I’m going to say something that’ll make a lot of equipment company owners uncomfortable: your crew doesn’t care about your business. They don’t care about your revenue goals, your five-year plan, or your new truck wrap. They show up, do the work, and go home. And if someone offers them two bucks more an hour, they’re gone.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: that’s your fault.

I run a forestry mulching company in Ohio. We run Bobcat T770s and a Takeuchi TL12 V2, pushing through brush and clearing land. I’ve had guys leave for stupid reasons and I’ve had guys leave for very good reasons, and I’ve spent way too long blaming everyone but myself for the second category.

The complaint I hear constantly

Go to any equipment expo, any Facebook group, any dealer waiting room, and you’ll hear the same thing: “Nobody wants to work anymore.” I’ve said it myself. But after losing three guys in one season two years ago, I sat down and actually looked at what was happening.

One left because a plumber offered him $3 more an hour. One left because I kept calling him on weekends to cover shifts I should’ve planned better. One left because he’d been running the same machine for 14 months and I never once asked him if he wanted to learn anything else.

None of those reasons are “nobody wants to work.” Those are “I wasn’t paying attention.”

What it actually costs

Here’s what most owners don’t calculate. When you lose a guy who knows your equipment, you’re not just posting a job ad. You’re eating three to six weeks of reduced productivity while you train someone new. You’re eating the cost of the new guy accidentally backing a skid steer into a fence because he doesn’t know the sight lines on that particular machine. You’re eating the time you spend babysitting instead of selling or running your own jobs.

I did the math once on losing an experienced operator mid-season. Between the downtime, the recruiter I paid, the training hours, and two minor equipment incidents from the replacement, it cost me somewhere around $18,000. That’s not a soft number. That’s real money I could trace through invoices and repair bills.

For reference, the guy left over a $2.50/hour raise somewhere else. That’s about $5,000 a year. I lost $18,000 because I wouldn’t spend $5,000.

Let that sink in.

”But I can’t afford to pay more”

I hear this constantly and I used to say it too. And sometimes it’s true. When you’re running two machines and barely covering your note payments, there’s no magical budget for raises.

But most of the guys I talk to who say this are driving $80,000 trucks and just bought a brand new skid steer because the old one “felt tired.” They’ll finance $400,000 in iron without blinking but act like a $2/hour raise for their best operator is going to bankrupt them.

Your equipment doesn’t run itself. The guy in the seat is the reason that $400,000 machine makes you money. If he leaves, that machine sits. And a machine that sits still has a payment, still has insurance, still depreciates.

You want to talk about ROI? Your best operator IS your ROI.

It’s not just money

I’ll be honest, money fixes a lot of problems. But I’ve also watched guys leave shops that paid well because the owner treated them like equipment. Show up, run, go home, repeat.

Last spring I started doing something really simple. On Monday mornings I’d spend 15 minutes going over the week’s jobs with my crew. Not just “go here, do this.” I’d tell them why. This customer is a repeat. This job came from a referral and the homeowner’s really nervous about their property line. This one’s a tight deadline because the builder needs the lot cleared before concrete trucks show up Thursday.

The difference was immediate. Guys started catching things I would’ve missed because they understood what we were trying to accomplish, not just where to point the mulcher. One of my guys flagged a potential drainage issue on a clearing job that would’ve caused problems for the customer months later. He only noticed because he knew the context.

That’s not something you get from a warm body in the seat.

What actually keeps people

I’m not a management consultant and I’m not going to pretend I’ve figured everything out. But here’s what I’ve learned from three years of getting it wrong and slowly getting it less wrong:

Pay what the job is worth, not what you can get away with. Check what your competitors are paying. Check what the plumbers and electricians and concrete guys are paying. Because that’s who you’re competing with for labor. If an operator can make the same money pouring concrete without the risk of rolling a machine on a hillside, why would he stay?

Let them learn. I’ve got a guy who came on as ground crew and asked if he could learn to run the mulcher. Old me would’ve said “maybe someday” and left him on the ground for a year. Instead, I started letting him train on weekends. Within four months he could run jobs solo. Now I can schedule two crews. That never happens if I keep him trapped in the same role because it was convenient for me.

Tell them what’s going on. You don’t have to open your books. But tell them when things are going well and tell them when things are tight. I’ve found that crews handle slow periods way better when you’re straight with them. “Hey, January’s going to be light, here’s what I’m doing to line up spring work” goes a lot further than silence followed by cutting hours.

Fix the small stuff. One of my guys mentioned the truck’s AC had been weak for two weeks. I’d been putting it off because it seemed minor. But it’s March. By May that cab is 130 degrees. He’s sitting in that cab eight hours a day. I got it fixed that week. Cost me $400. That’s nothing compared to what I’d spend finding his replacement because he got tired of me not caring about basic comfort.

Stop calling them on their days off. Unless something is genuinely on fire, leave them alone. I used to text my guys on Sundays about Monday’s jobs. It felt like being organized. To them, it felt like they were never off the clock. I started sending Monday morning texts instead. Same information, completely different feeling.

The owner who changed how I think about this

I was at a dealer event last fall and got talking to a guy who runs a small excavation company outside of Columbus. He had the same crew for seven years. Seven years in this industry is practically unheard of.

I asked him what his secret was. He laughed and said “I stopped treating it like they’re lucky to have a job and started treating it like I’m lucky to have them.”

That stuck with me. Because he’s right. Good operators are hard to find. When you have one, the smart move isn’t to see how little you can get away with paying them. The smart move is to make leaving feel like a bad deal.

The real problem with “nobody wants to work”

When you say “nobody wants to work,” what you’re really saying is “nobody wants to work for me, under these conditions, at this price.” That’s a very different statement. And it’s one you can actually fix.

I’m not saying every employee is great. I’ve had guys who genuinely didn’t want to work, who showed up late, who treated my equipment like a rental. Those people exist and you shouldn’t feel bad about letting them go.

But if you’re churning through three or four operators a year, the common factor isn’t them. It’s you. That’s hard to hear. I didn’t like hearing it either. But once I accepted it, things started to change.

My challenge to you

If you run a crew, here’s what I want you to do this week. Pick your best operator. The one who shows up on time, doesn’t tear up your equipment, and handles customers without embarrassing you. Ask yourself: does he know you value him? Not “I assume he knows because I haven’t fired him.” Does he actually know?

If the answer is no, or even “I’m not sure,” you’ve got work to do. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes it’s a raise. Sometimes it’s asking what he wants to learn. Sometimes it’s buying lunch on a Friday and saying “I appreciate you.”

The bar is genuinely that low in this industry. Which is both sad and an opportunity. Because if you’re the company that actually gives a damn about your people, you’ll have your pick of the labor pool while everyone else is on Indeed for the fourth time this year.

Your crew doesn’t care about your business. Make them want to.