Stump removal business

eleven how's everybody doing today I just want to make a video here I get gonna ask questions all the time about you know stump removal what it takes to stump grinding business maybe some things that you need or have to have it's there's a lot to it I mean I guess I can say if you're doing the stump grinding burrito game or you're trying to get in this might be a helpful video for you it's all going to be about this here you know getting rid of stumps we're going to big stumps we'll probably do a few different videos pertaining to it you know some things you need dealing with customers getting new customers maintaining your machines just just all around all around DeLand and I'm trying to help you guys out through it I don't do this profession you know I don't do videoing professionally I don't know this this isn't what I do right my grand stumps but you know I'm gonna try to help you guys out the best by hand lots of questions flying around I get asked almost daily by you know former people that I've worked with or family members on things like that I live here in western my name is Jake Tate I own a company called tactical stump removal we're in western Pennsylvania beaver county to be specific work probably we are one of the best grinders in our area and I say one of the best because I have respect for the other grinders in our area we've got guys who have been doing this a long time a lot longer than I have that I would that I would trust to you know come to my house grinder stomp do it the correct way and you know I wouldn't have to worry about it so these are some you know important things that will kind of go over right now this video is going to be basically a little bit of everything and then we will get more into it later on with you know future videos and things like that so if you're interested in stump grinding and you want to start your own business or something like that go ahead and you know hit the like and subscribe button now and keep an eye out you know for for more content I tend to ramble a lot so you know you're gonna have to bear with me again I'm a professional YouTube revenue we think about that type of stuff so no you know we'll work through together so this here is my rake o RG 45 of XR it is a 45 horsepower Kubota turbo diesel stump grinder I would consider this a small to medium style stop this is a very good with residential stuff grinder it can fit into tight places and it can still get the job done pretty quickly grinders are going to start you know there's going to be different styles of grinders to kind of go over some of the ones that you know you can start with would be your your push style handlebar units where you can you know pull up to the stump and grind it side to side things like that then you'll move up to like a 25 horsepower self-propelled unit there's the next step up from that might be a thirty five horsepower gasoline self-propelled unit and then they go up from there or what way up to you know huge industrial who lives or style cutters that can handle huge areas and things like that so the business in general it's going to take a few things when you start to stop grinding the business you have to have a plan you have to want to work towards a goal I guess I should say it's just like anything else you're not going to just go buy stuff grinder and get a truck in how to work these things are going to take time absolutely necessities you will need a truck you will need a trailer who need their stump grinder and a few handfuls and it would really help if you had a chainsaw so me personally I bought the Chevy 2500 HD it's an over truck into 2007 I have the trailer that was I made for this machine just for the ease ability that I guess I should say I can pull this machine right onto the trailer drop a pin and the way out though I don't have to do a whole lot of changing into things like that I can get it off the trailer just as fast as I get it on things like that so yeah you're definitely going to need the truck and you'll have to start with a stump grinder no I tell everyone work within your means you don't want to go out and buy a brand spanking new grinder if you don't have the money for a brand new grinder this is an investment that's going to pay itself off within five maybe ten years like I said you're not gonna have to work right out the back so you have your truck you have your grinder some hand tools you might need would be a rake I carry your standard break and then I also carry a larger aluminum landscape rake I also carry a flat shovel a leaf blower and I currently am running a steel M s 250 farm loss and a steel 461 my farm boss has a 20 inch bar on it I live it has an 18 inch bar on it and my 460 one has the 8 inch bar line so I can title quite a few jobs with those two chainsaws some other things you're going to carry with you are going to be teeth you're going to want extra teeth extra pockets extra bolts you know and things that like air filters if you live in a dry area and you're dealing with a lot of dust and sometimes you might have to change out order throughout the day but those are really your basic things that you need to take with you and take them with you all the time you'd really today that you believe in hope is the day that you'll probably need it so yeah those are those are really some things that you'll you probably deal on the way some other things that we can talk about is how to how to get customers and there's there's a few different ways that you can go about doing this you're going to have to advertise people have to know that you're the guy that's going to be random stumps also I might add that some other thing that you might want to purchase before going out is insurance insurance is a big thing the last thing you want to do is damage someone's property and not have the means to pay for it so let's take a step back and talk about that for a second insurance is probably going to be one of those things