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Alex B

@bprintco • 6,632 subscribers

I give people their land back - Owner of Brushworks Services Co.

Shorts

We’ve had a $7500 rental quote turn into an $18,000 invoice. 5 day rental of a Fecon FTX 150 was quoted at $7500. We run the machine for a week and clear about 4 acres. Yuck, definitely not worth the $7500 price. We’re on a large job charging $2k per acre. We thought this machine could do 3 acres a day. It cannot, so we return it knowing we just took a small loss on the rental. Invoice comes… $18k. What!? They charged $1200 for drop off and another $1200 for pick up. Never mentioned that. They tell us “oh your limit was 40 hours, you put 73 hours on it”. Didn’t say a word about it. Also, another $1100 for a small dent. It’s a forestry machine. It had dents on it when it arrived. (Good thing I record everything in 4k) None of this was ever mentioned by the rental rep. $18k to clear 4 acres is a non viable rental product. Just the rental price alone is far beyond the highest prices anyone charges. I’ll never rent anything from CompanyWrench ever again. Terrible service, terrible policies, and the 36 acre job is now a complete loss. Live and learn. Renting is very risky and they’ll invoice 2x to 3x what your quote was.

We’ve had a $7500 rental quote turn into an $18,000 invoice. 5 day rental of a Fecon FTX 150 was quoted at $7500. We run the machine for a week and clear about 4 acres. Yuck, definitely not worth the $7500 price. We’re on a large job charging $2k per acre. We thought this machine could do 3 acres a day. It cannot, so we return it knowing we just took a small loss on the rental. Invoice comes… $18k. What!? They charged $1200 for drop off and another $1200 for pick up. Never mentioned that. They tell us “oh your limit was 40 hours, you put 73 hours on it”. Didn’t say a word about it. Also, another $1100 for a small dent. It’s a forestry machine. It had dents on it when it arrived. (Good thing I record everything in 4k) None of this was ever mentioned by the rental rep. $18k to clear 4 acres is a non viable rental product. Just the rental price alone is far beyond the highest prices anyone charges. I’ll never rent anything from CompanyWrench ever again. Terrible service, terrible policies, and the 36 acre job is now a complete loss. Live and learn. Renting is very risky and they’ll invoice 2x to 3x what your quote was.

1,784,556 Aufrufe

In case anyone is wondering, it’s around $800 for one of those big semi crane trucks to spend 30 mins recovering your equipment. Not bad actually 🤷‍♂️

In case anyone is wondering, it’s around $800 for one of those big semi crane trucks to spend 30 mins recovering your equipment. Not bad actually 🤷‍♂️

229,212 Aufrufe

We have over $250k in scheduled jobs just in April alone A 5x increase over last April. Our biggest and most frustrating challenge by far is speed to scale. I could add another $250k with the click of a button, and I could press this button 30x over every 4 months. I could expand the service area and amplify it even more. But I can’t, because we can’t fulfill more than that without more equipment. I can’t just infinitely buy equipment either, it takes time to build up. The thought of taking on an investor has been discussed many times, but that’s another challenge, because it needs to be the right investor. Money alone isn’t the right investor. We need one that understands the industry and is well connected in it. We also have over 100 people ready to buy into a franchise model. A model that has already been built over the Winter. The possibilities are endless, but the decisions have become much more complex and more impactful.

We have over $250k in scheduled jobs just in April alone A 5x increase over last April. Our biggest and most frustrating challenge by far is speed to scale. I could add another $250k with the click of a button, and I could press this button 30x over every 4 months. I could expand the service area and amplify it even more. But I can’t, because we can’t fulfill more than that without more equipment. I can’t just infinitely buy equipment either, it takes time to build up. The thought of taking on an investor has been discussed many times, but that’s another challenge, because it needs to be the right investor. Money alone isn’t the right investor. We need one that understands the industry and is well connected in it. We also have over 100 people ready to buy into a franchise model. A model that has already been built over the Winter. The possibilities are endless, but the decisions have become much more complex and more impactful.

