A hundred 4 inch Live Oaks is not a line on a plant list, it is the line. On a commercial job it is often the single most expensive item, the hardest to source, and the one the owner will actually look at on the day the ribbon is cut. Bidding it well is mostly a matter of finding out, before you sign anything, whether the trees exist and whether anyone will commit them to you. Here is how we would go about it from your side of the table.
1. Check what exists before you price anything
Start with a count, not a phone call. Our availability list is public and comes from the same records our sales team quotes from, so it tells you in a minute whether the variety and container size the plan calls for is on the ground today, and in what quantity. Do the same with every grower you use. If nobody has the number, you have learned the most important thing about the bid before you have spent an hour on it: the trees will have to be committed ahead, or the specification will have to move.
2. Translate the specification into a container size
Specifications talk in caliper; nurseries grow in containers. A "4 inch caliper minimum" is a #100 tree on our farm (4 to 5 inches), not a #65 (3 to 3.5 inches), however hard you pick through the #65 row. Get that translation right and the count you took in step 1 is the right count. Our container size guide has the full table and the standard for where caliper is measured.
3. Ask what the number will be, freight included
A price per tree with freight to follow is not a number you can bid. Ask for the delivered price to the site, or the price loaded at the farm if you are hauling. Every quote we send states freight on it, so the figure you carry into the bid is the figure you pay. If a grower will not do that, add a margin for the surprise, because there will be one.
4. Decide how far ahead the trees need to be committed
This is the question that separates the jobs that go smoothly from the ones that end in substitutions. Be honest about the timeline:
- Planting inside a few weeks. Buy from stock. Walk the rows, tag the specific trees, approve the quote, and those exact trees are held for your ship date. Nothing else is needed.
- Planting next season. Tag and quote as above, but say the ship date out loud and get it on the quote. Approved trees are held to that date.
- A job a year or more out, or several phases. This is what contract growing is for. The trees are tagged with your name while they are still growing, the price is agreed at signing, and they are not offered to anyone else. It has a $50,000 minimum and a deposit, and it is the only honest way to promise a developer 100 large trees eighteen months from now.
The bid you can defend is the one where the trees behind it are committed for as long as the job needs them, and no longer.
5. Tag the trees yourself
For 100 large trees, come to the farm. An hour west of Houston, walk the block, put your tags on the trees you want, and what you inspected is what gets loaded. It costs half a day and removes the single most common cause of trouble on delivery day, which is that the trees that arrive are not the trees someone imagined when they read the quote.
6. Put the plan on the quote
Ship date, delivery address, whether the site can take a full load or needs splitting, who signs at the gate, and whether equipment will be on site to place #100 and larger containers. Every one of those is a phone call later if it is not written down now.
The short version
Count what exists. Translate caliper into container. Get freight in the price. Commit the trees for as long as the job needs, by quote or by contract. Tag them yourself. Write the plan on the quote. Do those six things and the 100 trees stop being the risk on the bid and become the part of it you are surest about.
Send us the plant list through the pricing form, tell us roughly how many and when, and we will come back within one business day with what we have and what it would take to hold it.
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