Charging ploughing per hour

hoff135 · Jun 4, 2020

Im burning 18l an hour. Anything under an acre an hour is pointless. Best i ever did was just under 2. Never plough stubble its always grass, normally old, acidic, and full of stones.

I know many wont like being quoted per hour but im going to have to do something

tepapa · Jun 4, 2020

hoff135 said:
Im burning 18l an hour. Anything under an acre an hour is pointless. Best i ever did was just under 2. Never plough stubble its always grass, normally old, acidic, and full of stones.

I know many wont like being quoted per hour but im going to have to do something

Eerrmm I think something's fallen off your plough?

glasshouse · Jun 4, 2020

Kiwi Pete said:
It's very rare that fuel's supplied by a client, nearly always added to the bill; just a bare 150hp tractor/driver would be £60-70/hr fuel included.
Put a trailer/scoop/implement on and it would be £70-75, same as a mid sized digger.
When I was doing cultivation etc 10-15 years ago it was all £80/hr but with good big gear

I am putting my charges up

hoff135 · Jun 4, 2020

tepapa said:
Eerrmm I think something's fallen off your plough?

Yes twice in the same field. Scraping bed rock

Kiwi Pete · Jun 4, 2020

glasshouse said:
I am putting my charges up

A business doesn't run on love. The thing you see here is that the guys who charge a decent rate get decent jobs and last, expand, pay their bills on time.

The problem is when you get these eejits who do it for about cost, sub their R&M across to the farm or somewhere, because the slightest hiccup or breakdown they hurt. Like @Gerbert said, if they want cheap they can have cheap.

Currently I'm sitting in the smoko room on £22/hr drinking the boss' coffee, and it cost me maybe £1 to get to work, I can only laugh at someone running their own machine and wearing metal at £25/hr.

kiwi pom · Jun 4, 2020

hoff135 said:
Anyone else charging ploughing per hour?

About 3/4 of the stuff i plough is extremely marginal. Either very stoney, steep or hasnt been ploughed since the war and ends up blocking every 10 yards.

I have seen me down as low as 1/2 acre per hour which hardly covered the diesel at £25 per acre.

Been toying with going to £35 hour which isnt a lot but better than current situation. Thats for a 4 furrow plough.

No point doing it for nothing, charge what you need to make it pay.

Of course you need to understand that there are many people that WILL do it for nothing so you may lose the work to somebody else.

Contracting is no different to farming you COULD set a rate or sell produce at the price you want to set. BUT someone will always do it or sell it cheaper.

kiwi pom · Jun 4, 2020

Kiwi Pete said:
A business doesn't run on love. The thing you see here is that the guys who charge a decent rate get decent jobs and last, expand, pay their bills on time.

The problem is when you get these eejits who do it for about cost, sub their R&M across to the farm or somewhere, because the slightest hiccup or breakdown they hurt. Like @Gerbert said, if they want cheap they can have cheap.

Currently I'm sitting in the smoko room on £22/hr drinking the boss' coffee, and it cost me maybe £1 to get to work, I can only laugh at someone running their own machine and wearing metal at £25/hr.

I make that to be $43 an hour?
Not sure what you do now, but that would be a higher than average wage round here for driving by some margin ( I think

)

Kiwi Pete · Jun 5, 2020

kiwi pom said:
I make that to be $43 an hour?
Not sure what you do now, but that would be a higher than average wage round here for driving by some margin ( I think )

Yep.
Joys of not needing the work, nor the money - if they want my time, they pay for it.

Farmer Roy · Jun 5, 2020

kiwi pom said:
I make that to be $43 an hour?
Not sure what you do now, but that would be a higher than average wage round here for driving by some margin ( I think )

err, I was on $49.50 ( Au$ ) this time last year sitting on someone else’s machine harvesting cotton. Haven’t bothered to do the conversion to NZ$ or £ or €

Kiwi Pete · Jun 5, 2020

Farmer Roy said:
err, I was on $49.50 ( Au$ ) this time last year sitting on someone else’s machine harvesting cotton. Haven’t bothered to do the conversion to NZ$ or £ or €

That's the thing - not everyone wants to be miles away from everywhere in a harvester, nor on 45° slopes in a truck.
That's where ag is going to have to pull its socks up because it's changing from a paradigm where people will gladly work for free to a paradigm where people don't want to.

Maybe the days of exploiting low-paid and free labour are gone?

kiwi pom · Jun 5, 2020

Kiwi Pete said:
That's the thing - not everyone wants to be miles away from everywhere in a harvester, nor on 45° slopes in a truck.
That's where ag is going to have to pull its socks up because it's changing from a paradigm where people will gladly work for free to a paradigm where people don't want to.

Maybe the days of exploiting low-paid and free labour are gone?

Nah they'll just get someone from another country to do it cheap.
How do you think I got here?

I'm expecting a story on the news any time now from all the Ag contractors telling the government they desperately need their northern hemisphere drivers back, because the locals don't want the work.

Kiwi Pete · Jun 5, 2020

kiwi pom said:
Nah they'll just get someone from another country to do it cheap.
How do you think I got here?

I'm expecting a story on the news any time now from all the Ag contractors telling the government they desperately need their northern hemisphere drivers back, because the locals don't want the work.

There's the joys of a capitalist × socialist economy, pay able people to do nothing and they get fussy

Farmer Roy · Jun 5, 2020

Kiwi Pete said:
That's the thing - not everyone wants to be miles away from everywhere in a harvester, nor on 45° slopes in a truck.
That's where ag is going to have to pull its socks up because it's changing from a paradigm where people will gladly work for free to a paradigm where people don't want to.

