Business Management tips and tricks

We so often get into climbing and felling technical tips and tricks.

Here is an open-ended thread for business tips and tricks, from how to handle being overloaded with work during storm response, to tax avoidance strategies, to employee management/ discipline/ review/ advancement/ training, to...


One thing that I learned this year when a wind/ rain storm came through, was to have a tarp and tar in truck, and always drive the work truck when a job might come in and be a matter of now or not at all.

My childcare fell through the morning of a storm. I drove D to preschool in my SUV/ family-mobile, rather than my work truck. I got a call as I arrived at the preschool for a tree on a house, pierced roof in two places, 5 miles away. When I got there, I could pull the two broken branch stubs out of the roof. I could have slapped some roof tar and a tarp on the house, and had it dry in 5- 10 minutes. If I had a saw on me, I could have zipped off a few more branches and cleared the roof, coming back the next day with loader, chipper, chip truck.

A miscommunication between owner and property management company resulted in me receiving the owner's call (elderly lady in poor health in doctor's appointments that morning) when I was 5 minutes from arrival (tarp, tar, all my gear) telling me the property management company hired someone out of the area (30-40 miles away). Poor safety, dull saws.

Could have easily charged $2500-3000 and had some cedar saw logs to take down the road to a friend's mill.

I call the tip, Stake the Claim.


Also, since I had no childcare, and Gary had a lot of personal stuff, and I didn't have any pressing work, I told him he could go home. Had I paid him to hang out and do maintenance instead, I could have gotten that job.



I did have Gary work other days, as such, in relation to that storm. One job came out of it for $1000 to get 4 fir with root disease down, all felled. $500-600 of that $1000 paid him a couple days wages and payroll taxes/ WC. He got a little easy work time, and I got some maintenance work tasks checked off.


Also, have all your saws filled and sharp, gear organized, etc, if a storm may come in. It might make the difference between finishing one storm job and starting another, or losing out on the second.

Before I go to bed...
Chris (tucker943 or something on here) was doing some sort of line clearance for an oil company last winter, anyway there'd been some sort of cock up and the bosses asked him to go back at the weekend and do some extra stuff (their fault)
There was some sort of penalty clause and they were over a barrel. Now, some people would have said "oh well, they've given us some work, I'll do them a favour on this one, I'm sure they'll appreciate it"
But no, he properly took them to the cleaners, and rightfully so.
Moral is, when the planets align and there is a once in a while chance to really make hay, you HAVE to take it, otherwise you're throwing money away.
Oh yeah, do your books weekly or you'll forget stuff.

Very simple. If you're not happy with what you make. Charge more and spend less.

Its an interesting topic, I found that a few scattered failed trees locally are nothing to get excited about, sure its work but often its still only paying standard rates with Hos expecting express service - whats the point if the schedule is full.

I felt the same. I never welcomed stormwork when I was booked out 4-6weeks solid and already given up a weekend or two to stay on schedule. I ended up loathing when the wind would blow.

Ditto. I am booked (with a few Windows of opportunity each month jic) into april.And here comes the storm work right in the middle of the holidays plus rescheduling due to weather...... arrrg!!!!!
My bread and butter are my repeats that I see regular. You will pay dearly to have me let you cut in line.

Exactly. I've done my time rushing around for people. If they're not a regular they pay dearly for storm work. I'm rather busy with my "side " work. My boss is the same way. We have so many contracts that we must respond to that new storm work is loathed. Basically the only storm work we do other than contract is high stakes high dollar. But yes Sean, in most cases one must be ready for anything at any time.

One thing I've learned is when a customer isn't happy, you drop what you can and figure out the problem. We have been lucky with good customers but that's also due to highly defined work orders. It used to be stump clean up that would come up. Now it's brought up at the time of the estimate and multiple times before the work is done. That and the occasional " I didn't think there would be that much wood".