Its very quiet and times are definitely tough out there

[farmerswife]

Groundworks - Quietest its been for a very long time (ever). Yes we have calls but when we price up some muppet is doing the job for £200 cash. QS costs arent justifiable.

Phone is quiet, some of the bigger blue chips havent called and work it very limited they are def cutting back.

Just halved our advertising bill, made a guy redundant and selling machines.

Finding our costs extremely high and margins poor. Pitching for works on larger building sites is a waste of money as they are paying silly rates and the machine drivers just above min wage.

Thinking of going back to the one man band. Wage bill so high.

 

[JeromeJ]

Hi farmerswife,

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Maybe cutting back is the best option for now. It is hard to do but sometimes the only option. I do hope things get better for you.

 

[Twinkle Toes]

All depends on your market, if it's on a downturn do something different. Beats moaning about how bad things are.

 

[Carl Mintern]

Why not try competing for the building work, so you are employing the builders not the other way round?

I'll throw out some other ideas off the top of my head, please disregard any that you consider worthless, I'm just brainstorming..

- call every builder within your work radius and ask if you can offer them a price on their next project. I'm sure you have done this, but have you done it in the last 6 weeks?

- call every farmer and repeat.

- how do you advertise? I live in a rural area and one of the best routes to consumers I have found is parish newsletters. They vary wildly in circulation and cost so shop around, there are some real bargains in terms of pounds spent to eyes reached.

- have you tried trade fairs and agricultural shows? Again, some pitches are more cost effective than others.

- is there an area you can widen your service range?
Can people hire your machinery?
Can your staff service other people's machinery?
Could you use the trailers you have to transport your machinery to transport others?

- some festivals and events contract machinery to pull people out of the mud at the end, have you tried for anything like this?

- have you contacted any hire company's with a proposal to use your fleet as 'overflow'

- could you upskill any staff to become instructors and offer operators courses?

These are literally off the top of my head and I made them up as fast as I typed them. Sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees when you are in the middle of it.

I hope you find something useful...

Edit; you say you halved your advertising budget. Do you record how effective your various adverts are? Every time the phone rings I ask how the client heard of us, that way if and when I cut advertising I know which ones to cut.

 

[RBS]

Didn`t expect to read that. Constructions is exploding, cranes and sites on every corner, building like crazy.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

When you say you have halfed your advertising bill . Have you done this in an effective way by cutting the dead wood advertising or just halfed it ?
We have seen this in the courier industry a massive boom but our competitors are running at the rates we were running 20 years ago .!. Its a result of a global e commerce economy .
I looked at things differently an had to trim the fat. An example is I like playing with old cars and have a small workshop. In order to be more competitive we stopped buying new vans . I went to the auction and brought older low mileage vans with cash and maintain them ourselves . Our costs have massively reduced .A 10 year old vauxhall combo doing 70K a year we can maintain for about £500 a year with a purchase price of £1500 .
This goes against the holy grail in our industry I would never of dreamed of doing this 10 years ago but things change . !

 

[Chris34]

I went to the auction and brought older low mileage vans with cash and maintain them ourselves . Our costs have massively reduced .A 10 year old vauxhall combo doing 70K a year we can maintain for about £500 a year with a purchase price of £1500 .
This goes against the holy grail in our industry I would never of dreamed of doing this 10 years ago but things change . !

Do you run them on LPG as well?

 

[BartJr]

Groundworks - Quietest its been for a very long time (ever). Yes we have calls but when we price up some muppet is doing the job for £200 cash. QS costs arent justifiable.

Phone is quiet, some of the bigger blue chips havent called and work it very limited they are def cutting back.

Just halved our advertising bill, made a guy redundant and selling machines.

Finding our costs extremely high and margins poor. Pitching for works on larger building sites is a waste of money as they are paying silly rates and the machine drivers just above min wage.

Thinking of going back to the one man band. Wage bill so high.

I will be interested in buying machinery including agricultural. Please message me

 

[farmerswife]

Well it depends the area of the country doesnt it here in Wales is no comparison to the SE. I met an Estate agent yesterday who is thinking of leaving the industry as nothing much is happening in Cardiff and this morning met a reclamation guy and he said its the quietest he's ever seen.

Constantly cutting costs - made someone redundant last week and only using subs now. Lets face it small construction is saturated and competative - big companies can underprice to keep the boys in work, profits can be carried forward while small business cannot do this.

 

[farmerswife]

Didn`t expect to read that. Constructions is exploding, cranes and sites on every corner, building like crazy.

Where???? The south East? there hasnt been much happening around here for a number of years - the Hilti shop was telling us a few years ago. Yes housing is going up but these arent jobs that help bonifide small companies they want to put subbies on for minimum wage and machines on site that would just be there to break even. Even the utility companies are cutting spending on maintenance and groundworks.

