Labor charge per man hr ?

[N.TX]

Right now im working this solo and wanted to know what you solo guys are charging per man hr on avereage for mowing and also for small landscaping jobs. Also if i get a helper that is working on a contract labor basis what all do i need such as workmans comp ect.. and how much does it cost .. give me some approx numbers if you could.. thanks alot for your help.

[hmeaders]

Labor Charge

I try to make 40 per hour on every job. I usually averge a little less.

[PTLlandscapingIL]

I charge $35 per man per hour I pretty much always have a 3 man crew at least so i charge $105 per hour

[attention to details]

My partner and I price labor @ 35.00 each per hour, but we have Very little over head.
If we do bring someone in to help out They are NOT an employee, contract or other wise, just day laborer. However... this does leave the homeowner open to liabilty for injuries here in Ga.

[mcdonnell all season]

I bill $60.00 per hour for a 2 man crew, so I guess you could say that I am at $30.00 per hour per man. with a min. of 1 hr. for one man = $30.00

[PTLlandscapingIL]

Yeah, guys were all in the "average" range i know guys who are charging 50 to 75 per man hour and there solo dudes

[Littleriver1]

Wow, No wonder there a so many threads about scrubs. I'm loosing my respect for all of you fast.

[Bikehigh]

If I'm a scrub, so be it. I charge between $35 and $45 per hour depending on the work. That's what I need to stay competetive, and even then, I've got a couple customers who get sticker shock. That being said, I'm a one man show with a 48" WB. If I had a big ZTR, prices would obviously be higher to reflect that improved efficiency and be higher.

And here I thought that scrubs were the guys that charge $15 for a lawn and work out of the back of their cars. If it makes you feel good to call to call people who are charging what the market will bare, scrubs, have at it.

[GrassMaster]

Sounds about right... I'm trying shed some light on this subject!

Warning, Mile Longer... If you have a short attention span, now is the time to click away from here!

$30 to $45 an hour is very close to average from what I've seen...

There's so many variables in time figured that it's very hard to pin point actual time per man hour. To tell you the truth probably not over 1 or 2 LCO owners even know how & actually figure time correctly out of a 100.

In these figures per hour are you figuring windshield time between jobs, time spent bidding, office - administration time, time spent on repairs, time on parts - material purchases & the list can go on.

One guy can be charging $30 per man hour in labor actually making a profit & the next guy can be charging $45 per man hour & he will be losing his behind.

There's a lot more to it than looking at another LCO dollars per man hour as compared to your dollars per hour. Most smaller operations the owner is putting way more dollars an hour in his pocket than the larger companies.

Labor rates, Workers Comp Rates vary so much from location to location that a price difference of $10 to $15 an hour difference per man hour & both be actually making the same amount after they deduct total cost of doing business.

Back in the day, mid to late 80's I thought people were crazy if they charged less than $45 to do a 8K to 10K lawn...

You want to dare figure what guys are getting now & figure how much expenses has went up since then????? I don't think so...

Let me see since then gas has doubled, a loaded Chevy Silverado was less than $12,000, a killer dual axle trailer was $1,000 & I don't mean them scrap iron ones made out of angle iron, my workers comp was $4.35 per $100 & that fee included me spraying, tree removal, pressure washing & just about any thing else I wanted to do on my contract lawns.

That $45 a pop minimum was every 10 days year round, yep even Nov through April I got that $135 a month minimum. Yes back then I couldn't figure out why the other guys didn't have that monthly check coming in?

Another thing a lot of these guys are doing more than just cutting grass for $30 to $45 an hour, I'm sure some of them have add-ons that run that price on up there per hour.

20 years ago I did pressure washing & I never made under $50 an hour. If I sprayed 20 boxwoods across the front of a house for white flies, I got $35 & up. On my cleanups I averaged at least 50% more per man hour...

Aeration & Fertilizing combined, On smaller residential lawns which at that time was 1/2 acre or less roughly I charged the same to fertilize as what I charged to cut & if I aerated I got between 3 to 3.5 times what I charged to cut it. I aerated & fertilized plenty of 8K to 10K lawns for $180 to $200 a pop. What do you get now for that... My overhead was probably 50% of what it would be Today.

My labor was $6 an hour back then, but many benefits came with it. When I got to a 3 man crew & up, they got paid if they worked or not year round as long as we were caught up. If all jobs were done for the week & it was Friday & my lawn was maintained by say 2:00PM they got their checks for the full day & went home. During the winter they didn't have much to do & they loved me for the way I treated them.

My income was the same every month except I was continually adding more jobs per month by my 3rd year due to only year round maintenance agreements but but I made a hell of a lot more money in the off season, Nov through April due to extra work. We did a lot of Pinestraw, I mean 1,000's of bails. We did a lot of small installs, pressure washing, roof & gutter cleaning & Bla Bla Bla. Most of my business was residential too.

Back to dollars per hour...
One guy can go home & have 10 minutes a day office time. Then it take him an hour to do a 5 man pay roll every Friday & at the end of every month it take him 2 hours to bill out 65 monthly customers...

