For those of you using a day rate for some jobs, how do you 'describe' your work in your quotes? Do you state approx how many hours of actual mulching will be happening? Do you say approx 8 to 5 with X number of hours of mulching, or how do you handle that?

How do you guys handle working in various city limits? KCMO has some rules for over 1 acre, water ways, soil disturbance, etc. Also how do you work around property lines? Doing online research it's recommending getting surveys and stuff but our pricing does not factor that in.

This might seem like an odd question but how is everyone defining these too? Forestry Mulching and Land Clearing? Differences from one to the other in your market?

New business startup: Really want to go with Takeuchi, but the dealers are around 1-1.5 hours away. I have a Bobcat dealer in town. Is it worth going with them just for the ease of maintenance if needed?

First let me say this: I'm outlining what I did. It's worked so far very well for me. You are welcome to take, steal, edit or completely ignore everything here. I'm sharing what I did and if it helps you in any way, excellent. My story in a nutshell. A couple decades in corporate America, IT manager (I was a nerd, now I manage nerds) plus I've run some side gigs that employed people. IT right now is pretty scary, everything will look different in the next few years and most of the jobs I'm qualified for will be taken by automation and AI so after a few months of research, I selected Forestry Mulching for the 2nd phase of my life. My plan is to own/manage and to hire out the operator positions. I'll learn how to operate for fun so it makes sense to me and I can 'talk operator talk' but I won't ever be more qualified than who I hired to do the job. Eventually I want to be at scale with several teams but for now I need to hire my first operator, which is the most important hire. They can make or break your start, which could make or break your business. For me they are going to do everything operational - help me walk jobs while I learn how to quote them, they will mobolize, handle all mulching activies, light maintenance, etc. They'll need a Class A CDL. They'll shoot video at the job site, take before/after photos of every job, read from scrips for ad content (I don't want to be on camera yet as I still have the corporate job). Intially I was requiring skid steer experience and forestry mulching / land management was a bonus. Now that I'm done this process and hired my 1st operator, next time I'm going to require land management and/or foresty mulching experience. I next had to figure out my requirements. Who we are looking for: Self starter, able to work alone Reliable and high integrity Complete daily paperwork Documentation for each job Willing to be on video - capture before and after photos daily, take video of operations, talk through scripts Safety minded