People are not extending nor are they moving around here - the steel works is close to shutting down and there is very little industry now.

There are a lot of people (one man bands) doing cash jobs cheap as. Whether they are insured is not matter for the householder the cheapest price is king. We know that a bigger construction company (roadworks etc) is worming into the domestic market just to keep the boys in work - their profits can cover this while the SMEs cant do this.

 

[farmerswife]

Thanks Carl - some of those I have already done. We are well known and have an excellent reputation. Farmers are def not paying our prices too many of them are fighting for survival at the moment and much can be done themselves. There are many farmers lads that have machines too offering a good service.

Yes advertising - Yell.com works well but have dropped the book, advertise in the local community paper, FB loads and website. Word of mouth.

So many landscaping and building boys are putting in silly prices now - I think some dont understand profit and do a sh@t job but they are cheap.

 

[matt90bc]

Firm I was on moved onto blockpaving and driveways to stay busy and its now their top earners theyve got 2 gangs constantly on driveways digging out and stoning up and they join up when tarmacing. we used to get a shed load of work from farmers too even if we were more expensive they wanted guys they could trust to do the job right. try networking a bit go to some shoots and do some beating and youll get to talk to a lot of guys with a lot of land who will be sure to push some work your way. if you haven't already put some ads in the local newspaper for the drivways and landscaping thats how they got that side of things going before word of mouth took lead.Alos try equestrian places we used to do a lot of horse arenas and stables aswell as trenching out flooded land for the lil pony's.
whatever you do though hope it all works out, Groundworks is a hard enough game as it is with out stressing about where the works coming from.

 

[Matt1959]

being in Wales is your problem (sorry I dont mean it to sound that way!) I am looking to basically retire by the end of the next 5 years and relocate to either Wales, Devon or Cornwall to end up mortgage free. I will still carry on my trade but fully expect in any of these areas to struggle. Where I am now, I have a never ending supply of work and can get good prices as theres a lot of money around.

probably theres a danger in making a general observation when actually its due to factors particular to your locality hence the replies on this thread that say its as busier as ever.

Sounds like you definately need to get away from getting work based on price....

 

[Mr A P Davies]

I live by Brecon, out in the hills. If all the diggers round here stuck their booms out, they'd be so close they wouldn't be able to slew.
It is mostly one man bands though, and I haven't heard any of them complaining about lack of work.
Lack of money, yes.
The farmers are twitchy, and houses are not going up like they were even 5 years ago, or less. Councils are not spending like they were.

The bigger boys, with a couple of bigger machines, are having to head down Hereford, or into the Midlands, to get enough good paying work to run their operations though.

The one man band, who owns a biggish mini digger outright, and the kit to move it, doesn't have to make a serious amount to keep going, and most of those boys are not plant men first and foremost, they are builders, landscapers, and farmers.

The ones with a few boys on, are not getting the work in this area.

I can see why your struggling. It ain't like it was.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Do you run them on LPG as well?

Hello Chris LPG is a wonderful thing but it is not good on vehicles that do high mileage and where an engine requires longevity . Its a bit complicated for us I had a Range Rover with and it was good but it was something else to go wrong . I would say it it is worth it if your the only one that drives the vehicle and it is only for personal use

 

[Chris34]

Hello Chris LPG is a wonderful thing but it is not good on vehicles that do high mileage and where an engine requires longevity . Its a bit complicated for us I had a Range Rover with and it was good but it was something else to go wrong . I would say it it is worth it if your the only one that drives the vehicle and it is only for personal use

Hi Jeremy, I've not heard of LPG being bad for engine longevity, in fact I've heard the opposite so that surprises me what you say.

If the Engines don't last as long, well wouldn't the cost savings on fuel still be worth it if you are only buying the vans for £1,500 in the first place? I think it costs about £1,000 to kit them but if you are doing 70k per year that must be some big potential fuel savings.

I have a van on LPG a little Peugeot Partner 53 plate with a massive 90 litre LPG tank. The difficulty I have had is finding somebody who you can trust to service the LPG, however I think I have sourced the right people now and they only charge £70 for the service which needs to be done every 5 to 10,000 miles depending on the system.

Maybe something worth re-looking at for yourself. If you want their details just let me know and I'll pass them on for you.


Chris.

 

[Twinkle Toes]

Get a old Land Rover (Discovery 1 is the "newest" you can go to) and run it on 100% vegtable oil in the summer and and 60/40 diesel/veg mix in winter. Cheaper than LPG (no conversion costs either) and if you can be bothered to filter used oil from a chippy you'll get it for pence a litre. Easier to use new oil though from a cash and carry for about 60p a litre.

 

[teecee90]

Maybe it is a local thing. I tried to get quotes for some relatively small scale ground works recently (constructing a pit for an MOT bay and brake rollers in the East Midlands) and struggled to get anyone interested in even looking at the job.