Start A Stump Grinding Business

The Grumpy Stump is for sale and you’d be wise to buy-buy-buy. Generally, stump grinding is the new newspaper route: at 19 years old, the kids on Reddit are saying you’d be wise to start your own grinding business. I learned this because I needed to get a stump ground in my yard and it was a pain in the ass. I needed to pay UP.

If you’re starting out small: Hard costs include equipment (10-20k) and insurance (couple hundred bucks). But you’d easily be making $1000 on a Saturday alone. Drive around neighborhoods looking for stumps, and tell clients you’re charging $150 for a minimum 6” stump, and thereafter $6-11 per inch. If you’re nervous about operating the machine (don’t be), but also you could technically bake an operator into your core business: lower margins, but with a name like “The Grumpy Stump” you could clean up in merch.

Alternatively, let’s say you’re in/around your 30s and you have some cash laying around? You could just buy The Grumpy Stump. My original rec, and I stand by it. I ran the numbers for you—

Year 1, profit $75k. The work mostly happens in the warm months.

$300/stump…Avg 3 stump/day

x5daysx52weeks

= 234,000

Less the cost of buying the business (100k). Less insurance and fixing costs.

Less cost of a day rate for an operator $120x5x52=$31,200.00

= figure about ~75k profit. But that’s year 1, and the margins only get better year 2. Happy Stumpin’.