# Fleet Average Acres/Truck



## EdNewman (Jan 27, 2004)

Just cursious on an overall basis, how many acres do you figure per truck? We got a bunch more contracts and I am working off of 2.5 acres per truck. Some trucks move more, some less, loader is definitely more, but it is an average, what kind of numbers do you larger contractors have?


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## Matson Snow (Oct 3, 2009)

EdNewman;1118762 said:


> Just cursious on an overall basis, how many acres do you figure per truck? We got a bunch more contracts and I am working off of 2.5 acres per truck. Some trucks move more, some less, loader is definitely more, but it is an average, what kind of numbers do you larger contractors have?


Truck on average is doing an acre an hour in a pretty wide open area....


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## Burkartsplow (Nov 1, 2007)

i do about 1.5 to 1.75 acres an hour with my old meyer 8.5 with wings (10'4" wide) in a wide open lot with 2 inches down


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## EdNewman (Jan 27, 2004)

Not per hour, overall. In concept, if you started a new company from scratch and sold 100 acres the first year, how many trucks would you buy? 10, 20, 50, 100?


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## elite1msmith (Sep 10, 2007)

im not gonna post it, 

and there is alot more to this question than a simple XYZ answer.

but....from your customers perspective, if it was snowing middle of the day, at an average rate per hour, how many inches do you think your customer watns on his lot? 2 ?3?4? so then how many hours does it have to snow at an average rate? take that hour, figure out your production per hour and thats my ratio. but- we also dont plow every single sq foot of parking lot during the day, so we figure that into the mix as well


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## EdNewman (Jan 27, 2004)

I know, it's not for estimating, we have a whole complex calculation we use for that. It was more of a general industry concept.

I think you are digging into it too deep, becuase it really only applies to what happens in the worst case scenario. Do you run every truck and loader for every storm? Smaller/slower storms need less than what should be your capacity. The biggest, the 25 year jobbies, even the best of us may be over our heads.


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## elite1msmith (Sep 10, 2007)

my theory is , is everything should run every storm that is plowable. you can save some fuel and some man hours by cutting back equiptment, but any time i did that, i saw only a slight savings, and then someone class in sick, or something breaks and that whole thing jsut became a night mare. run everything, finish in 4 hours, 2 hours, 8 hours what ever it takes


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## Bossman 92 (Sep 27, 2006)

Alright I'll go first. Off the top of my head. don't quote me, but I am close to 8 acres per truck. I have 4 trucks now, and I am picking another one up at the end of the week, so with 40 plowable acres and 5 trucks, it comes out to 8 acres per truck. 

Before someone jumps my ass, I have a few lots that don't have to be done during normal business hours, so that helps some. But I also have a few that are zero tolerance, and have to be serviced every inch, so that keeps us moving.

Bossman


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## Luther (Oct 31, 2007)

EdNewman;1118762 said:


> Just cursious on an overall basis, how many acres do you figure per truck? We got a bunch more contracts and I am working off of 2.5 acres per truck.





EdNewman;1118818 said:


> Not per hour, overall. In concept, if you started a new company from scratch and sold 100 acres the first year, how many trucks would you buy? 10, 20, 50, 100?


I thought I looked at things every which way but Wednesday.

Never tried to average every piece utilized vs acres serviced without considering time involved.

What significance does this mean to you?


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## forestfireguy (Oct 7, 2006)

TCLA;1119069 said:


> I thought I looked at things every which way but Wednesday.
> 
> Never tried to average every piece utilized vs acres serviced without considering time involved.
> 
> What significance does this mean to you?


I'm curious how this might be useful as well.

For what it's worth, we build our routes and equip our routes with the goal of having each one complete in respect to plowing and salting a 0-4 inch storm in 5-6 hours. We do pretty well with this and meet all of the client expectations for timely service. Obviously our time in service grows as accumulations do.


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## PLCI (Nov 8, 2004)

Interesting way to look at the overall picture, Were covering 68 acres with (28) trucks (5) and (4) loaders. Just using some rough conversions, the 5 skids are worth (2.5) trucks and the 4 loaders average to (7) trucks) for a total of (38) trucks. which averages 1.79 acres per truck. This is a full mix of residentials, medicals, office, retail and condo. 

The only way I see this info as being usefull is a rough benchmark, similar to your gross revenue per employee.


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## EdNewman (Jan 27, 2004)

Yes, PLCI, it is simply an interesting way of looking at the big picture. I thought of it as we added a few customers this year and I was starting to re-arrange the work teams. We price based on sq-ft (actually per thousand sq-ft) so I added up the total and divided by the number of teams (2 trucks each) and it just popped into my head that it was an interesting statistic. It will definitely vary greatly depending on where you work (how much snow) and what type of lots. I would figure most would be between 1.0 (more resi and small complex stuff) and 3.0 for all big lots with loaders. We're probably on the high side as we do mostly large industrial sites and use bigger trucks.


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