15/09/2026
Phil C. wrote the best comment on the $150 skid steer card and 74 of you liked it. It is better to be not busy at $150 an hour than busy at $100. You make the same in 27 hours as you would in 40. Busy is a fool's game.
So we ran his two weeks on the same machine.
The busy week. 40 hours at $100 bills $4,000. The machine and the man cost $73.59 every hour they run, so 40 hours eats $2,943.60. What is left for insurance, overhead and profit is $1,056.40.
The slow week. 27 hours at $150 bills $4,050. Machine and man for 27 hours is $1,986.93. Left over, $2,063.07.
Same gross. The slow man keeps almost double, and he has 13 hours of his week back. The busy man spent those 13 hours and $956.67 of fuel, wear and wages to bill the same money.
Phil was right. It is actually worse than he said, because he only counted the hours. The machine counts them too.
How many hours did you run last week, and what did they bill?