How to Charge For Tractor Work. Hour Cost Breakdown

[Music] times are tough right now so i get this question a lot can you make money with your tractor i'm going to answer that question hey tell us in the comment section below how much you charge per hour and for what kind of job in today's world the cost of everything seems to be on the rise and tonya and i uh are looking for every way we can to save some money or make a little bit of extra money so if you're new to our channel you know take a look at us we are always looking for ways to save money either cutting our own lumber with our sawmill or planting our own garden always something new here so we are formally inviting you to our homestead adventure let's get back to the subject at hand [Music] i need some new ramps yeah i think so you do too this was the good one look how straight that one is [Music] i think i would slow down and have a fix it day smells so good wish i could smell it beautiful [Music] hey if you're a new tractor operator i've got a tip for you so this pto shaft has a protector on it and back in the old days the pto shaft was just a solid metal shaft and there's been many people that were injured like a shirt a shirt or a belt a long belt hanging off or just anything loose clothing got into the shaft and would wrap up and pull them into the pto and really really hurt some people a lot of people been killed with this so they started putting these pto shaft protector and this basically just rotates freely on the pto shaft and keeps that from ever happening but you need to maintain these on each end there's a grease fitting and it's just a plastic grease fitting but you put your grease gun on there and you push grease into this and what it does there's a little plastic race in there and i got grease on my fingers but there's a little plastic race on the inside and that keeps that lubricated if you don't put greasiness eventually that will burn up and literally melt off there's one on both ends just my tractor tip for the day [Music] i am sure my number one most asked question on the channel is can you make money with your tractor and probably my number two most asked question is how much do you charge per hour well let's break that down how much is it going to cost to get your tractor to the job site you have to think about mileage wear and tear in your vehicle and insurance once you have all that together you need to figure out how much it costs per mile to tow your tractor you guys stick with me i promise you i'll get to question number one can you make money with your tractor [Music] once you know how much it's going to cost you per mile to tow your tractor then you have to figure out how much it's going to cost per hour to operate your tractor this is going to be an average you're going to need to know what your fuel consumption is per hour and the only way you're going to know that is to study it with your tractor a common mistake is forgetting to charge for your implement as well so what i mean by this is you need to assign a an hourly cost for each implement or attachment that you use on your tractor so if you have a rotary cutter then you need to charge so much per hour for the rotary cutter if you have a tiller it needs to have so much be charged for it per hour because these things wear out and need maintenance as well [Music] i'll use this job as an example and show you my formula so chuck calls me up and says hey tony i need you to till my garden how much will that be so chuck's house is about 15 miles from my house so this is my formula so it's 15 miles going to chuck's house but i gotta go both ways so i'll multiply that by two and i charge one dollar per mile as we said before the tractor cost is based upon many factors let's assume that your tractor costs twenty thousand dollars and it has a life expectancy of five thousand dollars so that means you need to charge four dollars per hour just for the replacement cost of the future tractor if i take my tractor in for service it costs about five hundred dollars for every 250 hours of use for maintenance you can knock this down a little bit if you do your own maintenance but for this exercise we'll say you bring it into the dealer my tractor burns about one gallon of fuel per hour based upon what i'm doing so we'll just say an average of one gallon per hour could be more or less depending on the implement pulled fuel runs about three dollars a gallon right now so we'll just say it takes uh three dollars per hour in fuel hey y'all hang in there with me we're gonna get to it i promise the last part of the tractor cost is the surprise cost if you run over a piece of steel and cut a tire you know you got to prepare for that and have some money put back for it so charge a little bit on each job for that eventuality [Music] using this formula my small tractor cost about fourteen dollars an hour to operate we've talked about transportation costs we've talked about the cost of operating the tractor now let's talk about people calls what does it take for you what are you worth per hour so only you can say what you are worth per hour you have to make that determination for my area i charge about 20 bucks per hour [Music] this job cost about 30 for mileage about one hour's worth of tractor time 14 bucks about an hour and a half of human time chaining it down and doing the job that's a grand total of 79 the expenses that no one talks about insurance we need a little bit of insurance today because of the world we live in if we tear somebody's property up they're gonna expect to be compensated for it if you have a business you're gonna be expected to pay taxes on your income if you don't pay your taxes or if you don't have some insurance this is what we call here is running dirty [Music] now it's time to answer the question can you make money with a tractor well the answer is yes and no if you manage your cost and pay attention to the details you absolutely can make some money with your tractor if you just wing it guarantee you're going to lose out hey don't forget to make your customer happy you

Channel: Tony's Tractor Adventure Homestead

Views: 75,599

Rating: 4.9083333 out of 5

Keywords: can you make money with a tractor, how to start a business, how to, how to make money, how to make money with a tractor, how to make money with a compact tractor, make money with a tractor, best way to make money with a tractor, can you make money with a utility tractor, tym tractor, can you make moeny with a tractor, tym tractors, kubota, john deere, kioti, ls tractor, mahindra tractor, massey ferguson tractor, yanmar tractor, branson tractor

Id: Q2avTVx-CPE

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021