Restaurant Sales Question

[leftyscott]

I am a small scale wood provider to a local restaurant (ex bro-inlaw) still on good terms. I provide them 1/3 cord of hickory every month for $75. My bil met a guy who owns a tree cutting company. Turns out this guy dumps tons of wood including hickory. Bil starts hauling wood to his rest. I'm offering to bring my splitter and split it as he gathers it. Trying to figure out a reasonable fee for me and the splitter. Wood is cut to size so all I need to do is split it. I spend $9 in gas per round trip. I'm thinking $30 per 1/3 cord to cover labor and costs. This sound like a fair offer?

Thanks,

 

[blades]

To bad you are too far away, at that price I would have you splitting wood 6 days a week 10 hrs a day.

 

[Jon1270]

That's not a business proposition, it's a gift. I don't have a hydraulic splitter so I don't know how much time it takes to split a third of a cord, but there's also the time to drive there, the wear and tear on the truck and equipment, the risk of damaging yourself or something you'd be liable for fixing. Just extrapolating a bit, if it's $9 in gas then it's... what, 40 miles round trip? By the IRS's reckoning, that's more than $20 worth of driving costs just going by their standard mileage rate. You've noticed that a plumber charges $50 just to walk in your front door, right?

If you've been okay with $70 for a 1/3 cord delivery, I'd say you could offer to come and split a similar quantity for $65. Seriously. Even at that, you're not going to get rich. What's valuable here is not the wood; it's the labor and time and equipment use and risk that costs money, and the fact that the wood is already there saves very little. If your brother in law wants to save money on firewood, tell him to buy a secondhand chainsaw and a maul.

 

[Paulywalnut]

Ex BIL charge him more

 

[billb3]

doesn't sound like enough to me

 

[basod]

Why don't you get the wood supplier to dump at your place if possible - might get some hardwoods for the fireplace instead of the smoker as well
I'd say $50 minimum - to me wood is just wood until you've processed it(hickory can be valuable wood though). I'd say it takes ~25-30 mins to set up and split that much cut wood plus your travel.
If he has more room to store it you might be able to cut it down to bi -monthly splitting trips.

Does he smoke the wood green and has gas fired rotisserie? or was the stuff you were delivering seasoned?

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I would consider charging by the hour. Do you also have to stack it? For sure then by the hour.

 

[Ram 1500 with an axe...]

Even if it took you 3 hours round trip to do all that you said, you would be working for $7 an hour, that s not even minimum wage here in nj.....your supplying heavy equipment, your traveling to the place, and your labor..... You need to charge by the hour and factor all three of those things into your hourly rate..... Why ont you ask how much he is willing to pay per hour for you to do it? Surely his dishwasher makes near what you are talking about.....if not more......

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Calculate the hourly wage including travel time, and it's probably going to be you doing him a favor. He might get a schmuck to do this sort of manual labor for really cheap, and that might be the right financial decision in running a business. If he's lucky, it works out.

 

[jackatc1]

The old adage, "Time is money" Plus expense's.

 

[Ram 1500 with an axe...]

If he rented a splitter at HD, it goes for $60 for a few hours or $100 for a day. Then he has to haul it back and forth and still pay an employee per hour to do the work....