Costs,,

[moxy 617]

Matt, for once i agree with what your saying. No bickering from me for a change.

 

Its still very debateable as to the realistic goal up here of acheiveing a tenner a mole, to a yorkshire farmer that just doesent sound right.

 

I work and charge by the hour or minimum cost per visit, and it works well for me (agric) albeit there will be an increase in this rate for the coming year, my prices have been fixed for the last few years.

[Matt 160]

Matt, for once i agree with what your saying. No bickering from me for a change.

 

Its still very debateable as to the realistic goal up here of acheiveing a tenner a mole, to a yorkshire farmer that just doesent sound right.

 

I work and charge by the hour or minimum cost per visit, and it works well for me (agric) albeit there will be an increase in this rate for the coming year, my prices have been fixed for the last few years.

 

If it works for you, then so be it Moxy. I'm not suggesting for a minute that the system I use is the only way to do it, or even the best way.

 

Out of interest, have you ever worked out what you are getting 'per mole' using your system? How does it compare on average?

 

I've found that whatever you are offering, providing you are able and willing to justify it people will pay.

[moxy 617]

Matt, for once i agree with what your saying. No bickering from me for a change.

 

Its still very debateable as to the realistic goal up here of acheiveing a tenner a mole, to a yorkshire farmer that just doesent sound right.

 

I work and charge by the hour or minimum cost per visit, and it works well for me (agric) albeit there will be an increase in this rate for the coming year, my prices have been fixed for the last few years.

 

If it works for you, then so be it Moxy. I'm not suggesting for a minute that the system I use is the only way to do it, or even the best way.

 

Out of interest, have you ever worked out what you are getting 'per mole' using your system? How does it compare on average?

 

I've found that whatever you are offering, providing you are able and willing to justify it people will pay.

 

:laugh: Thats the first question that gets asked come invoice time.

 

A lot of the land i do is fairly rough and you cant get a tractor on, so i often chain harrow as part of the service but cost extra for the bike fuel. The costs obviously vary as to the ammount of moles trapped. It can range anywhere from £3 per mole up to £9 per mole inc the harrowing.

 

But as always each job is different so again so are the costs

[moley 115]

sorry to hear you had a bad year matt and good to know things are back on track

i,m not in the game anymore,but everyone has the right to charge what they want and if they are happy with what they get and make a decent living and have the customers, then so be it, i made a bloody good living when i did the job,paid morgage, brought up a family, new truck and quad every 3-4 years and paid for , no chucky , so i must have bin doing something right for the 23 years i was self employed

just cos folk dont charge what you charge dont mean they are all wrong

 

[logun 91]

I thought you were a bricklayer/internet trapping guru logun? Have I missed something? Are you now a pest controller?

 

Anyway, folks tend to try and making pricing to complicated for moles. My charges range from £10 per mole to £45 per mole, depending on the job and how far away it is.

 

On farms, I charge a straight £10 per mole; it's not out of the way these days when you consider how much farmers spend on fertilizer diesel etc to produce silage. To risk spoiling a good crop for the sake of a few quid is pointless, and my customers tend to understand that. Less than that price would not be economical for me, and while I understand that some people like to try and go in cheaper to get the work, they tend to be gone within a year or two. There are plenty of 'busy fools' around these days.

 

Gardens are a different kettle of fish. Most tend to be just one or two moles, and if it's not too far out of my way then it's £35 per mole. Add more travel miles or time, then I charge £45 per mole.

 

I now have a minimum charge of £75 for garden moles. That price is for up to two moles, with additional moles charged at £35 each. I brought in the minimum charge last year because of the escalating fuel costs. When you break it down, even a one mole job needs three visits (one to set traps, one to remove the mole and rake off the molehills, and a final visit to make sure there are no more) so £25 per visit isn't out of the way.

 

On the farms, I tend to go in three times a year and take out as many as I can at £10 each. I did a new job at the back end of November where the farmer had paid someone £2,500 to gas about a dozen fields. I went in and took 50 moles out at £10 each and he was over the moon. It may take me a year to get it looking really good, but at least he can see what he gets for his buck.