The next guy can go home & have no office time daily due to him doing it on the job. Then it take him about 10 minutes every Friday to do a 5 man payroll due to them getting paid the same every week, then at the end of the month he can crack off billing 65 customers in less than an hour due to him having good program for billing. I billed my customers the same every month & if there was extra work the bill for that was inserted into the other bill. Because all extra work was done on a jobber basis & I wrote out the bills on the job. It saved a lot of time billing at the end of the month!

Are You Really Ready for Work?

http://www.lawnservicing.com/ready.htm

You have no work right now & your waiting on what?

http://www.lawnservicing.com/waiting.htm

Work Smarter, Not Harder... How I learned the Hard Way, Why Should you?

http://www.lawnservicing.com/work-smarter-not-harder.htm

Time is very precious, you can't get time rebates & once you use it, it's gone gone for ever. Make every minute count! It's all about making money!

Money is Work Divided by Time!
Look like a Pro, Act like a Pro, Work like a Pro, you will then get Treated & Paid like a Pro!

PS: Don't let other folks intimidate you by what they claim they are making per hour. If you can't see it in black & white, it's possible it's a inflated figure. The yearly income tax figures don't over exaggerate, trust me!

[cjm2783]

little river was was an abused child... dont mind him.

cjm

[Littleriver1]

Here's the thing, why would you work for $30. when you can get $40? Why would you work for $40, when you can get $50? Meaning, you need to test your market. Asking other people how much to charge is a very bad business decision. Just because the national average is $37.50 is no reason not to charge $60.00, if you can get it. Please, understand, if the nation average is $37.50, some one must be charging more than $37.50. I say that because all of you are charging less than that. Also understand that, in order for you to "average" $37.50 in your business you must charge more than that per job. If you do a lawn that takes 1 hr and charge the customer $37.50 and he doesn't pay, in order for you to make your hourly rate you will need to charge the next 38 customers $1.00 more per hr. Here's a little known fact. If you have insurance and you hire some one as a contract worker in order to get out of payroll tax, that person must have Liability insurance. If some thing goes wrong and it come back to you, your not covered. If you are getting more than 70% of your bids, your prices are too low. If you are not embarrassed by the total on an invoice when you hand it to a customer, your prices are too low. Last year we posted news stories here about some one getting killed doing what we do. I will never understand how any of you could subject another human being to such stupidity. How could you put some one out there with out insurance? How can you do that? What does it cost? Why would you not want to protect them? If you need to know how much insurance in your area cost, call an agent. Call more than one. Most states are different. By the way, the reason the rates are so high is because of those of you that have accidents or don't have coverage. Sorry about the word scrub, but to me it seems to fit. It's easy on here we don't have to look each other in the eye. If you can't prove to yourself that $40, $50, or $60 per hr is too much then you are not doing your job and your leaving your money on the table. I don't care how much you leave out there. It's a good feeling to shake another mans hand at the biding table knowing your making more money than you ever dreamed. There's plenty out there for all of us. Educate yourselfs. If your going to manage a business well, you may as well manage the hole thing.

[Stephen M.]

The last several years, I was pricing alot of my work on a per man hour basis and charging that way. This year I decided to practice what alot of guys have been saying here: know your costs and how much work you can do in an hour; and factor in all of your wage and hour mandates; then charge by the job.

I know what my target price is: a low of $25/man hour to about $30 per man hour, and then I bid the job on how much I think I need to do the job. Well, I'm happy to report that the "by the job" pricing works very well. I'm getting a range of $25/man hour and upwards to about $60/man hour and averging
$35/man hour.

I was always the guy complaining that I couldn't get people to pay my targeted price.The secret is not giving a price per hour, but a price per job. If you get the work based upon your targeted minimum price x say 8 hours and quote $200 plus tax (in WA), and you know it will take you 6 hours to do the work, then you just made $33.33/hr.; or if you are working fast and ace the job in 4.75 hours, you just made $42.10 per hour.

I just did a job on Monday where I quoted $165, sales tax included, to prune several rose bushes and spray them, and do a delayed dormant spray on several fruit trees. I just invested in a nice 200 gallon power sprayer @4.5 gpm, so I knew that it would take more time to unwind and rewind the 300' hose than to do the actual spraying. Its a property I have done before.

The client accepted the price. I figured the rose job at $45 and the power spraying at my new fee. I added in sales tax and rounded up to $165. I was on site for 1.25 man hours, which included writing up the bill and doing my pesticide record keeping. That's a cool $132 per hour with sales tax included.

Its not a rip off either since I provided a service using an piece of expensive equipment.

[Littleriver1]

Congratulations StephenM. ! Welcome to the world of the over paid.

[Stephen M.]

Thanks Littleriver1. The way I figure, I've been underpaid for several years, so now I can even the score!!!

Its also called "charging what the market will bear". In other words, if somebody is willing to pay, do your best to collect it!

[clclawn]

keep a few things in mind though, your cost to pull weeds is differant then when you have a 6k lawn mower working.