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What’s incredible is the number of commenters who don’t recognize obvious satire when they see it.
Two things at play: people don’t seem to critically/carefully read things very much, and Poe’s Law has been so thoroughly beat into the ground the past few years that satire has taken a huge blow.
For what it’s worth, many autistic folks have a hard time discerning satire so that kinda adds to it.
It does make a rather absurd pivot in that paragraph.
Wouldn’t that be detectable?
Legit asking. I feel like the joke here isn’t terribly well makes.
We’re in a post truth world rn. This very much could have come fresh from LinkedIn Lunatics.
I’m pretty sure it’s satire.
But…
Pro tip: once you’ve secured the job just ask ChatGPT to do it. Same pay but more free time for you.
Being an arborist is one of the most dangerous careers there are, this “passive income” guy would probably die in under a year.
If that post was sincere, I will eat my hat.
I’ve met people like this before: I hope it’s satirical, but wouldn’t be shocked if it was posted in earnest.
Edit: Yes, I am now aware this particular account ia just satire.
Satire can be hard because people approach an Einsteinian ridicule limit at which point they become indistinguishable from the most blatant satire about them… But I have to take a stance on this one, he hangs a hat on it - “one of those morons”. Come on!
Some people are like characters that escaped a comedy skit.
The account is entirely satirical.
Yes, I am aware now. Thanks.
My point was more that people who really think like this exist.
Who think “I’m going to say something satirical” and then say it?
No, people who earnestly say shit that sounds satirical.
Well yeah, satirists need someone to satire
you mean your tree.
Ever eat a pine tree, many parts are edible.
the seeds. need fiber eat the wood.
Reread their username
That’s exactly the hard thing about satire these days, someone who would call themselves that in earnest is not beyond belief.
This particular account is specifically a satire account
Pretty sure that account is satire
I’ve known people like this IRL, glad this isn’t real through.
Edit: Weird downvotes, but OK.
I’m downvoting you too, sorry. I’m not sure why, but it seems like the popular people are doing it, and I just want to fit in. We can still be friends in secret if you’d like.
That’s kind of you, but I don’t know if you’d want to be friends with me: I heard there were popular people downvoting my posts and they might go after you for associating with me.
Wow, that’s something only a true friend would say! Too bad about the unpopularity… Goodbye forever 🙂
You’re not my friend, Guy.
You want to know about the big money? Look into cutting down trees on other people’s property.
Cut down a mature hardwood tree on your neighbour’s lawn and it might cost you tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There’s got to be a way to monetize that.
Too late. Lawyers already have.
And that is the story of how I have my own personal chef and a team of arborists. Follow me for more advice.
As a former groundsman for an arborist, I was shocked at how much of what seemed like a ludicrous sum just bled away to nothing. Guy earned the equivalent of maybe 20$ an hour after expenses. This was 20 years ago, so that was livable and more than double what someone at McDonalds could expect to make, but the actual income he brought home to the family was microscopic compared to the 1.2 million he took in before expenses.
What sort of expenses are there? Obviously equipment and paying wages, what else? Insurance?
Equipment is more than you think. Trucks with cherry pickers or spider lifts are a couple hundred grand each, plus they need to be maintained and replaced. And you probably need more than one. So now you’re deep into 6-figure debt, and that means big monthly payments. That’s before you even get to the costs to store the equipment safely, leasing an office, skilled workers, etc. And yes insurance and bonding, which, you can cause some major damage to multiple structures at once, so that’s not cheap at all. How about marketing? Do some billboards or commercials? Tens of thousands more.
I’ve worked in commercial construction (which absolutely is a cash generating machine) and tree trimming services are like a mini version of that - you need a lot of upfront cash to make it happen and get a stable cash flow going before it’s solid and profitable.
Equipment and wages, but also all the time you have to put into your business that isn’t billable.
Time spent on the phone, scheduling people, time spent doing estimates for jobs, time spent doing business accounting, time spent on truck maintenance, time spent disposing of materials that you’ve hauled away.
