Just weigh the slab before and after 😜 Then you also get credit for drying, too!

I'd say by the hour if wonky and square foot if nice.

[GAB]

When dealing with slabs the term that comes to my mind is potato chip in potato chip out.  So to my way of stinking thinking you need to have one size flat before you can use a planer or a sander.
Please enlighten me as to where I am wrong in my assessment.
GAB

[scsmith42]

We charge by the minute for millwork services. Our rate is $3.00 per minute.

Our equipment is fairly high HP and reasonably fast. The jointer/planer is around 50hp, the wide belt sander is 100hp, and the horizontal resaw is 30 hp.

Moulder work is priced by the bd ft. Sometimes there is a setup charge.

Price includes consumables and 2 workers. We do not run any type of reclaimed thru our millwork equipment.

[Ianab]

By the hour makes sense. Obviously if you have a 50 hp planer it's going to do a lot more work per minute than a 5 hp one, but costs a lot more to buy and operate. 

You will soon be able to give clients an estimate of how long an X by Y slab is going to take to process. If it's cupped it's going to need a few passes, if it's stupidly hard wood it's going to be slower going etc. 

Then you work that back to how many dollars per hour it needs to be to make some profit. As well as machine time, there is that initial setup, loading and unloading, and the paperwork . Even if the machine only ran for 30 mins, you probably spent an hour on the whole job. Make sure you account for that time as well.  More of an issue with the small jobs, where you get to the end of the day, and only have 3 hours of machine time, So a "setup charge" might make sense for smaller jobs. Covers the unloading / loading time etc. Then the hour / minute rate that it actually takes on the machine. 

So at one extreme. If someone drops you in a days work of slabs, then the setup charge is chump change. You can get ~7 hours of chargeable machine work in. OR, if it's 8 small jobs, that only need 30 mins machine time each, then you have the Setup charges to cover all that the messing about. 

[customsawyer]

I do by the bf on the planers and by the SF on the Slabmizer.

Gab do you remember watching us plane the two pallets of pine slabs at the project? With that planer the heads are far enough apart that it will remove most "potato chip" out of the slabs. The worst are if they are twisted. Then I will have to use the joiner to get a flat reference spot to start with. 

[GAB]

I do by the bf on the planers and by the SF on the Slabmizer.

Gab do you remember watching us plane the two pallets of pine slabs at the project? With that planer the heads are far enough apart that it will remove most "potato chip" out of the slabs. The worst are if they are twisted. Then I will have to use the joiner to get a flat reference spot to start with. 

Jake:
I remember you running the material, however I wasn't paying attention to the quality of the material you were feeding in.
Remember that not every one has toys like you do.
GAB