# Just bought a New bobcat A 300 high flow with 7 ft sweeper and 12 inch brush, wet kit



## kcress31

Looking at converting all of my snow contracts to our sweeping business instead of the one sweeping contractor that is in town. He has an old one speed thomas with a 5 or 6 foot containment sweeper. The one sweeping guy is getting into snow so I thought we would get into the sweeping. I think we should get 95 % of our contracts and also others as well. What kind of houly rate would a machine like this justify? I know I will have to bid a flat price but I have no idea as to how much area I can cover in an hour. To rent a Bobcat S 250 and sweeper from a local rental dealer would cost $4000 a month plus freight. I am Guessing a profitable hourly rate of $95.00 would make sense. Thinking of offering everyone who had him last year 25% off their last years bill to start, if they sign up by 3-6 weeks after receiving our proposal. Any thoughts?


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## JD Dave

A self propelled sweeper around here goes for $85/hour, I know this for fact because I had to quote power sweeping for some contracts of mine so I called around. The hourly rate was cheaper then I expected.


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## kcress31

JD Dave;861864 said:


> A self propelled sweeper around here goes for $85/hour, I know this for fact because I had to quote power sweeping for some contracts of mine so I called around. The hourly rate was cheaper then I expected.


What size of machine? Or how would it compare to my A 300? Avg square ft per hr? I am a virgin sweeper. Be gentle.


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## JD Dave

kcress31;861867 said:


> What size of machine? Or how would it compare to my A 300? Avg square ft per hr? I am a virgin sweeper. Be gentle.


Don't worry I'm a virgin also. Not sure of the size, all I know Bruell has 42 of them and they are the ones you see doing road sweeping and such. My guess is they'd sweep circles around you but I'm just guessing. I was just trying to give you a starting point, hopefully $85 will work for you. When I called for a quote on a 14 acre site he gave me a price of $1200 dollars cleaned curb to curb and that includes a guy blowing out all the corners and tight area's. We don't use sand around here so we don't have much to haul away.


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## kcress31

JD Dave;861872 said:


> Don't worry I'm a virgin also. Not sure of the size, all I know Bruell has 42 of them and they are the ones you see doing road sweeping and such. My guess is they'd sweep circles around you but I'm just guessing. I was just trying to give you a starting point, hopefully $85 will work for you. When I called for a quote on a 14 acre site he gave me a price of $1200 dollars cleaned curb to curb and that includes a guy blowing out all the corners and tight area's. We don't use sand around here so we don't have much to haul away.


Thanks. That gives me a starting point. My machine would only be used for small to medium sized lots and a few large ones. The closest competitor with a bigger or better sweeper than me would be 300 - 400 km away.


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## buckwheat_la

we do a fair amount of sweeping, so i can shed a little light on your dilema, for starters, we charge 15 dollars a hour more for the sweeper to be pulled out. is your sweeper a containment sweeper?, you well find this is important for parking lot sweeping,(i recommentd the JD containment sweeper as a simple sweeper to start out with, also i have a recommendation on how to alter this sweeper for snow removal too) also, do you have a gutter attachement? if you don't plan on a employee to be doing the edges of the lots, now i did try a gutter attachement, and found it wasn't that good, so i have been selling the idea to the lots we sweep of having a extra person on site, but then we get all the shopping cart bays, all the nooks and crannies, around all the parking blocks, etc. i have had a lot of success with this system, so we are billing about $120/hour, and we do a 8 acre lot in about 4-6 hrs depending on just how dirty it is.


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## kcress31

buckwheat_la;861915 said:


> we do a fair amount of sweeping, so i can shed a little light on your dilema, for starters, we charge 15 dollars a hour more for the sweeper to be pulled out. is your sweeper a containment sweeper?, you well find this is important for parking lot sweeping,(i recommentd the JD containment sweeper as a simple sweeper to start out with, also i have a recommendation on how to alter this sweeper for snow removal too) also, do you have a gutter attachement? if you don't plan on a employee to be doing the edges of the lots, now i did try a gutter attachement, and found it wasn't that good, so i have been selling the idea to the lots we sweep of having a extra person on site, but then we get all the shopping cart bays, all the nooks and crannies, around all the parking blocks, etc. i have had a lot of success with this system, so we are billing about $120/hour, and we do a 8 acre lot in about 4-6 hrs depending on just how dirty it is.


