For those attending GIE+EXPO next week in Louisville, Kentucky, make sure to add Friday’s breakfast workshop to your list of things to do at the show. From 7:30 to 9:15 a.m. in Room C-108, Equipment World’s executive editor Tom Jackson will host a session on “Calculating Your Equipment’s Owning and Operating Costs.”
Why O&O costs? Because, says Jackson, in 14 years of writing about construction equipment, he has come to realize this is the one area where landscapers and small contractors are the most deficient. Most guys who own just one or two pieces of compact equipment think the sticker price is their biggest cost. But nothing could be further from the truth.
And if you don’t have an extremely accurate read on your equipment owning O&O costs, you could be leaving money on the table or charging your clients less than it costs you to do the work. “As I’ve heard many contractors say, ‘You can be going broke in this business and not know it for six months,'” Jackson says.
Successful earthmoving contractors calculate every machine’s cost down to the dime. The techniques they use are within anybody’s reach. All you need is an Excel spreadsheet and consistent recordkeeping. What’s more, once you see where your true costs are, you can start to put your cost-containment efforts into areas that matter.
In this session, Jackson will take three popular machines in the landscaping world — a skid steer, compact excavator and backhoe — and show attendees how to detail every cost from the initial purchase price down to what they pay for lube oil, maintenance and how they can use that information to make better decisions.
When you’re talking big machines, the little changes add up to big money pretty fast. So, stop in Friday and learn what you can do to win more bids and pull more profit out of every job with O&O cost calculations.
Note: The session costs $50 to attend, and pre-registration is required. If you have already registered for GIE and want to reserve your spot in the workshop, use your dashboard password and click here.