 

I don't make any other charges; if I wasn't confident enough to catch moles then I'd get a job doing something else. No mole, no fee works for me, and my customers like it. In 2011 I turned over just under 40k on moles alone, so it does work.

 

to be honest rat no landowner gives £10 a mole this way and with fuel costs etc better off me laying bricks,,, need to betrapping moles 5 days a week to make a living out of them .. i do the odd garden tho just extra coin to add to my income as a brick layer..

[stubby 175]

I charge £90 for garden moles, 3 visits, irrelevant of how many are caught, money paid on first visit, I think alot of the undercharging, comes from hobbyist pest controllers that go in cheap, with the hope of getting shooting permission

[logun 91]

im one of thos stubby ,, do it for nothing just for the shooting rights ,,,fair deal i think ..

[Matt 160]

 

A lot of the land i do is fairly rough and you cant get a tractor on, so i often chain harrow as part of the service but cost extra for the bike fuel. The costs obviously vary as to the ammount of moles trapped. It can range anywhere from £3 per mole up to £9 per mole inc the harrowing.

 

But as always each job is different so again so are the costs

 

Interesting. Thanks for that.

 

sorry to hear you had a bad year matt and good to know things are back on track

 

Thanks for that.

 

I didn't come clean about last year for sympathy; I thought it might explain why I quoted 2011 figures, and why I've been struggling for the last nine months.

 

i,m not in the game anymore,but everyone has the right to charge what they want and if they are happy with what they get and make a decent living and have the customers, then so be it, i made a bloody good living when i did the job,paid morgage, brought up a family, new truck and quad every 3-4 years and paid for , no chucky , so i must have bin doing something right for the 23 years i was self employed

 

Yep, I understand and respect that.

 

I suppose that if you are clearing big acreages on badly infested farms on the edge of the fells (from what I remember of your film), you are quite justified in starting off at a lower rate.

 

Most of the farms I do I tend to catch 50-100 at a time. The farmers down here tend to only want their silage fields doing, so the numbers are lower.

 

just cos folk dont charge what you charge dont mean they are all wrong

 

I'm not saying that they are doing it all wrong; what I'm trying to get at is that people keep saying that farmers 'wont pay that much' etc. Surely if the job costs more to do then you should still ask for it?

 

If you go in too cheap to start off with, then there is no room for negotiation. Farmers are the same the world over; they all want a deal, and always begrudge paying for something that many of them think they should be doing themselves.

 

The point I've been trying to make throughout this thread is that people should properly value their time by working out their costs. Once you've done that you can justify asking for a profitable fee regardless of what the 'going rate around here is'....

 

I was charging similar fees twenty years ago to those that I'm charging now. The difference is that twenty years ago diesel was 60p per litre, and I was happy to draw 15k from the business. I've not put my prices up partly because mole catchers seem to be 10 a penny these days, and partly because this myth about farmers not being prepared to pay more than a token fee persists.

 

I thought you were a bricklayer/internet trapping guru logun? Have I missed something? Are you now a pest controller?

 

to be honest rat no landowner gives £10 a mole this way and with fuel costs etc better off me laying bricks,,, need to betrapping moles 5 days a week to make a living out of them .. i do the odd garden tho just extra coin to add to my income as a brick layer..

 

I can assure you that landowners your way do pay that and often more Logun.

 

How do I know? Well, I travel to various parts of the UK molecatching and doing other pest control work.

 

I charge £90 for garden moles, 3 visits, irrelevant of how many are caught, money paid on first visit, I think alot of the undercharging, comes from hobbyist pest controllers that go in cheap, with the hope of getting shooting permission

 

Funny you should say that Stubby.

 

Up until April of last year I was VAT registered. I de-registered in April for the reasons outlined earlier. Prior to that my charges were all plus VAT, so my £75 minimum charge was actually £90 the same as yours. The only difference was that I charged £35 or £45 per mole on top if it was more than 2 moles.

 

The hobbyists and permission hunters certainly do nothing to help the professionals trying to pay mortgages that is for sure. Having said that; when I was a lad at school it was one of those things that we did to get 'in' with the farmers, so I shouldn't really knock it too much.