Maybe the days of exploiting low-paid and free labour are gone?

kiwi pom said:
Nah they'll just get someone from another country to do it cheap.
How do you think I got here?

I'm expecting a story on the news any time now from all the Ag contractors telling the government they desperately need their northern hemisphere drivers back, because the locals don't want the work.

the thing with Australia is everyone ( well, about 90% of our population) wants to live in that narrow 100km wide strip on the east coast between Brisbane & Melbourne. We are the most urbanised country in the world.
Relatively few want to live / work in inland rural areas.

The other issue that agriculture has to contend with in regards to skilled machinery operators ( along with tradies / welders / mechanics etc etc ) is the mining industries. Not only are the wages much better, but most are in remote locations so operate on a FIFO ( fly in, fly out ) work force. So - old mate can have his big MacMansion show home & wife & kids living in Brisbane or the Central Coast ( or even set up house in Indonesia with servants & stuff, as some of the single blokes working in the north of WA do ) & just work a 26 on / 7 off shift, or whatever . . . So that doesn’t upset the family by having to drag them into the inland or rural areas . . .

by the way, that $50 / hr was also because I am old & very experienced & had a ute full of tools

The young blokes working with us ( as “off siders” not “senior driver” ) were on about $25 / hr I think. Which is comparable to most labourer type wages in other jobs here

Frodo2 · Jun 5, 2020

Durry cows said:
Plough 3 acres/hour with 170hp and 5 furrow here. Same as most things you can pay yourself reasonably well to do the job/pays for the kit but it’s the timeliness of operation that’s one of the main benefits imo

If my maths is correct 3acre/hr with a 5fur plough means you plough at 16 inch and sit at 6km/hr never stopping to turn let alone change metal.

glasshouse · Jun 5, 2020

Farmer Roy said:
the thing with Australia is everyone ( well, about 90% of our population) wants to live in that narrow 100km wide strip on the east coast between Brisbane & Melbourne. We are the most urbanised country in the world.
Relatively few want to live / work in inland rural areas.

The other issue that agriculture has to contend with in regards to skilled machinery operators ( along with tradies / welders / mechanics etc etc ) is the mining industries. Not only are the wages much better, but most are in remote locations so operate on a FIFO ( fly in, fly out ) work force. So - old mate can have his big MacMansion show home & wife & kids living in Brisbane or the Central Coast ( or even set up house in Indonesia with servants & stuff, as some of the single blokes working in the north of WA do ) & just work a 26 on / 7 off shift, or whatever . . . So that doesn’t upset the family by having to drag them into the inland or rural areas . . .

by the way, that $50 / hr was also because I am old & very experienced & had a ute full of tools
The young blokes working with us ( as “off siders” not “senior driver” ) were on about $25 / hr I think. Which is comparable to most labourer type wages in other jobs here

Wages over there have always been double the uk, for all the above mentioned reasons.
The tightly controlled work visas and immigration policy limit the supply of foreign workers of course, unlike the uk.
I had numerous good job opportunities over there in the eighties, including playing aussie rules football, but there was no way legally to stay.

Durry cows · Jun 5, 2020

Frodo2 said:
If my maths is correct 3acre/hr with a 5fur plough means you plough at 16 inch and sit at 6km/hr never stopping to turn let alone change metal.

Admittedly I don’t hang about that’s realistically in 6-10 acre fields going 8-9km. Yes I know it’s going some but auto reset plough, in maize stubble with fields I know. Makes a better job imo a bit of speed to throw the furrow ie half worked down?

glasshouse · Jun 5, 2020

Frodo2 said:
If my maths is correct 3acre/hr with a 5fur plough means you plough at 16 inch and sit at 6km/hr never stopping to turn let alone change metal.

6km/hr?
Who ploughs that slow?
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Grassman · Jun 5, 2020

So basically you are doing a job that loses you money and obviously causes you a lot of grief.
So just stop doing it.
Or perhaps tell the landowner the price will be agreed when you know how well the job will go as neither you or them know what's under the grass. If it's easy charge a bit less.

Grassman · Jun 5, 2020

It's always difficult to charge a sensible rate for some jobs. I used to wrap and stack a lot of bales. Some farms made great efforts to have all the bales ready and in nice need rows to get the job done quickly and efficiently. Others just tipped the bales in a big heap and expected you to be happy running over all the rock hard ruts they made during the winter getting the bales out of the stack!

Gerbert · Jun 5, 2020

Kiwi Pete said:
That's the thing - not everyone wants to be miles away from everywhere in a harvester, nor on 45° slopes in a truck.
That's where ag is going to have to pull its socks up because it's changing from a paradigm where people will gladly work for free to a paradigm where people don't want to.

Maybe the days of exploiting low-paid and free labour are gone?

Come off it, sounds an awfull lot like a socialist. This last thing doesn't even has anything to do with it as you first state that some people are happy to work for nothing.
Whatever.

It's anyone's perogative to work for nothing, but why work for a loss? Just do some fagpacket calculations.
How much fuel do you use.
How many hours does you wearing metal last and hoe much does it cost to replace.
How much can you get paid without the machinery.
Other cost are tiny or kinda hatd to quantify.
I also tend to look at my contractor prices, who isn't cheap.
In my case, €25 for myself, 10 to 15 for fuel, 5 for bits and bobs. So €45 for the tractor only. It's not that hard.

Charging ploughing per hour

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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