that you have god forbid you accidentally cut through someone's gas line or electric or hit a water line or kick the rock up and they glow with glow a rock through a Ferrari window these are things that can actually happen so insurance and burying Potter if you know important and you're going to want to price those things out insurance can can be very pricey for a machine like this it can run you know fifty fifty five thousand dollars if I accidentally roll this machine down a hill and I didn't have insurance you're basically left with a ret grinder nobody's going to cover the cost for that you're out underground you're so those are some some really important things to do and that's also going to play an effect with the way you advertise if you advertise that you are insured if you carry proof of insurance people will trust you more and know that you're actually legit you want to give you touch with your state and figure out what type of license you need to operate a business out of your state I live here in Pennsylvania it's it's very simple so really to start these these businesses it's not hard as long as you have the money or the backing you can start a stump grinding business and you can actually do it pretty affordably this do you guys might have a pickup truck you can pick up a trailer for maybe a thousand dollars or 1500 to get started you could buy like a little premier 2 5 2 self-propelled and I suggest staying away from the handlebar grinders there they're not very efficient they're cheap but you're going to go home really tired at the end of the day and for the price if you can spend maybe a thousand dollars more you can actually get into something like 4 rear 2 5 2 or the Reiko rge 25 or RG 35 they're all you know you're going to do some researching and find out you know what company's going to work best for you what I always tell people is deal with the companies that are nearby and the reason I say that is I don't have a Carlton sitting here right now Carlton is a very good grinder and I think most of the grinders out today are very good but I don't live in North Carolina I live in Pennsylvania and then two and a half hours from rooster Ohio that is where this machine was built and this is that's where this machine gets maintained so maybe you live an hour away from a premier dealer maybe you live you know somewhere close to Carla and they're things like that that I always like I said that's why I always with that because if this machine breaks down today I can go to it's not going to kill me to drive two and a half hours to looser I can have that part I can have a foot on that night and I can be back to work tomorrow so that's that's kind of an important thing so we'll go back to you know how to get clients I know I'm jumping around and like I said I'll probably do that a few times I'm sorry so now you have your your truck your trailer your equipment you have insurance you've talked to the state and you've got your your business license now it's time to think about how we're going to get customers so some of the things that I do personally may be the work for you maybe they want I use Facebook obviously a little bit of YouTube but I don't promote really my business over YouTube I used the newspaper and I did contact the company called X media who was able to sort things out Business Bureau things like that anything that you can do to get your name out there is a good thing but you have to be careful you don't want to over advertise and what I mean by that is expand your area try to stick if you can with a radius if you have a radius that you like to work in for me my radius is usually about 3035 miles out I don't typically like to travel outside of that that radius if that was the case I would spend a lot of time driving and I rather do that when I first started I drove all over the place I bought lots of models on my truck and it really just wasn't worth it so get yourself a radius don't over having the pies don't be afraid to tell people I'm sorry they're too far away it's not a big deal I'm sure that there's a grinder out there somewhere that can help them so we talked about the newspaper we talked about advertising through like Google Facebook things like that those are all very good things to advertise on you can use Craigslist really anything that you can do to get your name out there another thing that you can do is contact local tree guidance one of these local tree guys don't have a lot of guys will advertise that they they have or not that they have runners but they offer stump removal and in fact they they really don't they call the guy like myself and then I use I work for those guys I go out and grinders comes for them and you're really helping those guys out so don't be afraid to pick up the phone book or type it on Google or whatever search engine you use tree service tree services near me but you have to be careful and you definitely don't want to get taken advantage of these guys are in business to make money maybe they're charging you $75 per stone they want you to do them for $25 and stuff you have to you have to find a way to keep yourself happy but also keep them happy so you know don't be afraid to explain your situation will typically charge for stuff things like that we'll get a different sized ISM and all that now most of these guys they've been around a while and they know what a typical stuff is work that there are guys out there everywhere in the world that will try to take advantage of you it's not a big deal because remember your your your other thoughts so if you're not happy with something change it I tell this to my guys you name your price on your trees I name my price on my stumps most of my guys will let me make let me do this stuff for the customer I'm not really doing it or the tree that some guys like that you know have their name on the stumps and that's fine too as long as you're happy that's all that matters so really we we talked about how to find the