 

The ones that are getting my goat at the moment are the gardeners who seem to want to try their hand at any pest control they think is needed. If the wasp season is as bad this year as last, I'm seriously thinking about offering free grass cutting with every nest. That'll learn em!

 

Anyway, it's nice to see a reasoned, sensible debate on here. Thanks to everyone for keeping it sane!

[logun 91]

what gets me is mole catches who often visit gardens ,end up doing a little tree work ,then some paving jobs etc... usually mess the job up by the way to.. mat ,,why do you need to travel so far for work,,,,, and i can ensure the land i hunt on that maybe contains 50 farms maybe would not pay you £10 a mole..

 

the mole catching boom is the result of many who visits this site... moley brought his film out and over night every one became expert mole catchers... there many tips that the film don't contain i would guess and yet it,, along with the guild of mole catchers produced master mole catchers by the thousands....it makes me smile going on 50 now to have 18 year old kids question my views etc .and at best thinking i'm the fool lol....out of interest matt,,,, how long you been a mole catcher ?

Edited January 15, 2013 by logun

[heritage 202]

It wouldn't always be in your best interest to charge the "going rate" & I imagine that even if they won't admit it most pesties have worked for peanuts , most if not all business have loss leaders of some kind that if successful would pay dividends in the long run.....

[Matt 160]

Logun, I've been a professional pest controller and wildlife manager for 25 years. Prior to that I was a hobbyist when I was a schoolboy.

 

During my years in pest control I've worked for the UK government, and two of the biggest pest control companies in the UK.

 

I'm lucky enough to have contracts with a major supermarket looking after their estates and occasionally trouble shooting their farming suppliers, and also English Heritage looking after world heritage sites. I also do some field work for a university that studies rodents occasionally.

 

These days I pick and choose what I do to a certain degree. Mole catching is the part of the job that I most enjoy, and I do between 2 and 8 garden jobs each week and about 10,000 acres of farmland.

 

My working area is from the M3 in Hampshire to the lizzard in Cornwall, but in the past I've had employees right across the south. A few days before xmas I was staying at a Hotel in Cwmbran and ended up catching a few moles in the grounds while I was there. I have to admit that the chances of me voluntarily crossing the Severn Bridge these days is remote; the toll is a rip off and I'm not keen on heights, so you can rest easy in Wales.

[logun 91]

yes ,, the toll is expencive

[micckey 106]

yes ,, the toll is expencive

Tut !

[Le Braconnier 49]

I've followed this thread with interest. Having been involved in a shoot back in the UK and having helped out gamekeepers for well over thirty years I'm amazed that you could get anything like a tenner a mole from a farmer without them doing a full body, vehicle and bag search to make sure you hadn't brought any moles with you, and then following you round just to make sure.

 

Back in Yorkshire I'd get a phone call from a farmer about the fields being 'blue over' with pigeons get there to find a few dozen that moved off never to return, and while making a show of doing a bit of decoying with no meaningful results, have the farmer telling me how he could charge £40 a day for decoying based on something he's read in the Farmer's Weekly. In the end I started telling him how much he'd have to pay for a private security firm to keep an eye on the land 24/7, trap rats and let him know when anything was wrong.

[moxy 617]

Le Brac.

 

Fully body searches and a good old frisk may happen if you quoted a tenner a mole up here but no farmer suffers fools and your results have to speak for themselves. There is very little loyalty when money is concerned.

More the like you are told to feck off and the next chap will be in. I know!! I have made the mistake of quoting a tenner a mole and lost work in the past.

 

This year won't be the best to be radically increasing your mole rates. Well certainly not up here. Poor harvest last summer means silage, haylage, wheat and straw prices have increased. Also what crop was harvested wasn't of the best quality and combined with the wet weather milk production is also down. The list goes on.

 

The only blessing I see at the moment is the increase in mole numbers and new jobs. A lot of moles have been driven into new areas due to the saturated and often flooded fields. Along with neighbouring farms not catching moles the numbers are rising.