excavation

[KerryB]

Hi everyone,
I have a proposal I'm working on. I have 569 cubic yds of old mulch and dirt to remove from beds. Not sure how to estimate it. I have to dig it by hand because of the size, shape and location of beds. Will haul away using 2001 silverado long bed. approx 5 miles travel each trip.
Just need a little shove in the right direction.
Also wondering about planting shrubs, 1/2 hr per shrub size 24"?

[paul]

You mean you are planning to load up 40 semi loads by hand?

I think you need to refigure you bid!

[Lanelle]

You're kidding us, right?

[KerryB]

OK there are 11 beds
272sqft,150, 64, 324, 476, 1140,312, 243, 720, 80, 45 each.
at 4" depth each

[paul]

ok I refigured your beds you have 43 cu yds of removal.

[Lanelle]

Now I'm curious. Why are you removing soil and mulch from the beds?

[Guido]

Thats a big difference, huh!

Its going to be 20 plus loads.
Figure about 3 hours driving time if its city miles, 2.5 miles each way, right?

By yourself, since you'll be wore out, it will probobly take about 30 hours to load and unload your pickup truck 20 times.

So, if you can stay within those numbers that I gave you:


$ 135.00 Drive Time
$1,350.00 To load and unload the trucks


Figure at least $1500 if you have to do it all by hand, by yourself, without a dump truck or dump trailer.
Thats at $45 an hour....don't forget to add your overhead in (fuel costs, wear and tear, etc)

Good Luck!

[kris]

IMHO

I would rethink your method... If it is not possible to access this with a machine and you have to hand dig it all ...why not pile it all and then have a loader / dump truck, haul it away(sub this part out if you have too)....nothing worse than wasting time loading and unloading a pickup.

[Stonehenge]

My first year in biz that's what I did - loaded spoils into my p/u and truck 'em to a dumping area, where I'd shovel 'em back out. I'd like to think I'm a little smarter these days.

You could do what Kris said, pile it up, then you could even rent a skid loader (have it delivered to the site if you don't have a trailer), call a trucking company and have them send over a quad-axle, and just fill that thing up a few times. The extra money you spend on the skidder and the truck are not worth doing it all by hand. You'll save time (which you can use to nail down more biz), you'll save your back, you'll look like you've got a big operation when the customer sees how fast it went. And finally, you'll actually end up making more $$$ in the long run because you spent $500 now, but it allowed you to do the job 3 days faster, and you did enough work in the extra time to more than offset that expense.

For planting the shrubs, do some searching in old threads here - that's a topic that's been hammered at many times.

[KerryB]

Ok now I feel like an idiot.
Where did I go wrong
length x width x depth divided by 27
Right?
thanks everyone you have been lots a help.

[Guido]

Originally posted by lawndoctor
Ok now I feel like an idiot.
Where did I go wrong
length x width x depth divided by 27
Right?


The part where I always catch guys going wrong is they have lenght and width in feet and depth in inches and forget to convert them.

L W and D all have to be either in inches, or all in feet, etc.

Let us know what you decide to do!

[KerryB]

Thanx guido, thats exactly what i did wrong.

[KerryB]

To answer your question lanelle,
the beds are old mounded up and look like s**t. Need to be removed, reworked and soil needs amending. The only thing growing in them for years are the trash collecting blue rug junipers.
No fertilizer no nothing. Going to remove by the roots and plant them in the compost pile where they need to be. lol