work and all of that so now once we get the work how do we charge how do we how do we do these jobs without or without not getting the drugs looks how do we get these jobs so that's part of the this stuff business that I really don't like I hate driving around doing things I like to do the work but unfortunately that's going to become a part of your job people are going to call you and they're going to let estimates on stumps they're going to know how much you'll charge I never give a price over the phone I will let people know that I have 75 that is out of your price range I'm sorry I cannot afford to move for less than $75 I really could once you do this for so long you kind of get used to I don't want to say you get used to it you don't know how much to charge these it'll all be in their head as soon as you walk up to a stop how much it's worth everybody across the country is different what I do is different than everybody else or you know vice versa everybody's got their own way to bid stuff some guys will pull on a tape measure your charge per inch that's fine some guys know just by looking at a stuff that it's going to take them maybe an hour this machine here I expected to make somewhere between 150 to 200 dollars and ours does some people just charge hourly it's there's so many different variables and you're just going to have to do what works best for you do the job for what it's worth for you if they decline you know you do it in the job that's funny you know there's always going to be another one but you'll learn you're not going to make a ton of money everybody thinks that when this grammar shows up to their house and then thirty minutes I take a hundred-dollar bill off of them some people get upset about what they don't realize is is all of the maintenance and upkeep all of the insurance not only on the grinder the business in the truck I mean we have we literally have insurance on everything everything is taking money out of my pocket so the reason I'm explaining this to you is because you've gotta have to find out what it cost you to operate so typically for me after I get done paying for shorts most jobs I take 20% it's not 30% of whatever the amount of money is that I made that I set it aside for me things like teeth teeth on this machine here cost around 13 or 14 dollars a piece so at $14 a piece times 24 that money adds up really fast there is a sometimes you know you can go to a job do you think it's going to be a nice simple easy country and you're going to be in and out in 15 minutes you might be in another 15 minutes piece of steel or maybe drove through a rock it's just it's hard to say those teeth can be worn out of fact you could knock the edge off of those teeth so the people aren't really paying $100 and I'm leaving that money is going towards my maintenance my insurance my gasoline that I know I put $100 in my truck every two days so sometimes you might have to explain that to customers like you're not they're just taking their money and leaving you're actually providing a service this is not a mix this is not a cheap business to be in this business that I'm currently running I have my trucking my trailer my grinder and my tools right now I'm about $90,000 investing so and it might not look like much but that's just part of the game yes if that's the way that they want to be that's okay so the big thing is is you've got your equipment and you're starting to get customers and things are looking up you always want to prepare for the future this machine's not going to last forever we saved money the big thing with any business is saving money at any time this boater decided to go down or at any time something could happen to my truck or any I mean really anything can happen so you always want to have a security blanket you want to have some money set aside to wear something does happen you're not out of business this machine was just in the shop for a week I had to have two bearings and most people don't think that's a big deal it's a week but this is an entire week of not working this is busy season sometimes this stuff happens we have to prepare for it so that was an entire week that I didn't make a dollar grinding stumps now on the entire week behind so I now have 12 days to catch up with the stuff that I lost so we'll be working extra hours today it's raining so I can't really be out running that weather is a huge factor you know here in western Pennsylvania this is what I knew full-time this is my full-time job I do this usually from March April ish and I can normally get through to then we're before it starts to slow down so from November till March that's a lot of time that I'm not writing for anything about making money so you know with the snow and the salt everything else that's on the road it's just not worth it for me to go out so I actually have to have two jobs if you live in Florida if you're any state where you can drag it around them so it's it's not so much of a rush this this in western Pennsylvania like I say what happens is when it's grinding season we don't take time off I don't take a vacation during the summertime I don't spend a whole lot of weekend trips with my kid I don't do you know a lot of that party over the weekends it's a business maybe you're in a position where you're retiring and you can do that type of stuff you're not in a rush you don't really care that's fine - I mean this business is good for anyone if you want the money you maybe over weekends you guys that are watching out house all the time draws greatly and that's awesome that's how I started out grinder will tell me when it's time to quit your day job when you are so busy and your phone won't stop ringing that's when you might when I considered quitting it took me almost three years to get to the point where I had to think about you know my day job I was working a the hour a week at a company and things were great there and I was doing this on the weekend and then the next year it was