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I only run one truck and I cut and landscape. How do you guys think I should divide my week ; We plan on having 50 weekly accounts that we should be able to knock off in around three days, the other three for landscaping and poeple here like there lawn cut before the weekend. What days should I cut and what days should I landscape?
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Can a man serve to masters? One will be the bastard child of the other.
One of two things will happen, either your lawn customers will love you and your landscape customer will intensely dislike you for only giving them half time, or your landscape customer will be unhappy that you only spend part time on their project and your lawn customers will interfer in your landscaping schedule.
It sounded like you were a one man band and or you had some help with only one truck to do multi-tasking. Hmmm, not a good combo. -
I understand your reasoning fully Stephen, but everyone has to start somewhere. I think his name is Jim Roan, that said "Start from where you are, with what you have".
I had to do that and believe me it is tough. But, all in due time. You can make it work. Granted, you will need to get another truck and crew. I take it you're trying to raise the capitol to do that by diversifying your services there in Dearborn. Mr M., I respect your opiinions highly, and am not disagreeing with you here, just showing a different view point. You can make it happen Dearborn.Comment
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Cut your lawns in those 3 days. Schedule your main/landscape work around those days. Grass is more time sensitive than main/landscaping. Also, if it rains or a day is shot for mowing, you can normally do some of the extras.
clsComment
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Welcome to the forum CLS Lawns, You will find this a great place to converse with your brothers and sisters in the trade. I am green, as in not all that experienced, but there are some real pros here, that are good people.Comment
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Originally posted by hardboiled
Thanks! We all can learn from one another.
clsComment
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Last year I was in your spot with being a one truck operation, and luckily this year I have 2 crews now, a designated design/build and a designated mowing crew. Last year when I would really get bogged down I would drop off a guy or two in the morning at a landscape design/build project when there would be something simple and easy that they can do all day long, like excavate, move topsoil, ect. Basically I would go drop them off, lay everthing out as to what needed to be done, and luckily I have one employee who has now become my forman and right hand man to make sure everything got done right at those jobs. While they would be working at those sites I would then go back to the shop grab the mowers and my other worker and we would mow all day and then I would pick the guys up on the design/build project after were were done mowing. It was horribly inefficent, I put a lot of miles on my truck, but I only used this senario when we were really bogged down, such as in the spring time we had a very large landscaping project that took us 2 weeks to complete, complete tare out of existing, and design/build of a new landscape for their entire front, side and back yards. I would only do this senario as well on wed, thurs, and fridays, our mowing days, on monday and tuesday everyone would be at the design build jobsite. Saturdays became mowing days during those few weeks when we were jammed up becuase it would be just a worker and myself taking care of our 60 lawn accounts. Like I said its not the best way of doing things, but we made it through last year fine, kept all the clients happy and now this year im fortuante enough to be able to purchase another truck and get 2 crews going. We are hoping to reach up to around 120-140 lawns per week, we have already signed on 15 more accounts just from the end of last year alone. Now we are just sittin here waitin for spring to come
James
JS LANDSCAPINGComment
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After 2 years when my ex-partner bugged out I dumped the landscaping side of the business, and now just offer mowing. I'll do a few small LS jobs here and there as they come up, but it was hard enough keeping up with everything with two of us. We tried halving the weeks keeping monday, tues, and wed open for LS jobs, but then it rains on thursday, and you spend friday trying to do thursday's mowings along with friday's... Plus you may find like happened with me that EVERYONE wants their lawns mowed on friday!!! Grrr...
Another thing (and this is a biggie)... Make sure you know what you are bidding on with LS jobs... A lot of customers will ask you to bid a job that is better fit for a 20 man crew over a week or two (usually because they called the "big boy" already, and thought you might be cheaper). It's really easy to overestimate your abilities when you see $$$, and bite off more than you can chew. Even on regular jobs you'll be surprised that a lot of times they take much longer than you originally thought it would.
Example: Last year my partner and I bid an LS job that involved moving a brick walkway, and a bed replant. We split the job to do the walkway one day, and another 2 days for the bed replant (one to pull the old azaleas out, and another to replant). 3 days turned into 5 days... It took us a whole day to demolish the walkway, another to cut in and lay the new one, and one more full day to clean up the mess (excess bricks, excess fill dirt, and re-sodding where the ond walk was). The beds took a whole day to remove the azaleas (we'd only scheduled half a day) which put us behind on the replant day which meant we were out a third day mulching. Actually you could say there was one more day involved as one type of plant the customer insisted on was nowhere to be found, and it took 5 months to find a suitable substitute... As well as another partial day to plant them (including moving the potted plants the customer use as temp fill-ins).
Just be sure you can get the job done in the time you have or you will find yourself mowing day and night trying to catch up on your lawn accounts. That's a pain in the butt... If you happen to get rain as well then it's an absolute mess you don't even wanna think about.
Schedule your time effectively, and don't be afraid to turn down any jobs that you know are to big for you to handle... Some people can't turn any jobs down, and it's real easy to ruin your reputation by biting off more than you can chew.Comment
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thanx for the help guys ((( It's really easy to overestimate your abilities when you see $$$, and bite off more than you can chew. Even on regular jobs you'll be surprised that a lot of times they take much longer than you originally thought it would.))) this happened a lot to me last year cj, and im gonna make sure it dont happen again this yearComment
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Good luck not overestimating, but don't be suprised if once or twice a year I seem to do one.
What we do on the LS and mowing, down here in Ohio, the mornings usually wet and we have a large number of customers that don't want you in the grass when it is wet. So we do the few that we do then and then mow all afternoon. We don't do a lot of LS and nothing as major as L&C but enough to give a little extra work.
Just and idea for you at least on the smaller jobs.Comment
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Of course now the mowing's slow until around april, and I've been hoping for little LS jobs to give me something to do, and get a little more $$$. Got lucky enough to get a clean up and mulch job last week, another 2 scheduled for next week plus I've got a customer that wants a Japanese Maple put in after the last freeze has passed (probably mid to late march here). After that the lawn accounts should kick in full tilt. Looks to be the beginnings of a really good year for me. Good luck with your's DBLC.
One more bit of advice... If a customer asks you to design anything for them make absolutely sure to charge them for the design... I busted my hump designing 3 irrigation systems a year and a half ago just to have the customers (freeloading @#$-holes) take my designs to other companys to install. Everyone since then has gotten to see (but not keep) my pencil sketch that I do when estimating the job. I won't even start the real design until they agree to paying for it. You'd be surprised how many people try this... The job I mentioned in the above post was designed by a LS co, and handed to me by the customer... At least they were smart enough to charge her for it before running to me to do it.
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Originally posted by hardboiled
Point well taken and I meant no disrespect to Dearborn. I do understand the need of young companies to sink their teeth into anything and everything that comes along. However, with that said, it is extremely important not to feel compelled to do "everything" and spread yourself too thin. Whatever you take on should fit into a planned business direction, i.e., where do you want to go w/ your company. In that plan, are you trying to be the biggest or the best.
Alot of my business growth came from disguntled customers of another landscaper(s) who didn't see the guy on a consistent basis because of his landscaping. Many landscapers will sell maintenance after an installation job as a way to grow, but then only do a half-as*ed job maintaining because the installation of the next job took more time and/or was more profitable.
My point is, be sure not to take on too much. Strive for happy customers, and everything will fall into place according to your plan.Comment
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