The $39,875 Job Your Competition Is Legally Barred From Bidding

Somebody watched a video about making $130,000 a year with a skid steer, and he left the smartest comment on the whole internet. He said, and I'm reading it straight, "Where I live, there are so many people with skid steers that there isn't enough work to keep them that busy." And he's right, and he's looking in the wrong place because every operator he's competing with is bidding the same driveways, the same pads, the same three builders in town who all know each other and all pay in 90 days if they feel like it. Everyone's fighting over the work you can see from the road. $39,875. This is a real contract last year. The farmhouse is in a condemned state of disrepair with an associated health and safety concern. Demolish a condemned farmhouse in Colorado. Health and safety hazard. Needs to come down. 30-day job, one machine. And the customer, United States Forest Service Operations. Now, here's the part that should make you a little bit angry. Look at when these jobs get bought. Why your town feels overcrowded, let's be honest about why that comment hit so hard because it's true. If you own a skid steer, you're in one of the easiest businesses in America to enter. Machine, trailer, truck, insurance, you're operating. That's the good news. That's also the bad news because everybody else did the same math you did. So, in your town right now, there's probably a dozen guys with the same machine chasing the same grading jobs, the same driveways, the same builders, and the only lever any of you has is price. Somebody always goes lower. That's the race you're in. Here's what I want you to notice, though. Every single one of those jobs has something in common. You found out about it because somebody told you. A builder called, a buddy passed your number along, and saw a lot getting cleared and pulled over. That's a referral network, and a referral network has a ceiling. It's exactly as big as the people who already know you. So, when you say there isn't enough work in my town, what's actually true is there isn't enough work inside the group of people who already know your name. There's a whole 'nother category of work where nobody has to know your name, where But customer is required by law to post the job publicly, tell you exactly what they want, and tell you what they paid the last guy. That's called federal work, and most of you have never bid one. I'm not going to tell you about it, I'm going to show you. This is usaspending.gov, it's free, no login. This is where every federal dollar gets reported. And what I'm doing is I'm searching, I put 2026 in, and then I put in 238910. That is your code for site preparation contractors, that's you, grading, excavation, demolition, clearing. And I'm filtering to small business set-asides, that means the big guys are legally excluded from bidding. I'll come back to that because it's the most important thing in this video. So now, when I pull this up, I see here opportunities, and let's just look at the one that I brought up in the beginning of the call today. I'll scroll through. Right here, 39,875. I'm going to pull that up on the screen, and you can see the description here. The farmhouse is in a condemned state, disrepair, with an associated health and safety concern. Start date, June the 10th, end date, July the 10th. 30 days. Now, think about what the job actually is. A structure comes down, material gets hauled, site gets leveled. If somebody handed that scope to you tomorrow, you would know exactly how to price it in about 10 minutes. The only thing standing between you and that contract is that you didn't know it existed. Here's another one, 53,350, Willamette National Forest, Oregon, warehouse demolition and disposal at the McKenzie River Ranger District. Same shape, small job, one machine, federal customer. Let's look at another one. $49,716 tree phase removal, phase two. Which means there was a phase one, which means somebody won that work, and they're coming back for more. That's the thing that nobody tells you about federal work. It repeats. Ranger districts don't clear trees once. Depots don't move snow once. That warehouse isn't the only warehouse. A builder who likes you might give you three jobs a year. A federal customer who likes you has a documented history of buying the same thing over and over and that history is public and you get to go read it before you ever pick up the phone. Who actually buys this? Now, when I say government contract, I know what most of you picture, Pentagon, fighter jets, some guy in a suit with a security clearance. Let's look at who's actually buying the work. Again, so we have Forest Service operations that falls under the Department of Agriculture. That's the Forest Service. So, top of the list below that I pulled up was called the Department of Interior here. The Department of Interior, the National Park Services, Bureau of Land Management, US Geological Survey. So, I see here we pulled up the Forest Service operations which manages essentially 193 million acres of national forest. Defense is in there too and it's