weekends in a couple nights three of the week after work and that starts to take a toll on you then the phone will just keep ringing and ringing and ringing so now I'm working nights I'm working every night I'm working every weekend and there's times where I'm taking my personal time off of work to go right to keep caught up with the things that we're going on at that point in time I decided all right it's time to do this full-time and that's scary to leaving a job have you been out for a while but the people will let me know if your good call you word of mouth is the best best thing going I'm to the point now where I don't have to advertise I get repeat colors going stuff and all that every other person that calls me says so-and-so sent me to you so it sort of told me about you and they they think you're awesome so you'll get to that point if you want to get to that point this business and I should have said this in the beginning it is a love-hate relationship you never know what can happen some weeks you're gonna have outstanding weeks some weeks it might bring every day some weeks you might not get any phone calls some weeks you might get a on a phone calls you just never know I keep track of everything that we do here and after it's all said and done with I'm still happy with the outcome I'm making enough money on my good days to where they can support my bad days so things like that that's okay maybe my daughter has a football game coming up or something like that she she does cheerleading so I can take that time off if I really need to or if I really want to I don't have to go to work so that's one of the you know better parts of the job I'm very self driven so I work as much as I can when I can so yeah we've talked about a bunch of stuff about you know the things that you need in how to get people or how to charge I guess these are all things you know some of these things you just going to have not yourself maybe ask around talk to the three guys and see you know what what their rates are like in your area everyone's areas are different I can't say how much money they're going to make there's if anybody in this world tells you that this is how much money you're going to make they're full of it nobody knows how much money you're gonna make it's all based off of you equipment that you buy so really that's about all I got for you right now some future videos you know we'll take some videos you know this machine grinding different jobs that we get on get in on check us out on facebook at tactical stump removal there's some stuff on there you'll see some of the jobs that we go to some of the things that we do like our page check that out you'll find some pretty interesting stuff on there that we get ourselves into I don't post a whole log on there anymore I still post you know a few times a month things like that especially when we get odd jobs giant little overs and things like that this year has been a good year for us this last winter time we had a lot of ice that destroyed a lot of trees all those years but nothing but raining and cleaning so I I've lost count how many blow over stops the machine has been standing no breakdowns nothing severe I should say you're always going to have typical little things happening we'll do some videos on maintenance things to check out most of these machines they're all going to be about the same maybe the oil tube is on the other side it'll give you an idea on how to maintain this type of stuff you know we'll shoot a video on the truck and you know how we keep it shoot a video on you know how to schedule jobs you know my book I carry a book around with me and I should when someone calls be irate their date when their phone number down and if they left an address and I'll call them back and we'll go through getting to their property getting their stuff you know the paperwork side of it and you know receipts things like that these are all little things that you're going to meet along the way stuff crimes not a huge thing in the world but it's an important thing people like to have nice lawns and things like that so it's it's definitely an important job to have if you like machinery if you like being your own boss if you like traveling around the meet people it's definitely a great drug to have so we'll keep you posted on everything please if you have any questions leave them in the comments I'll do my best to get back to you and you know get you pointed in the right direction I've been doing this now and going on six years it's been six very long years I know a lot of people in the industry a lot of Facebook groups guys are out standing out on their they helped me tremendously and that's why I'm kind of doing these videos to try and hope the next guy you know I offer something that I didn't have maybe you'll become my competition that's fine I'm not worried about competition when you do a good job the people will always call you there's enough stumps out there for everyone yeah that's that's really about that like I said you guys got any questions comments concerns whatever we'll do our best to point you in the right direction please save the negative feedback of somebody else I already told you I'm not a professional at this I don't really know how to edit videos and do all that stuff so most of my videos are going to be you know however long and it's just gonna be me doing whatever it is I'm not going to add any music or things like that I didn't take any professional speaking classes in college any do any of that stuff I am a stump grinder so say that I don't care anybody who is interested in doing this stuff doesn't care so I appreciate you guys for watching it if you have any questions let me know that'll do it today and we'll be in touch here soon

Channel: Tactical Stump

Views: 21,958

Rating: 4.8215961 out of 5

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Id: pb2Nm6wHzY4

Length: 32min 21sec (1941 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019