Derek, yep, my mother is pretty smart. She never let me blame someone or something when things went wrong. Can't tell you how many times she said, "Quit griping about the problem, start thinking about the solution." One heck of a woman.
Gordon, cutting and skidding out logs is hard [censored] work! ESPECIALLY when working at night! And it's cold! I hope you charge a lot 'cause you deserve it.
I remember a story that goes well with this tread. There was a manufacturing plant manager that had one of his main assembly line machines go down. He called the service man, told him that his production line had stopped, and he was loosing money every second the assembly line wasn't producing. The service man came right out, looked at the problem, told the plant manager he could fix the problem right then, and it would cost $5,000. The plant manager agreed. The service man went to the broken machine, turned a screw 1/2 of a turn, and it was good as new. When he presented the plant manager with his bill, and the plant manager got very angry. He told the service man he wasn't going to pay him $5,000 for simply turning a screw 1/2 of a turn. The service man told him he wasn't being payed $5,000 for simply turning a screw 1/2 of a turn, rather he was paying him $5,000 for knowing which screw to turn and how far.
One last thing, talked to a friend last night and asked him how he charged folks for tractor work. He said with small jobs instead of minimums he charges a flat rate. He used the example of one customer who needed a pile of rock moved. He said he'd do it for $175. The customer thought his price was a little high. He asked the customer if he had any idea how long and hard it would be if the customer did the job by hand. The customer agreed to the $175. The job took about an hour and a half. This way of charging made sense to me.
Bill Cook
