Then check this out!! A bit overboard for most it seems but i thought it was pretty cool!! http://www.mulchmule.com/index.html
A local lco has two of those, doesn't make sense to me. I mean its great that it fills the wheelbarrel fast for you but still alot of labor spreading the mulch. This year I'm contacting another company that has a mulch blower. He charges $18 a yard for labor, I charge $40 a yard labor, I make 22 bucks a yard and giving me extra time to do more profitable jobs, priceless.
For that much it just doesn't seem logical, unless you had lots and lots of jobs to pay for itself. The video showed it unload out the back also....I wonder if you could run rock through it. The video showed a leaf loader hooked up to it....this is like a $10,000 option. I seen one at the GIE a couple years ago. The loader itself is only something like $5K.
Well I agree with you but for one thing... I, too, contract out jobs over 12 yards to the blower guys because they charge $40/yard... But that's all we charge, $40-$45/yard includes the mulch, labor, everything... Different parts of the country, perhaps... Still... 46 thousand for the mule, man, it is going to be a long time coming before I give up the 10-tine pitchfork load method. I would have to do nothing BUT mulch year-round with a mule for that machine to pay for itself, and even then it only saves me a few seconds per barrow and it's 7 barrows/yard... It only takes me 2 to 2.5 minutes to load AND dump, so what, 45 seconds to load? So if you do 10 yards/day (that's enough mulch for me), times 7 = 70 barrows x .75 minutes = 45 minutes / day = $35 labor saved, roughly. Well about the only thing it would do is get me home up to an hour sooner... 46k for that ? 35 x 6 = 210 dollars/ week saved ? But lets not forget the additional 2 tires for the extra axle and the added weight which you spend on lost fuel (mpg). So, save 180 / week but don't forget you have to do MORE mulch than you did before in order to see the difference, I dunno, 46 thousand at the tune of $200/week, I'd rather buy a new car for all that. Now if ALL you do is mulch, then maybe I can see it.
you guys that are getting hung up on the price- what does your labor cost you? what are labor savings worth to you? what would it be worth to you to increase your production with no labor increases? To me, these things are priceless. When I have the volume to support this machine, I will certainly invest in one. If you cant see the value in it, then that is your issue. Look at the companys that are using them. Do you really think they dont know what they are doing? I wont name names, but there is at least one top 100 company using these things. I guarantee if the numbers didnt work out, they wouldnt own one.
I agree, but the initial cost is hard to get over. But if you do alot of mulch then this would be the time saver.
