Mistle toe, what to charge?

[Phillip Baker]

Has any one ever removed mistle toe from tree tops. I have a customer that wishes to have all the mistle toe removed from about 50 trees on her property and I haven't a clue as to what to charge for that let alone how may man hrs will be involved. I was thinking about charging her a set price for each mistle toe removed branch and all. I'm going to be using 2 pole saw's to prune with and everything that comes down is going into the neighbors burn pile. Shes a really good lawn customer, and weve even thought about removing 2 or 3 trees worth of mistle toe each time we mow, but I still dont have a price in mind yet? Any help or suggestions are welcome.......Thanks!!!!

[dwyman]

Haven't done it before so can't help on set price. If she's a good customer and knows that you are trustworthy, maybe you can agree on an hourly rate. Just be honest and tell her to be fair to both yourself and her, you would like to do it hourly. Or maybe you can do one, and then estimate from that what you should charge for the rest.

[Stephen M.]

Your hourly rate x estimated hours x 2 = $$charged.

Last fall, my wife and I looked at a property to be done this March. The job was cutting fern fronds and spring clean up. We gave a bid price which was rejected by homeowner as being "ridiculously too high".

While I don't normally try to justify my quotes, what the guy wrote torked me off really good, so I wrote back that the price included travel time and my time to do disposal of his trash.

Last month, the guy's neighbor called for the quote and gave me the winter address of the guy. He signed the work authorization form and mailed it back.

Basically, what I said that apparently changed his mind was that the job was more than one day, but less than 2 days for 2 people. Where that magic line is, I haven't a clue, but I'm not going to lose money just to get his work.

If your job takes you off the ground and up a ladder, be sure to charge more for danger pay. Ladders are dangerous pieces of equipment. Anything that I have to rely on for other than my feet standing on solid earth, is, in my book, requires danger pay.

Good luck and let us know what you decided on and if you made good $$.

[Phillip Baker]

My price?

I have counted the amount of mistle toe per tree and decided that is avg. around 10 per tree, i was thinking of charging $3.00 per mistle toe to remove and $20.00 for using my ladder, this would avg $50.00 a tree. There are well over 50 trees that have the mistle toe, I figure I can spend one hr with my pole saw and two helpers and clean 3 trees each time we mow, this nets me $150 per visit not including the $110.00 mowing fee per visit. It takes 1 hr to mow and another hr to do the trees. Thats $260.00 per visit every other week. Does that sound to high for the mistle toe removal?