Speccing iron for a job you have not won yet
Every bid carries an equipment assumption. Getting it wrong loses the job, or wins it badly.
By the time you are choosing a machine, the decision was usually made weeks earlier — in a bid, by whoever assumed what the work would take. That assumption is equipment strategy whether anyone called it that or not.
The two ways it goes wrong
Spec too rich and your number is high and you do not win. Spec too lean and you win a job you have to deliver with iron that cannot do it comfortably — which shows up as overtime, a second machine you did not price, or a schedule that slips.
The second one is worse, and it is the more common one, because a lean bid feels like discipline right up until the machine arrives.
Price the plan, not the machine
- Work out the production you needMaterial to move, divided by the days you have. That is the requirement. The machine is downstream of it.
- Then find the machine that meets itCycle time and load size against your haul. Not the machine you have, and not the biggest one that fits.
- Price the transportEvery move. It is the column most often missing, and on a multi-site job it is not small.
- Price the contingency honestlyWet ground in March, a breakdown in July. If your plan has no slack, your bid has none either.
- Ask what happens if you are wrongIf the ground is worse than surveyed, what changes? Knowing the fallback before you need it is most of the value here.
Rent the uncertainty
This is where renting earns its keep, and not for the reason people say. It is not that renting is cheaper. It is that renting lets you commit to a machine after you know something, instead of before.
- You do not buy iron for a job you have not won. Obvious, routinely ignored.
- If the ground turns out different, you change the machine instead of living with it.
- A rate is a known number in a bid. A machine you own carries costs that are harder to allocate honestly to one job.
- And if the job repeats, you have real data to buy on — which is a much better basis than a hunch.
Ask before you bid, not after
We will give you rates for a bid you have not won. That costs us nothing and it makes your number real. Tell us the production, the ground and the dates, and we will tell you what we would send and what it costs.
If you win it, the conversation is already had. If you do not, you have lost nothing but an email.