You can pay someone to do almost all of that, and charge for estimates if you’d like, but paying for an accountant or a secretary turns a time cost into a money cost, so you’re either losing your hours or doing extra jobs to pay for your accountant. Since finding enough work can be a challenge, it’s easier to put in your time, but spending, say, 8 hours a week on accounting is still 8 hours you weren’t paid that week.
Taking your truck in for maintenance also means you’re paying a mechanic, who has to price similarly to you for all the same reasons, so if you’re measuring in time spent per day, you’ll find setting aside time to do maintenance yourself is probably worth nearly as much as what you’ll make actually working.
Charging for estimates would be great, except that’s a privilege you get when you have enough work that you can decline jobs. If you don’t have that much work, eating the 10$ of gas (probably 30+ now, but 10$ then) is better than having a customer decline to call because he’s paying for you to do maybe nothing, in his mind.
Some weeks I worked 5 days, some 2-3 days. I was college age and either was fine for me at the time. The arborist was putting in 40-50 hours of work on that slow week, 60-70 on the full one.
A larger organization is gonna break all those time costs into additional employees that manage the day to day, an accountant, a mechanic, a secretary, and that’s a great way to visualize all the costs that you can’t bill for that someone who is working on their own or as a single-crew business is still paying for, just in time they don’t get reimbursed for instead.
Yes. Fuel Veichle payments. Veichle maitnace Veichle anual safety and emissions, due to being comercial use Veichle insurance. Equipment costs Mulchers Cranes Chainsaws wich at that level, become consumables. Harnesses, ropes climbing, and riging gear that needs to be replaced frequently. Mainance on said equipment. Oil changes, blades etc Property lease and insurance to store the equipment and tools and act as central location for the business. Saftey training and certificates, working at heights, whimis etc. More insurance. Wages and wsib. Taxes, then more taxes on the taxes. If your company has over x amount of employees you have an extra health tax you have to pay just because you have more employees. I don’t know the full reasoning for it. Permits and planing, to operate in some towns and cities. Disposal fees. Only so much of it can be passed down to the customer too. Plus many more misc , Christmas bonus, lunches and coffey for your employees, water and electrolytic drinks. Incidentals etc.
They should get a vehicle instead, much cheaper than a Veichle.
Holy shit more people need to know about this. Can’t tell you how many times I got screwed out of so many of my local currency units by Big Veichle when there were trillions of perfectly good, 2-5 LCU vehicles of all kinds I could’ve used instead.
Lamo. The delivery & cadence is perfect.
I agree with this guy but to the plumber trying to charge my mother 450 to re install the float valve assembly…fuck you man.
Its not that the job is worth 450 dollars, its that his time is. If he’s at your place fixing something easy, he’s not somewhere else making that money he could make. The whole process of getting there and fixing it could take a couple hours.
Man I wish I could do that for computers
I wish you could too 😔
It’s one of those things where it would be great if you could make an informed choice on whether you needed to hire a Master Plumber or save a bunch of money with Dave who has a pipe wrench and a youtube premium subscription. One of those things where if you knew enough to know whether you could get by with Dave, you’re probably pretty close to doing it yourself.
If Dave were worth his salt - he would be capable of telling you this job is over his head, or if you legally need a professional.
That’s part of being a handyman. If he can’t do that then he’s dangerous, and not worth any amount of money.
And you’d best pay him for coming to this conclusion…
Yeah, funny how it works. Of course of you know that’s like a fifteen dollar part from the hardware store.
Another cheap but expensive one when a capacitor goes in an HVAC. Super cheap quick and easy but an HVAC company will probably charge $500 if you called them.
Can save a ton of money just knowing a few basics on your plumbing, HVAC, and cars.
Don’t they say not to take apart microwaves because the capacitor could shock and kill you? Is it the same with HVAC capacitors?
Yup.
