Contractors price guide

I hear what your saying, but I have to disagree to an extent with you, I meet a lad on holidays most years who's a fairly large contractor, prob because we are opposite ends of the country and never meet at home we offen talk freely about his contracting business when you hear him talk about costs it's eye watering stuff. Set of tyres for the tractors start at 6k for a set of 4 His fuel bill from march to September would have me kept awake at night worried where will the money come from to pay it. Never mind the wages for the staff some of which are full time and not just seasonal so they get paid on a bad week the same as a good week. It's the only hope he recons of retaining the best lads he has and having them when he needs them. I always admire these lads as it takes some bottle to get up every morning and be at the mercy of weather and bad payers to make a living.

What happens the day your fusion 2 breaks down as she has already done 30k bales when you buy her and you left with 20acres of silage on the ground for 3 or 4 days while you wait for that one part no one in the country has in stock???

If you look at marteye the last few months there has been a few big sales of contracting gear going for sale. Obv the money as is/was is not in it and the lads are getting out as it's not viable going forward.

If no one buys new machines then the 2nd hand ones won't be cheap or any good, because they will be worn out. Buying new means that you have a warranty and the dealer will send someone out to fix any breakdown so less time down, which is critical in most industries and even more in agriculture, buying 2nd hand you have to worry about how well maintained it was and usually no have support from the dealer.

One of the biggest thing catching contractors is the season is becoming more and more squeezed. There was a time when the pit silage season was 8-10 weeks.

It started with the early dairy men in mid May. Moved on to the bulk of the crops in late May to mid June. Then you had the lads making bulk crops in late June and finally the lads starting second cut in late July into August.

A lot of dairy men change second cut to bales. Smaller beef lads moved to that as well as they had no choice as to when they did pit silage.

I expect put silage cost to significantly rise over the next few years. The costs and sees are horrendous. Most arracontractor's have 30-50% of the machinery sitting idle for 8-10months of the year. That is not sustainable.

Bales are not under as much pressure. It's an easier operation to set up. Every young jockey wanting to go driving a tractor looks at it and sees an opportunity to enter the sector. Add a slurry tanker bought with a 60% grant and you have 6 months covered. Add a bit of hedge cutting and drawing bales or hay etc and you are getting near full time.

I expect bale cost to be in the 12-15 euro to cut, take, bale and wrap this year. Diesel dropping slightly compared to last year will help.

I’d get the contractor bill a few times a year and spend a few minutes thinking that I’d be better buying more machinery and doing a lot of my own work. Then I spend the few minutes realising that the off farm job pays near as much per hour as the contractor charges per hour and I’ve none of the expenses only to get to work.

Say for slurry at €60 per hour for a tractor and tank, he has to make repayments on his tractor and tanker, diesel costs, labour costs repair costs and still try and leave a bit of profit. It all doesn’t seem so dear then.

Exactly. If people just stop and think about it for a few minutes, they would realise this but no, they have to moan about it to everyone. You wouldn't believe the amount of dairy farmers who spent most of the meeting they had with us last autumn moaning about the money they had to give their contractors. How we had the manners to keep our cool I do not know. And nothing at all about what they were getting for milk.

And the contractors will drop their rates in line with dropping milk price...fair play