84,390 Aufrufe

Well… I scrolled Facebook today and counted 22 new brush clearing companies in our local market alone. Every single one of them…except one, started no earlier than summer of 2025. A lot of them are copying our social formula almost exactly. - Same content style. - Same messaging. - Same angles. Not quite as effectively, but close enough. At the same time, I get emails, calls, and texts almost every day from people around the country starting forestry mulching businesses who want advice. Which is fascinating to watch… and exactly what we expected. Here’s the part people don’t talk about when they say “just post more content”: Visibility creates competition. Our lead costs are up roughly 10x because of market saturation. Our close rates are down because crowded markets always turn into a race to the bottom on price. That’s the tax of winning. Luckily, we planned for this. We’ve been expecting this since day one, and we’re rolling out Phase 2 of Brushworks this spring… a little earlier than anticipated, but no big deal. I will say… I am surprised by how fast people rush into a market when they see a good idea working. It moves faster than most people think. On to Phase 2. I won’t be sharing this one though. 😄

Well… I scrolled Facebook today and counted 22 new brush clearing companies in our local market alone. Every single one of them…except one, started no earlier than summer of 2025. A lot of them are copying our social formula almost exactly. - Same content style. - Same messaging. - Same angles. Not quite as effectively, but close enough. At the same time, I get emails, calls, and texts almost every day from people around the country starting forestry mulching businesses who want advice. Which is fascinating to watch… and exactly what we expected. Here’s the part people don’t talk about when they say “just post more content”: Visibility creates competition. Our lead costs are up roughly 10x because of market saturation. Our close rates are down because crowded markets always turn into a race to the bottom on price. That’s the tax of winning. Luckily, we planned for this. We’ve been expecting this since day one, and we’re rolling out Phase 2 of Brushworks this spring… a little earlier than anticipated, but no big deal. I will say… I am surprised by how fast people rush into a market when they see a good idea working. It moves faster than most people think. On to Phase 2. I won’t be sharing this one though. 😄

58,933 Aufrufe

We finally pulled the plug on per day pricing. It had to be done. The problem with per day pricing is it always creates winners and losers. - If we’re on site for 8 hours and don’t quite finish, we feel obligated to work extra to get it done. We lose. - If we finish a project in 5 hours and the customer paid for 8, they feel like they lost. It’s a simple system to start with. Customers understand it, it’s easy to quote, but it’s not scalable. It relies too much on experience and too much back and forth. So we switched to project based pricing. Now we’ve got 3 tiers of brush density and 3 tiers of terrain. Tier 1 is easy, Tier 3 is tough. Pricing scales per quarter acre, with volume discounts on larger jobs. It seems more complex on paper, but in reality it’s repeatable, reliable, and something we can train any new hire to do. We calculate the project, send the estimate, and that’s it. No more “estimated days” language. No more winners and losers. We’re much happier with this system.

We finally pulled the plug on per day pricing. It had to be done. The problem with per day pricing is it always creates winners and losers. - If we’re on site for 8 hours and don’t quite finish, we feel obligated to work extra to get it done. We lose. - If we finish a project in 5 hours and the customer paid for 8, they feel like they lost. It’s a simple system to start with. Customers understand it, it’s easy to quote, but it’s not scalable. It relies too much on experience and too much back and forth. So we switched to project based pricing. Now we’ve got 3 tiers of brush density and 3 tiers of terrain. Tier 1 is easy, Tier 3 is tough. Pricing scales per quarter acre, with volume discounts on larger jobs. It seems more complex on paper, but in reality it’s repeatable, reliable, and something we can train any new hire to do. We calculate the project, send the estimate, and that’s it. No more “estimated days” language. No more winners and losers. We’re much happier with this system.

