Arva, Ontario | You've identified the issue. Now do you have the fortitude to address it?
We have a local outfit that does a lot of custom work, and they have gone to a combination charge system. There is a flat base charge per acre, and a second charge for time. It rewards the long, flat field with no obstacles and makes it more worthwhile to the operator to work in the cut-up triangles.
A couple of things happen: the customers with the small, odd-shaped stuff will chirp about the price and perhaps look elsewhere for service. If you aren't making anything on those acres running at flat rate, that's fine. If they swallow, and have you carry on, you make similar margin on those acres.
One issue is that you wont be able to quote a price before the job. So much an acre plus so much an hour. You're now like a guy doing renovations on a house - time and material.
So, if you have good records, you can use them to come up with your price scale. Otherwise, its time to gather data, and inform your customer base that you will be moving to a new system for next season. You might be amazed at suddenly they want to get an excavator in to remove a few fences, or not break a field into a couple of crops...
I still run a flat rate, but simply dropped the stuff that wasn't making money...
Ken |