What to charge for brush hogging
There are two ways to price it, by the acre or by the hour, and both come from one number: what an hour of you and the tractor costs you. Work out the hours the field takes, price them at that cost, pick a price above it, and divide by the acres.
By TailGateBid. .
By the acre or by the hour
A price by the hour is what the hour costs you with something left on top. A price by the acre is the same money seen from the field's side: what the whole job costs you, plus what you keep, divided by the acres.
What joins the two is how many acres you cover in an hour. Nobody else can give you that figure. It belongs to your tractor, your cutter and that field, and the boxes below work it out.
From acres to hours
- The width of the cutter in feet, times your ground speed in miles an hour, divided by 8.25: that is the most acres you could cover in an hour. The sum comes from Iowa State University's extension service, and 8.25 is the square feet in an acre divided by the feet in a mile.
- You never cover all of it. Turns, overlap between passes and stops take a share, and the guide calls what is left field efficiency.
- Multiply by what you really cover of every 100. Divide the acres of the field by the answer, and you have your hours on the field.
- The drive to the field and back, the loading and the daily service are not in that share: the guide leaves them out on purpose. Add them yourself.
Two numbers only you can measure
- Your ground speed. Mark off 88 feet in the field, drive it at working speed and count the seconds. 60 divided by the seconds is your miles an hour: 12 seconds is 5 miles an hour. The method is from the same guide.
- What you really cover. The box starts at 70 of every 100. A second Iowa State guide assumes 70 percent for a 2 acre job with a walk-behind mower, and 80 percent for a 6 foot mower under a compact tractor. Neither is a figure for cutting brush on rough ground, and the guide gives none, so treat 70 as a place to start and not as an answer.
- Your own record beats both. Acres finished, divided by the hours you were on the field, is what you really cover in an hour. Keep it for a few jobs and you no longer need the sum.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the field
These boxes turn the acres, your cutter and your speed into hours, and put the size and the hours in the calculator below.
The speed you really hold in that field.
Turns, overlap and stops take the rest. It starts at 70; put in your own.
Loading, the drive there and back, the corners the cutter cannot reach. Yours to type.
Type the acres, the width of your cutter and your speed. The hours show here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each acre.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
One field, worked through
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a field is 5 acres, your cutter is 6 feet wide and you hold 4 miles an hour. That is 2.91 acres an hour at the most. Say you really cover 70 of every 100: 2.04 acres an hour, so 2.46 hours on the field. Say loading and the drive add 2.54: 5 hours for the job. Say an hour of you and the tractor costs you $57.05 and fuel is $40. The job costs you $325.25. Charge $465 and you keep $139.75, which is $30 of every $100. On this field that is $93 an acre.
The same field at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $362 | $36.75 | $10 |
| $407 | $81.75 | $20 |
| $465 | $139.75 | $30 |
| $543 | $217.75 | $40 |
| $651 | $325.75 | $50 |
The hour has to carry the tractor
If the hour you price with is only your pay, the tractor works for nothing. Its payment, its insurance, its blades and its repairs belong in your overhead, and overhead belongs in what an hour costs you.
Work out what an hour costs you with the machine in it, then bring that figure here. Fuel for the job goes in the materials box.
Or give the tractor an hour of its own. Work out what an hour of the machine costs you, with its fuel, and add it to your own hour. Count the tractor one way or the other, not both, and when its fuel is in its hour leave the materials box for anything else the job uses up.
A small field still costs you the trip
Loading and the drive take the same time for one acre as for ten. Put a small field through the boxes with the real drive in the other hours, and look at what the job costs you before you say a price. That figure is the least the job can go out for, however few acres it is. What a trip costs you works the drive and the loading out by themselves.
On a quote
In TailGateBid you describe the work in your own words, choose what it is charged by, an acre or an hour, and type your own price. How rates work.
The same sum, without the boxes for a field, is the job price calculator. For other work you sell by its size, see what to charge for a job.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- Width in feet, times speed in miles an hour, divided by 8.25, is the most acres a machine covers in an hour. The figure is the square feet in an acre divided by the feet in a mile. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, Estimating the Field Capacity of Farm Machines (Ag Decision Maker, File A3-24), .
- The box for what you really cover starts at 70 of every 100. Iowa State's guide to compact equipment assumes 70 percent for a 2 acre job with a walk-behind mower, and 80 percent for a 6 foot mower under a compact tractor. Starting at the lower one is our choice. Neither is a figure for your machine on your ground: put in your own. Iowa State University Extension, Finding the Right Machine for the Job: Compact Power Equipment (PM 1976), . (our choice, change it)
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
Related
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- Job price16 hours of work and $600 of materials cost you $1,320. See what five prices would leave you.
- Lawn mowingFrom a lot's length and width to the hours on the mower and a price for each 1,000 square feet.
- Stump grindingAdd up the inches across each stump, then see what the job costs you and what a price for each inch leaves.
- Rates and pricesWhat you charge an hour and for each service, and what you keep of it.
Set your price for an acre or an hour once, and TailGateBid offers it on every quote you build.
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