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.
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.
Hmm, most of the comments I read add interesting tidbits about the life of an arborist and the costs of removing a tree that people might not expect. I wouldn't say that the commenters don't understand the joke, I for one appreciate the extra information.
It's the internet so if you're making a post with satire you'd better clearly mark it as such or else you don't careabout other people and how they might feel if they get fooled.
Being an arborist is one of the most dangerous careers there are, this "passive income" guy would probably die in under a year.
you mean your tree.
Ever eat a pine tree, many parts are edible.
the seeds. need fiber eat the wood.
Reread their username
This particular account is specifically a satire account
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.
Yes, I am aware now. Thanks.
My point was more that people who really think like this exist.
I've known people like this IRL, glad this isn't real through.
Edit: Weird downvotes, but OK.
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.
Not really, but what can you do?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The thing is, it's hard to discern where to stop... Could it be done safely with 1 guy and a truck? 2? Cherry picker? Did they need 6 guys, 3 trucks, and $300,000 worth of machinery to make it safe and easy? One costs 5x the other method, but it's just easier on them and not necessary at all in some cases.
My experience so far:
For the big company you pay a big chunk of money and they show up on time and are done in an hour or three. The tree(s) comes down fast, everything’s hauled off, chipped up, or ground down. They likely do several jobs in a day, so that’s where the money comes from. You know it’s 99% chance they are actually insured.
The small business consisting of a guy or two might get to you in a few weeks. He might or might not show up for the originally discussed time and day. They’ll be there for several hours, probably take a few breaks, and then they’ll need to drive off and retrieve their chipper truck. Maybe he’s insured. Maybe not. You’ve just got to go by his word. Grinding the stump might happen same day, or maybe a couple days later when they drag the stump grinder around to the last 5 jobs they did to finish them.
The big company will cost more. But not a whole lot more.
That depends entirely on the customer and how long they want to be hearing chainsaws, chippers and having trucks and equipment on their property. Can it be done with just one guy? Probably not reasonably, especially if you live somewhere like I do, the Pacific Northwest and the trees are big. But a few guys and a small operation with small trucks and minimal equipment? Sure, but they still need to be licensed and insured, they are doing a hazardous job, and with the time not being saved by machines you’re paying for significantly more labor hours. The reason tree trimming businesses do it that way is it’s generally more efficient and more efficient typically costs you about the same but puts a little money in their pocket. Things have a built in cost that you can’t undercut with out straight up losing money, you pay what you pay or you do it yourself (and you still have to pay some of that for the equipment or gear needed). Business works best at scale, that’s just how it works in most industries.
Nothing they wrote indicates to me that they didn't understand the post is satire. It seems to me like they are just adding information and context that people may not know
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.
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.
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.
Well that's the point
Same except different. A microwave cap stores more current than most HVAC systems do. That doesn't mean you should play with those caps either if you don't understand what you are looking at.
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....
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
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.
"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!"
Alright so when the wood chipper sheds the tree all these extra bark chips just get tossed out. So we simplified the whole thing, we rounded them all down, drop the remainder into an account we opened.
Ugh, my brother is this type of person. Everywhere we go, he's like "You know, this place probably just prints money. If they're charging each one of us $X and they do this amount of business all the time, that's millions every year! We could easily do this and probably double that if we really tried."
Turns up with a tree harvester - "okay, this thing can process a thousand trees per day, who will pay 1000x rates?"
I grew up with a wood burner for heat in the winter, so ever summer we'd go out and cut down a dead tree somewhere, cut into chunks that can be rolled or carried to a truck bed, hauled home, unloaded, and repeated until the entire tree was collected. That would mean probably 5-10 truck loads in a standard farm truck. With 3 non professionals running 2 chainsaws, that's 4+ hours not including drive time.
So while this is satire, for anyone who's not cut down a tree before, especially one with consequences if you fell it wrong, the pros make it look fast an easy.
The same with almost every work. We don't see years of expertise and background calculations behind every their action. Especially with good tools they are used too.
It's porn to watch a professional do what they are skilled for.
Make humility great again
I have helped remove a tree before, it wasn't over a house or in a dangerous place. We sawed the limbs top down. fell the trunk, cut it into firewood sized rounds, split it. and dug out the stump by hand.
It was a 15' tall tree.
5 unskilled labor, 20+ hours.
If we had the right tools, it might have been a couple-hour job for that tiny tree.
It's definitely a job worth paying someone with the right equipment to do.
Right equipment makes it infinitely easier and safer, but even a 10 foot tree could easily be lethal or life ruining if the people working it don't know what they're doing or aren't paying attention. Felling or even trimming trees is extremely dangerous
Fuck brah, the first tree I felled was a 35' poplar that was way too close to the fence. I used a corded Sawzall with a 9" wood blade. Managed to cut it completely through and it just stayed there wobbling. Had to push it over and run once it started falling. Neighbour was just watching and chewing Tylenols right from the bottle.
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.
even removing a large succulent like a mature agave is dangerous(they have sharp spines, and very heavy and produces a poisonious sap.
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.
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!
Clearly fake - if it were real everyone would have clapped.
The condoms are under the sink
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.
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 put whatever you want in a contract, but it can't contradict the law.
If an arborists is negligent and fucks up, they can still be sued for their fuck up, no matter what some boilerplate contract says.
About tree fiddy.
Cutting a tree down is not "a few minutes of work". It can take hours. So the $750 is for several hours of work.
The extra $1000 though? These really are for a few minutes of work. Than again - that work involves talking to stupid customers, which is much more draining than cutting a tree.
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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, Twitter X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
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What’s incredible is the number of commenters who don’t recognize obvious satire when they see it.
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