big, but the Pentagon isn't buying your farmhouse demolition. An Army depot in Pennsylvania is buying snow removal. Think about who these customers actually are for a second. A ranger district in Oregon, a park in Oklahoma, a refuge, a field station. These are small offices and rural places with a facility that needs work done and no equipment to do it with. They're not looking for a national contract, they're looking for somebody local with a machine. And that's you. That's always been you. No one told you they were buying. And here's the part I promised to come back to. Every award I've shown you was a small business set-aside. That's a legal category. When a contracting officer sets a job aside for a small business, the large firms are not allowed to bid it. Let's sit with that. In your town, you're bidding against everybody. On these jobs, the field is legally restricted to companies your size. That's not a loophole. That's a federal policy on purpose because the government decided a long time ago it didn't want just three companies owning everything. You've been fighting for scraps in open market. This is a market where the biggest competitors are barred at the door. Okay, back to the thing I told you it make you angry. So, the federal fiscal year ends September 30th. Every agency gets money for the year and money they don't spend, they lose. Worse off, spend less this year, and next year's budget gets cut. So, what happens is, every September is the most predictable thing in American business. Agencies spend. And the awards I pulled, September had more than triple any other month. In the prior year I checked, it was even more lopsided. Here's why that matters for you specifically. That contracting officer in September has money that expires in weeks, and a facility that needs work. What they do not have is time to find you. They're going to buy from somebody who's already registered, already in the system, and already visible. Which means the work you do in the spring is what gets you paid in the fall. If you're watching this in July, you're early, and early is the whole game. Now, the other comment I want to answer, somebody said, "Now, mention the part where you're busy for 2 months, and then you're scarce for 2 months." That's the honest objection. Everybody in the business knows the winter. Now, look at this contract, the $41,850, the snow hauling services at Letterkenny Army Depot to relocate accumulated snow piles after snow events. If you look at when it was awarded, started January the 26th, 2026, end date January 31st, 2026. That's 5 days, $41,000. That's not a summer job. That's dead of winter, and that depot has that problem every single year. Same thing with snow plowing. I found a ranger district plowing contracts running multiple year terms. Somebody plows Mount Hood every winter and gets paid to do it. Here's the reframe. Private construction is seasonal because building is seasonal. Federal facilities, they're not seasonal. A depot still needs snow moved. A septic system still fails in February. A condemned building doesn't wait for spring. Your slow season is somebody else's operating problem. Someone's getting paid to solve it. There's no reason it isn't you. So, what does it take? I'm going to be straight with you. One, you have to register in sam.gov. It's the federal vendor database. It's free. Anybody charging for it is running a scam. Takes a few hours of paperwork and some waiting. You need an EIN and a bank account. That's the toll booth and that's the reason most of your competition never shows up. It's not hard, it's just boring and boring filters people out. Number two, know your code. 238910 for site preparation. If you do more, you claim more. Number three, you go where they post. sam.gov lists open solicitation. And a lot of small jobs like the one I showed you get bought fast and simple, not through some giant 100 page proposal. Number four, this is the one thing that people skip. Look at history before you bid. You already saw me do it. That tree removal was phase two. You can look up who won phase one, what they charged, and when it's coming out again. Try getting that from a private builder. Now, let me be honest about the part this doesn't fix. This is not free money and it's not fast. Your first registration is going to be tedious. Your first few bids, you'll probably lose and you may not find out why. Federal customers pay reliably, but not instantly and the work is scattered. A range of it might be 60 miles out. And that's a real cost that you have to price in. I'm doing a whole separate video on that one because it deserves a real answer. But compare it to what you're doing now. Right now, you're competing on price with every guy in town for work you only hear about if somebody calls you. From customers who pay you when they feel like it. Over here, the customer publishes what they want, tells you what they paid last time, bars the big companies from bidding, buys again next year, and doesn't stop in February. That guy in the comments was right. There isn't enough work where he's looking. He just never looked here.