25,944 Aufrufe

Might be time to give up on Bobcat Company . When our machine was in the shop, we had them replace the drive belt. First job out today, the drive belt fails. Machine’s now stranded on the customer’s property and completely immobile. We called it in and were told the earliest a tech could come out is next Tuesday. That’s a full week of a machine just sitting, dead in the water. Totally unacceptable and not a good sign of reliability. They charged us for a new belt and pulley, which we’ll now be installing ourselves tomorrow. And they tried to spin it like maybe we did something wrong. We didn’t. At the exact same time, our other machine starts spewing hydraulic fluid from the arm. No obvious cause. Our 2025 has been in the shop 5 times already. The 2019? Even more. I’d understand this stuff if we were slamming these things into trees or neglecting maintenance, but that’s not what’s happening. These are just mechanical issues that keep stacking up. All this is happening while we’re right at the finish line on buying a new T86. Honestly? I’m second guessing it. The guys in service and sales have been great, no complaints there, but the reliability just hasn’t been. We need a third machine, and we need it yesterday. Starting to look hard at the Takeuchi TL12 now. We’ll see what happens.

Might be time to give up on Bobcat Company . When our machine was in the shop, we had them replace the drive belt. First job out today, the drive belt fails. Machine’s now stranded on the customer’s property and completely immobile. We called it in and were told the earliest a tech could come out is next Tuesday. That’s a full week of a machine just sitting, dead in the water. Totally unacceptable and not a good sign of reliability. They charged us for a new belt and pulley, which we’ll now be installing ourselves tomorrow. And they tried to spin it like maybe we did something wrong. We didn’t. At the exact same time, our other machine starts spewing hydraulic fluid from the arm. No obvious cause. Our 2025 has been in the shop 5 times already. The 2019? Even more. I’d understand this stuff if we were slamming these things into trees or neglecting maintenance, but that’s not what’s happening. These are just mechanical issues that keep stacking up. All this is happening while we’re right at the finish line on buying a new T86. Honestly? I’m second guessing it. The guys in service and sales have been great, no complaints there, but the reliability just hasn’t been. We need a third machine, and we need it yesterday. Starting to look hard at the Takeuchi TL12 now. We’ll see what happens.

23,168 Aufrufe

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There’s a guy out there who has 5 of these machines… He makes over $2M per year just traveling the country cutting mountain bike trails. Pretty sweet business.

There’s a guy out there who has 5 of these machines… He makes over $2M per year just traveling the country cutting mountain bike trails. Pretty sweet business.

322,155 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

Whelp… the year is not going as planned. We’re getting another machine. We’re roughly $30k deep into repairs this year on the 2019 Bobcat and it has run for only a few hours all year. It’s on its 4th or 5th service visit since the season started. We get it back, run it for an hour or two, get another major breakdown, and take it right back to the dealer. So we’re picking up another TL12 tomorrow. We could have made 12 payments on it just in the repair expenses we’ve had at Bobcat this year alone. So much for no new equipment this year 🤦‍♂️ The 2019 Bobcat is just going to be running grapples, power rakes, and plows.

Whelp… the year is not going as planned. We’re getting another machine. We’re roughly $30k deep into repairs this year on the 2019 Bobcat and it has run for only a few hours all year. It’s on its 4th or 5th service visit since the season started. We get it back, run it for an hour or two, get another major breakdown, and take it right back to the dealer. So we’re picking up another TL12 tomorrow. We could have made 12 payments on it just in the repair expenses we’ve had at Bobcat this year alone. So much for no new equipment this year 🤦‍♂️ The 2019 Bobcat is just going to be running grapples, power rakes, and plows.

55,867 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

"HAHA! You fools! You can't just vibe code your own billion dollar software. It's impossible! How dare these small business owners think they can actually make something good?" I mean... I guess they're right. I made it better than their billion dollar software. All the shit I don't need is gone, and I made a better version of the stuff I do need. This is the process now for a Brushworks quote. Literally takes seconds...

