How busy are you this year compared to other years?

We, the smart but far more likely just plain lucky of us menfolk, have brilliant women in our lives for many reasons...one perhaps not intended at the outset but surely must be true if we are honest with our selves, is certainly to keep our egos in check :D.
 
I have started covering a much larger area for work out of necessity and demand. I usually like to stay within 30 minutes drive, however that has now increased to an hour each way. I do live in a very rural area and nothing is close.
Charge accordingly, your time is valuable. It might be a stupid little job but you have hours of road time.
 
Eh, I'm with Burnham for the most part. But as usual I differ in the details...

@cory, you exhibit some considerable grace to shrug off what I would call an insult.

I can't say that I'd get particularly offended, but I would certianly point out how it was a pretty crappy move. But I'd do it later on, flippantly, with apparent good humor, the next time I was helping him.

Mom said, kill em with kindness.

Used properly, honesty can deliver blunt-force-trauma.
 
Frankly, I still after more than 45 years of trying to learn better, can have issues hearing what my beloved westcoast born and raised wife is saying straight out, rather than interpreting them through the filter of the hidden cutthroat messages my mother and even more sweetly vicious grandmother laid just under the surface of their communication with me all those many decades ago.
 
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This is a fascinating conversation! Especially interested in the impact of travel time since my wife and I have analogous experiences in her work as a visiting social worker and mine as a industrial/commercial electrician.
My wife is like Sean Kroll. She mostly gets clients in her urban zip-code which means a short walk or at most a 15 minute drive! By contrast I often commute 1 to 1.5 hours with no gas or labor pay. Sometimes the company will have me driving an hour north to work near another employees house who is driving an hour south to work near my house! This in-efficiency drives my wife up the wall! I think it’s just the way it’s always been and out of my control. Like Kile’s wife she also hated when I went on the road during the 08 recession. Work does seem to be slowing down for the company I work for. Still enough for their core people but they are using less temporary labor and easing up on the overtime. I see lots of commercial and residential new construction driving around but we seem to have less of the industrial machinery adding and musical chairs we did in other times.
 
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I'm looking at maybe having more time for working on the milling ends of thing. I need to make some covered, level storage for drying and a sawmill shed or cover.

Better weather is here, so more calls will come in.
 
I'm insanely slow for mid spring, have a 2 day back log:whine::\::\:

Here is a recent vid with world class tree guy Mark Chisholm, he starts with comments re current work load. Other good stuff from him too. He is super legit.

 
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Sounds like my schedule. As of last Saturday, we had this week scheduled and a couple more later in the month.
Phone rang. Now I have two morw weeks before I need to find work..
Those of you that know me here, know full well we are normally 2-3 months out.
 
I saw another tree guy on FB recently saw he was 9 months booked out, seems to have no decent gear.

Clearly not pricing right.

As for me, steady as she goes, not fighting them off with a shitty stick, but working every day.
 
9 months???

Firstly, I don't believe it even a little bit and secondly that's just plain stupid. As if there is a numb nuts on earth who would wait 9 mos. for treework. 2+ months is insane imo opinion but 9 months? Um no.

FB BS to the max
 
That got my attention too. Dunno what's typical for this stuff, and I'm sure there's jobs where people are cool with "some time this year", but I'd think most would be calling other companies when told "9 months".
 
Total joke. I presume calling the guy a tree guy is a massive stretch.
 
Its been steady,off to a good start with some larger commercial jobs.

Slowing down now, but thats just the good weather effecting peoples habits.They will soon be spending more time at home.

Talking about clients going with the low bidder. There was a client of mine here that for the past 17 years I would visit to have a look at her large Sycamore tree,a real beauty of a specimen right out the front of her house.I would do this free of charge as the Tree was in slow decline and she wanted to keep it as long as possible. Each vist would have taken probably an hour all up with driving there and off to the next bid,so 17 hours all up over the years.

She Emails me saying that with a heavy heart the tree has to go,I go over for now the 18th time,write out the bid and by the time I got home she had Emailed me saying she had gone with a lower bidder.

Man was I fuming,I thought about writing a reply to her illuminating the fact that she had received free advice for nearly two decades at my cost,but honestly if she is that cheap and selfish it would simply be yet more wasted time.
 
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