Starting a New Business

[treeadmin]

I am a Glenville State College student wanting to see if maybe you could help me. I am a forestry major here and I am currently enrolled in a small business class. I chose to do a tree removal company for my small business and I was wondering if maybe you could help me out by sending me a list of startup costs, insurance, and if possible a description of your company. I need some numbers and stats to help me get started so anything you can provide me with would be greatly appreciated, and if you can think of anything else that may help me that would be great too. Thanks for your time.

[treeadmin]

This is a comment from someone who contacted us asking about the business. I thought it would be great if some of us could give him some advice.

[ContractorCare]

I can give a couple rough scenarios. Biggest question is how realistic is your money situation? If you don't have a strong 6 figures sitting in your bank account, you are going to be a start-up company. What this means is you probably should focus on small jobs that are a mix of tree service and landscaping. Fill that nitch that big companies can't get with trim work and $100-200 jobs. Get basic insurance, a truck, a few saws and a trailer. Spend time knocking doors and putting up flyers.
If you are able to put some money into the business, the big expense will be equipment and insurance/workers comp. You really need no less than $100,000 and a lot of good credit if you want to start a fully legit business. Not to mention someone with decades of experience to tell you what to do. That is a starting point. Try some more specific questions and you can get some real quality answers.

Good luck.

[treewife]

I to am "developing" a tree service business for my college business project. I am a student at Southern Oregon University and my husband is interested in beginning his own tree service business, as he works for his father's business now. The market in Southern Oregon is extremely saturated and as I run the numbers I have found during my research, it is showing to be a bad decision.

What I need to know is how you "generalize" pricing for a financial sheet when every job is different and the average number of tree jobs you perform each year.

He is also thinking about contract work for government agencies and I need to know if there is an average you can expect to get every year, if there is a way to make a new business thrive without them and how you go about finding them.

We have decided that if we are going to do this, we will wait five or six years and purchase a plot of land with a shop and house on it so that we won't have two loans.

Any other advice would be helpful, especially with insurance prices and workman's comp since those are a large expense in this business.

Thank you!