How much to charge

[MASTERMOWER]

Ive been in business for about 6 years. Since I started my prices have increased, but Im only making about $30/hour now-a-days. The lawn care market in my town is flooded with LCO and highschool/ college students looking to make quick cash. I feel I can only charge what I am now to stay competitive. Other companies seem to be charging about what I am. Im successful by all means, but I will graduate from college in less than a year and want to expand my business. Problem is I dont see how I can expand and hire employees when they only make $30/hour (if they work as hard as me, which they likely wont). Should I increase my prices with risk that I may loose clients, or continue on charging what I do now?

[PremierLawnscapes]

Use the lawncare to upsell landscape, and other services. I used to do just landscaping and tree removal, and gave my grass customers to a friend. Now i decided to do lawn services and its an excellent way to gain customers, upsell services, and increase revenues. It sounds like you need to be more diversified with higher end services. I make in a few hours of installs what it takes all day to do with lawns.

[MASTERMOWER]

Yeah, that seems to be what the other compaies here do. I think they offer mowing service just to get there foot in the door when the client needs/wants landscaping or other services. Right now 90% of my business is landscape maintenance, primarily mowing. Once Im out of college I want to focus more on landscape designing/install since afterall, that's what I paid many thousands of dollars in tuiton to learn (not to mention the over priced text books)!!!! Your likely right, I will have to use lawn care as a tactic to sell other services.

[Scaper-S2k]

Yes, I agree, if one part of the market is too saturated, you should look for things that the others aren't offering. Or look for things the others aren't doing properly.

[Jack D.]

One must increase productivity in order to increase mowing profits. Mowing prices are fixed and stagnant due to the abundance of riff raff.

The most effective two pronged approach to increasing mowing profits is to lower prices and decrease mowing times through better equip., and more efficient mowing methods. This will increase route density, production and profits. As a semi retired high class scrub, Jack D. can earn $100 plus hrly mowing without breaking a sweat.

[PNA]

Jack D,
How 'bout explaining in more detail. For example, when speaking of machines, if one already uses a ZTR, what more can one do to be more efficent besides using a larger machine?
What about mowing methods? Assuming one is doing all the basic stuff, what methods can increase productivity? I know I want to increase the dollars per hour earned while mowing but with the pricing pressures in my area (S.W. Florida), I have yet to accomplish that. Any insight Jack D?
PNA

[Dreamaloud1]

Jack D,
How 'bout explaining in more detail.

$100 an hour seems a bit high..but I'm sure he'll say it all comes down to route density and having one or more low paid minions to do the grunt work.

I doubt he's getting $100/hr doing everything himself.

[Allan]

The other day I saw a truck next to the lawn that we mow. It was a quad cab something-or-other. Well, out hop about for workers and they unload the equipment (on this lawn they were bagging with 21" mowers) and they went through that lawn in a short order. The owner (I assume that he was the owner) got out as well and he took it upon himself to spray the weeds in the driveway cracks.

If a guy doesn't want to expand any farther than a one truck show, then I think that maybe this guy pretty much nailed it. I would be suprised if he did much sweating and I think that they could do 30 lawns per day with that setup. It was a little bit inefficient but overall I could see something like this being fairly profitable.

[RRS]

My first two years in business I did exactly what you guys are talking about. I concentrated on getting smaller properties grouped tightly together at a low price. I had a route with about 80 lawns that could be completed by myself and one helper with nothing more than a 21" and 36" mower in three days.

I could do between $100-$140 an hour easily. I didn't start my business to have an army of unskilled low payed seasonal workers though. It's just not what I want. I also don't want to starve in the winter when the mowing ends. That's why I began only taking full service annual contracts and dropping the pay as you go customers. On a yearly average I'm still making close to the same amount of profit with much less headache.

Around here a place like the one in the picture easily goes for $35-$40 a cut. Line up 15 between three blocks so you can park in the middle and knock them all out in three-four hours without moving the truck and you've just done about $130/hour.

[PNA]

I assumed Jack D was suggesting he makes $100/hr mowing solo. I can see being able to do this every now and then but NOT everyday / all day long in solo mode. I believe it's very possible to make $100/hr in the above examples; multiple persons/work sites close together.
PNA

[Scaper-S2k]

No one on here 'makes' $100 per hour by themself. No doubt you can gross $100 per hour while working many hours, but that's not what anyone here brings home.


Keep in mind, you need to figure it over the whole year. It would be nice to say you make $150 per hour. But doesn't mean squat if you only do that for a couple hours per week, and off all winter.



To say you MAKE $100 per hour means your tax form must be showing $208,000. Assuming you work all year round......because you must figure the whole year whether you work in the winter or not.


Example: If you profit $60,000 per year, there were likely many times you grossed $100 per hour for parts of some days. But averaging it out, you were really making about $29 per hour. $60,000/52 weeks per year/40 hours per week. And that how you HAVE to figure it.

[MASTERMOWER]

First comment --- I really have to love the lava mountain mulch piles (im assuming its mulch) in that picture......what a good example of what the green industry is doing wrong these days. I would not be surprised if that trees dies or has severe die back in the near future because the root zone is being deprived of oxygen! Second, there is no way I could ever make $100 an hour mowing...well unless I bought some 72" mower and mowed at top speed. As I said, the market here for lawn mowing is horrible, I cant see myself breaking the $40/ hour mark ever! I'll just face reality and use mowing as a extra service for once I get my landscaping division up and running over the next few years.

[Scaper-S2k]

That picture RRS posted might only have a couple inches of mulch on it, the rest could be topsoil. Not sure, just my opinion.

[MASTERMOWER]

Yeah possibilly, but the way the mulch swells up around that lamp post tells me otherwise.

[RRS]

Your Assumptions are incorrect. I hate the huge mounds of mulch as well. That's part of the reason I don't like commercial work. Very seldom do any of my properties have huge expanses of mulch.

This picture was taken just before the mulch was put down last February. The Liriope is the only perennial left at that time of year. I'll take a picture of these beds this time of year the next time I'm by there.

The bed around the Jap Maple is full of shade plants. The bed around the light post is loaded with Irises and then Liriope a little later in the season.

I'm a gardener at heart.