I’ve pulled them before with shovels and a farm jack, and it is a nightmare, dangerous too. Now we have machinery to do it, or a truck and chain, wouldn’t do it manually any more

The overhead running a legit business is unreal.

My general advice is don’t use post mix concrete, use regular stone mix and backfill immediately. The backfilled dirt will hold it in place and slow the cure, giving you hours to go back and tweak as you go. That rapid post makes no sense, there’s no urgency in the setting phase, that’s the opposite of what you want.

And remember, if you do a good job it can last 20+ years, so don’t be lazy and take a shortcut because it’s “good enough”. You’re better spending $300 on a rental machine to dig the holes than to set a post that isn’t deep enough. I’m in Canada where frost can be hell, my posts go 4’ down and usually 5 bags concrete per post, then another 3 bags down the post once it’s all assembled. Your 40’ fence I could easily put in 50 bags. Don’t base your shopping list on that, but know that if you care about longevity it takes patience and hard work, like anything else in life

My time to shine. I own a company that does fences, we specialize in custom vinyl. Obviously this varies by region, but I’ll price vinyl $95-130/ft, and $300 per gate. Depending on if I liked you, what I knew about the soil, travel time to your job, I’d probably come in around $5300, installed

It might sound insane, but my 4 man crew costs about $1100/day to keep on the road. 40’ in bad conditions is 2 days minimum, can easily spill into 3. My materials would be around $1500, so worst case I’m netting in $500 for 3 days of work, which is damn near unsustainable considering the amount of machinery I’ve got in play

Debt collectors. The businesses took the risk when they loaned money or provided some kind of service on credit.

I don’t use debt collectors any more, but I have a construction company and a few times a year people just decide not to pay for their work. If someone really truly refuses to pay I could take them to small claims court, and I have, but it’s a ton of work and lawyers won’t bother with anything under 10k. I’ve literally had a judge say “so petty” about me taking someone through small claims for a $1200 they’d been dodging for years So some jerk can stiff me for $1500 and I have basically no recourse. I’m not talking about some impoverished person who I took advantage of, these are people with nice homes who make a habit of not paying bills. I’ll work with people who are short on cash and honest.

Even though debt collectors are 0/3 in the times I’ve used them, it’s at least something to fire off a final ‘fuck you and your credit’