Price adjustment

[Minnesota_boy]

1.  No, I never charge a setup fee.  I probably should, but I have plenty of competition here and while the other guys park their mills for weeks at a time, I only park mine when the weather gets too bad.  I almost always have sawing to do.  I give up $$ for the setup fee, but keep $$$ coming in all the time.

2. I charge the same for all species, but reserve the choice to not do a job if there is no money in it.

3. For slabbing jobs, I scale the logs and charge by that scale.  When sawing lumber I usually get more lumber than the log would scale, but when cutting slabs, there is no edging to be done, saving me time.

4. Word of mouth is the only advertising I have done since the first year I got the mill. (1996)  I do a good job at what the customers feel is a reasonable price, so they talk.  I have some that I go back to over and over.

5. The dollars come in as soon as I finish a job.  It took me a full 2 years to pay off the mill, but by then the jobs became more frequent and my volume per hour had gone up as I had learned the short cuts.

[oakiemac]

I charge $25 setup fee and $.25/bdft for custom sawing, No setup fee if logs are brought to me.
I have found that there is not much call for mobile sawing in my area. So far this year I have only done about 3 mobile jobs. I do have 2 big ones coming up this fall. I would have "starved to death" by just counting on the mobile sawing.
I have found sawing then selling green and kiln dried lumber to more profitable and more to my liking than mobile sawing. I have a full time job besides milling so when I can find a few hours here and there  then I go to the mill and saw. If mobile sawing, then I'm on the customers schedule and need to find an empty day or two to do the job.
The down side to selling lumber is marketing, finding logs, dealing with customers, finding logs, and more marketing. But I also find it more rewarding.
VA-sawyer, if you are slow right now try hooking up with a big production mill and saw their old logs into cants/boards before they go bad. I just hooked up with an outfit that has hundreds of logs that have been in their yard for a long time and they want me to saw cants for their pallet mill. I will probably do this all winter long. The owner said that I have about a years worth of work to do!

[DR_Buck]

I've been charging $.25 bdft since I started sawing in February this year.  I've had no complaints about price, although I lost one job to someone that did it for $.15 bdft.  

I recently established a minimum fee of $200 plus mileage to go on site.  This is to cover the single tree suburbanites mention in a post above.  If I hit the 800 bd ft point then I charge $.25 bdft.

I charge $1.00 per mile one-way travel fee and no initial setup charge.  $25 if I have to move the mill to a different location on site.

Of course, like others, I charge for blades broken by foreign matter in logs.

VA Sawyer,

I only saw on weekends, and have more work that I can handle.  I've been turning down some jobs recently to give myself some free time.  

As far as advertising goes, the local newspaper story on my milling (mentioned in a prior post) worked wonders in getting me started .  But since then I have been targeting the people with trees.  I have a flier and business cards posted in all the farm supply stores and feed mills in three counties.  Also have one of the local fixed mills referring me to the suburbanite customers.

[neslrite]

    I get $60/hr to saw and $1.00/mile oneway travel and set up, I get 1/2 of my customers from advertising in the local Reminder newspaper 1/4 from the Website and 1/4 word of mouth.
   This is my 3rd year in business and I have had about 15 repeat customers.
   Ray,
 We will be offering kiln dry service starting this winter, my Dad bought a nyle and we should be able to run about 3000bf in it.
 We started the site work for the building today and the trees come down tomorrow , I will post pics .
Kevin  
 

[neslrite]

I forgot to mention,
  I have 1 hour minimum.
   About 1/3 of my work is suburbanites, they tend to be the most fun because they look at every board coming off the mill like it is gold.
Kevin