"HAHA! You fools! You can't just vibe code your own billion dollar software. It's impossible! How dare these small business owners think they can actually make something good?" I mean... I guess they're right. I made it better than their billion dollar software. All the shit I don't need is gone, and I made a better version of the stuff I do need. This is the process now for a Brushworks quote. Literally takes seconds...

35,395 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

We’re currently running at full capacity. With two machines doing nothing but forestry mulching, our max revenue is $70,000 per month—and we’re there. We’re booked out through October and will be through the end of the season, which ends in November. Each machine can bring in around $35,000 per month with this service. Some services might earn more, some less, but we’re strictly forestry mulching, and it works. I’ve shut the ads off for now. I want to leave the last couple months of the season open for referrals. It’s important to protect our reputation and take care of repeat customers. If I have any open spots left to fill, I’ll flip the ads back on. But for now, we’re full.

We’re currently running at full capacity. With two machines doing nothing but forestry mulching, our max revenue is $70,000 per month—and we’re there. We’re booked out through October and will be through the end of the season, which ends in November. Each machine can bring in around $35,000 per month with this service. Some services might earn more, some less, but we’re strictly forestry mulching, and it works. I’ve shut the ads off for now. I want to leave the last couple months of the season open for referrals. It’s important to protect our reputation and take care of repeat customers. If I have any open spots left to fill, I’ll flip the ads back on. But for now, we’re full.

40,013 Aufrufe • vor 11 Monaten

Haven’t given a Brushworks update in a minute. Mainly because things have been quietly, consistently crushing it. Every month has been a new record. Ever since we switched to project based pricing we haven’t had a single machine failure. I don’t know if it’s coincidence or a direct result, but when operators aren’t racing a clock, they slow down, run smarter, and the equipment lives longer. Huge stress reduction across the board too. Sales got more interesting, though. Nobody else quotes this way, so anytime someone wanted to compare quotes it was: “Yeah yeah, but how many DAYS though?” I could give the whole explanation, they’d agree our system made way more sense… and then still ask. So now when people insist, I just estimate high and move on. Doesn’t matter to us, the price doesn’t change, but it keeps their brains from melting. We also didn’t even start pushing commercial work yet… and commercial started finding us anyway. Funny how that works. We’ve got a quote out right now that, if it closes, has the RCU booked basically all winter. That machine could pay for half of itself in a couple months. Seems like the RCU market here is wide open. No one else has one, so we’re filling the gap. We locked in snow clearing contracts this year too instead of sitting around waiting on snow. Way better to be proactive when you’ve got 3 skids sitting there ready to go. Salt spreader going on the truck soon too, may as well monetize the off season fully. November is already slammed and winter is shaping up strong. Happy Halloween 🎃 Time to finish the year strong 👊

Haven’t given a Brushworks update in a minute. Mainly because things have been quietly, consistently crushing it. Every month has been a new record. Ever since we switched to project based pricing we haven’t had a single machine failure. I don’t know if it’s coincidence or a direct result, but when operators aren’t racing a clock, they slow down, run smarter, and the equipment lives longer. Huge stress reduction across the board too. Sales got more interesting, though. Nobody else quotes this way, so anytime someone wanted to compare quotes it was: “Yeah yeah, but how many DAYS though?” I could give the whole explanation, they’d agree our system made way more sense… and then still ask. So now when people insist, I just estimate high and move on. Doesn’t matter to us, the price doesn’t change, but it keeps their brains from melting. We also didn’t even start pushing commercial work yet… and commercial started finding us anyway. Funny how that works. We’ve got a quote out right now that, if it closes, has the RCU booked basically all winter. That machine could pay for half of itself in a couple months. Seems like the RCU market here is wide open. No one else has one, so we’re filling the gap. We locked in snow clearing contracts this year too instead of sitting around waiting on snow. Way better to be proactive when you’ve got 3 skids sitting there ready to go. Salt spreader going on the truck soon too, may as well monetize the off season fully. November is already slammed and winter is shaping up strong. Happy Halloween 🎃 Time to finish the year strong 👊

16,611 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

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