OnDemand
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Tight Budget?
Have a small job to do?
Standby Service Option
Like the idea of having a machine come to you with the operator to run it for you? But really feel that you can't justify the cost because what you have to do is likely to take a very small amount of time? (In other words, you don't want to pay for our 4 hour minimum when you only have need for 1 hour with a machine. We need to charge our minimum 4 hours in order to be viable as a business - to schedule you a specific block of time and make a special trip out to your site, deliver the machine, and do the work. But if you can be flexible on timing, another option does exist: "Standby")
- for instance, maybe you have a couple of big rocks to move, or a skid of block - things too heavy to do by hand, but
you figure that it is only a half an hour's work with a machine
- or perhaps you have a small area sod you need dug up, a tiny walkway or patio to dig out or driveway to widen - the
type of thing that may only take an hour or two at most with a bobcat or mini-excavator
- maybe you have 8 or 10 cubic yards of dirt that needs to be loaded with a bobcat into a bin for removal
- or something else along these lines, which won't likely take much time - then "Standby" Service is for you
(Note: as for a hole drilling job - perhaps you have just 4 or 5 post holes for a deck to be drilled - we already have a
special program in place for that specifically - click here to be taken to it)
How "Standby" Works:
We do offer an option in such a case. Instead of charging you our normal 4 hour minimum, we will charge you only a 2 hour minimum, but on the condition that we can fit you in to our schedule at our convenience. So what you give up by taking us up on our Standby Service option is the ability to be able to dictate specifically when you want us to come. Call in to our dispatcher, give us all the details we need - we take your booking, but then instead of giving you then a precise date and time as to when we will come, we"ll discuss with you an approximate range of time that works for you (like anytime after 3 PM over the next 2 weeks you might request, for instance). And then when we have an appopriate machine working in your general area next (that happens often - we have machines crisscrossing the region all the time) we will call you ahead of time to make sure that it can work for you (normally we'll call the day before). You still get our great services, you get what you need done, and save potentially a couple hundred dollars in the process. All other policies and pricing apply (such as the float fee) as with our regular scheduled service, other than the key differences of the lowered number of minimum hours and the fact that we do the final determination as to scheduling. This can delay things a bit, so you need to be not in a rush, and you need to be sometwhat flexible as to when it can be done. Standby doesn't work for everyone, but if if does for you, great!
Just ask for "standby" when you call in to book.
Bobcat Service
Machine-with-Operator Excavation Service
Rental
As you know we offer machines both with and without an operator. We suggest that in the majority of cases it is in the customers' best interests to have the operator with the machine. Our operator, who has thousands of hours of experience, is going to offer you significant advantages and savings, in terms of speed, efficiency, accuracy, safety and so on, over a part-time "operator" who rents and runs a machine only a few times a year.
As a rule of thumb, we always suggest that if you have a significant amount of machine work to be done, especially if that work can go on continuously, then having us supply you the operator will work out to your advantage. However, a cost savings might be had if you rent in the situation where you expect a number of lengthy and frequent interruptions and/or the project is expected to take a number of days. Then instead of paying us hourly to have a machine with operator sit idle while you do hand work or subtrades have to do their thing, delivery of materials need to arrive and so on, it might be better rent a machine from us for a few days, or a week or more. Compare our weekly rate, click here. You might also consider renting just the machine without the operator in situations where the machine-operatring task is relatively simple and may not require a good operator to handle the digging with skill and accuracy (or safety), such as when working in a wide open area - like a field - far away from structures, burried utilites, and so forth, and doing something relatively simple like loading dirt into a bin or sprading soil for rough grade, doing clean up, and so on.
Contract the work?
Some customers request a firm all-in price as opposed to something seemingly open-ended, like our hourly-based method of billing. Some will insist on contracting the work on the mistaken assumption that doing so will save them money. Consider the fact that unless the excavation contractor has made a mistake in his calculations or estimating when he is quoting you, there is no "deal" to be had out there. Everybody is using similar rates - or the rates they are using are at least what ours are, and in many cases they base their work on a significantly higher price per hour than we do. So while it might seem that getting a contract price does allow you to have a firm number in mind, how does that price compare with what it would have cost you had you simply paid for what you got - the actual time it took, paid by the hour? When a contractor has to put a firm number on something, a dig or a certain amount of work, he is going to estimate how long he thinks it will take, and then he will "pad" that number - adding a large cushion onto it when he quotes the price. So, a 2-day dig, which we might charge $80 per hour for, which if it takes 2 8-hour days, your cost would be about $1300 ($640 per day), it"s safe to say that most all contactors would not consider giving you a firm price for the equivalent job for less than $2500. He wants to make his hourly rate (usually a bit more than ours', perhaps $100/hr) and he is aware that if anything goes wrong, takes longer, he could potentially end up having to eat the extra time - so he adds a big buffer on to his estimate (of course you never know how much he started off with in mind for the work or how much a buffer he is building into the price). The only way you would get it cheaper than that is if he happens to be short on work at the moment (a possibility, and even so, what will he quote you, perhaps $2000? Still more than you need to pay), or if he has made a mistake in his estimating and calculations. Maybe he comes in at $1500. If his mistake is serious - if he is way off, odds are great he'll come to you looking for more money anyway (most customers will give in at that point, they can't afford to get into a squabble and have their work held up). If something should come up that was somewhat unexpected, like some burried concrete or other unforeseen issue, you can be sure that his contract will have enough small-print clauses to cover him for such a contingency so that he can charge you more for such things. There are no "freebees" in this business, and you can be sure that if you want a firm contract price, for these reasons and many more (won't take up the space here to list them all, but be assured there are others), you will be paying more for such "peace of mind" - and remember, in the end, that peace of mind is really an illusion - he can almost always charge you more if he feels he is justified - once he's started, you are really held captive to him and pretty much have to go along with him. We hear about these things all the time.
Advice: Don't do it - Contracting the work will almost always cost you more in the end, often a lot more!
So, the bottom line is, that in the interests of saving money - working towards keeping within your particular project's tight budget, we strongly urge you not to look at going with a contract as a way of doing that. If you want to save money, pay for only what you get - pay hourly. Stay in control of the project (yes, once you give out a contract, you lose much of the say in how things are done), and remember you can always modify plans, skip a section, reduce the amount being dug out, increase the work somewhere else, and so on, when you are working hourly; but when you are contracted it's not so easy to do that - you are basically committed to sticking to the exact wording of the contract, its terms, dimensions and specifications, and any deviations from that (known as "change requests") are very expensive (contractors always overcharge for those - because they can! They've got you, and they know it!).
That said - if you are completely fixated on a fixed price - still contact us. Strictly speaking, none of our OnDemand members will do contract (fixed price) work, but we may be able to put you in touch with someone reputable that we feel safe in recommending that may offer you such a contract price.