Crt monitors are the stereotypical "surprise, you just pushed the dead button!” device, but microwaves too.
Their transformers are the bit that kills the most hobbiests though. Crazy high frequency high voltage transformer that chooses not to fuck around when you plop it in your project.
You should be careful, but it’s not hard to drain them real quick before working on them.
If the plumber is your mom’s neighbor and has the float already, then yeah it’s pricey but if they had to drive 30 minutes to get there and go to the store for the part, it really isn’t that crazy. Also is it a legitimate business or just an under the table side job? Location in the country matters too.
Have you ever installed a float . … because $400 for at most an hour of work is crazy. If it’s more than an hour then you’re doing something wrong or something else.
But I literally just redid mine and it’s stupid easy.
Yeah absolutely, I’m not disagreeing with you. But if you had to drive across town to perform the work, and say you didn’t know beforehand that it was a float or you didn’t have the right type with you and had to go to the store, then your total amount of time spent port to port would likely be more than an hour. How much is your time worth? I am a technician , my work charges over $200/hr labor rate. About half that goes to me. There is overhead with coordination, vehicle costs, tools, etc… Basically what I’m saying is that yeah, the physical work only takes 10 minutes, but much more goes into the cost than just that.
That was almost c/linkedinlunatics material for a second. Well done.
Completely missing overhead costs. We had a couple trees removed and it cost a fortune, or so I thought. But a crew of 6 showed up with 3 big trucks that probably cost 6-figures give or take. A chipper, a lift, and a tractor-trailer combo to haul off the trunks. All that has to be paid for, plus insurance, licensing, bonding, health care, payroll taxes, etc etc.
Everyone gets paid, of course, so they’re making money. But putting big bucks in the bank for the owner? Not likely.
This is a fake story. Guy recounting the story is lying through his teeth.
It’s called satire
Must be the post funny era of satire I keep hearing about.
Nah, just the joke flew over your head at Mach 5.
It’s okay, not everyone gets every joke, or maybe you were having a slow day
At March 5? Huh.
Mach 5.
Mach is a unit of speed, used mostly by aircraft, with Mach 1 = Speed of Sound
So mach 5 is 5 times the speed of sound
For some reason it’s pronounced “Mac”, I dunno why
Someone doesn’t understand gross vs. net income. Or how much work it takes to take down a tree.
Depends on the tree. But one cost nobody is mentioning is insurance. It’s pricey for these guys because a small mistake can do a million dollar’s damage and kill 3 people in about 5 seconds.
Who needs insurance?
if you drop a tree on a house. Just close up shop. Claim all your vehicles were stolen, and open up TreeTrimming 2.0 - a legally distinct Limited Liability Company.
That’s what LLC’s are for after all…
That’s exactly why most cities require them to have insurance as part of their permitting.
Would arborists be liable? Or would they demand you in the contract to take all and any consequences?
You can’t sign away liability a lot of times. Contract law isn’t as simple as “they signed it!”. There are limits to what can be signed away in a contract and liability is a classic
You can’t sign away liability a lot of times
Yeah, but do arboristic works fall into these “a lot of times”?
I can’t find anything particular on the internet.
And how much is it?
I like the little detail that they can’t do math.
$1,750 per job assuming ten jobs per week is $17,500 per week of working. Assuming 4 weeks per month, that’s $70,000 per month. Assuming 12 months of working per year, that’s $840,000 per year. I’d be calling it “almost a million” at that point. I think the math works out, but the business prospects don’t.
It also says 10 other jobs so 11 per week even
He says 10 other jobs per week. So that’s $1750x11x52 which is over a million.
This is akin to the whole ‘ two coins, 30 cents, one is not a nickel’ trick question. I like it.
A 35¢ coin and a -5¢ coin. Easy!
you could probably do 2 trees at the same time. that’s over a million dollars a year
“Lawrence, what would you do if you had a million dollars?”
“I’ll tell you what I’d do, man. Two trees at the same time, man!”