I am still waiting for everything to come in at the end of the month. It is a bobcat containment - 84 "sweeper with 12" gutter brush. What do you mean you charge extra to pull out the sweeper. How can it be used for snow? $120 minus extra person = $95 sounds about right. I think having an extra person with a blower is a good idea. I think I might try that or offer both rates or levels of service. 8 acres in four to six hours sounds good. Some people may not want to give me a copy of their last years bill so knowing what it will take in hours is very important in me being competetive in my price.

Thanks again


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## kcress31

kcress31;861921 said:


> I am still waiting for everything to come in at the end of the month. It is a bobcat containment - 84 "sweeper with 12" gutter brush. What do you mean you charge extra to pull out the sweeper. How can it be used for snow? $120 minus extra person = $95 sounds about right. I think having an extra person with a blower is a good idea. I think I might try that or offer both rates or levels of service. 8 acres in four to six hours sounds good. Some people may not want to give me a copy of their last years bill so knowing what it will take in hours is very important in me being competetive in my price.
> 
> Thanks again


I forgot to ask. Does the high flow make a big difference in the sweeper and gutter brush?


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## buckwheat_la

first, the hi flow doesn't make any difference,(my machine doesn't have it) the sweeper doesn't turn that fast anyways. when i said i charge more, i meant i add the $15 on top of my skid rate, currently, i am charging $70/hour + $15/hour for the sweeper, and $35/person. Also the blower well work sometimes, but you are going to find, a good broom and metal grain scoop is also going to come in handy. As far as the sweep being used for snow, i can't speak for the bobcat one, but with our one JD containment sweeper, we cut off the metal front, reinforce the edges, then built a removable rubber front, so that in the winter you take off the cutting edge at the bottom, the rubber front, tilt your bucket and you run the sweeper in reverse and it pushes snow out the front, we use the sweeper this way on pavingstone, stamped concrete, and other special surfaces that have worries about being scratched, we also found our bank jobs are willing to pay extra for this service


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## kcress31

Thanks again. Once I get the unit in I will let you know if I have any more questions.


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## plowtime1

Personally, if your trying to enter the market for sweeping, you should look into a sweeper you can travel on the road and highway; these units are equipped with water tank, curb brooms etc.
I usually can sweep on average 4-5 seasonal clean-ups(local) with a three man crew with these type of units (jmo) YOU CAN BRING IN $$$$ if you operate more efficiently and look better than your competitor.

I wish you well with your machine.


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## kcress31

plowtime1;862905 said:


> Personally, if your trying to enter the market for sweeping, you should look into a sweeper you can travel on the road and highway; these units are equipped with water tank, curb brooms etc.
> I usually can sweep on average 4-5 seasonal clean-ups(local) with a three man crew with these type of units (jmo) YOU CAN BRING IN $$$$ if you operate more efficiently and look better than your competitor.
> 
> I wish you well with your machine.


Good point. As of now I had a hard time convincing my partner to buy this machine. He thought it was too small. We have mainly larger stuff. Us having this machine and sweeper diversifies us a bit and allows us to service our clients better than before. Our competitor who sweeps has another full time job and only sweeps on his days off. Our other competitors don't offer skid steer rentals or sweeping. If we were in a larger centre I would have considered something bigger and better. Our town has a population of less than 6,000 and nearest other town with 2,000 to 3,000 people is 1 hour away. Where we are I can drive the Bobcat from one contract one one end of town to our farthest on the other side in about 5-10 minutes. I hope to have about 25 - 35 jobs lined up for spring. I am lucky that 90 % of our contracts are next to each other or 1-2 minutes apart so traveling is not an issue. We did get the water kit and the gutter brush for the machine as well.


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