Travel time?

[AllieLawn]

Do you guys always add in travel time? Or do you take the travel time away when you get a substantial customer base in that specific area. I just figured that you might have a time where you are already in that area. So stickin them with travel will just make your bid too high.

Chris

[sharp]

Always add travel to the bid. even if you have 5 jobs with in 2 minutes. Never know what might happen, I throw 30 minutes for each man to all bids.

[AllieLawn]

Hey Sharp

Is that in a commercial setting or residential? There is no way I could add 30 dollars to each one of my residential accounts. That would make my lawn price obviously double.

Chris

[sharp]

In commerical and residentual, maybe not $30 but you need to look at the whole day and find out how much time you spend driving vs working, everyday, you need to find out how much you can make in one day and look at the time driving. If you are doing 4 yards next to each other and one that is 15 minutes away you need to charge the same per working minute is my point.

[AllieLawn]

Well I totally agree with time is money kind of thing. Our fees for lawn work have stayed the same for years. I can barely get a standard price for a yard anymore. Is there a high rate of fly by night companies in your area? Alot of the hispanic crews here are killing me. They do the same work for a cold beer and a sandwich. I see them all day long and cant figure out how they can afford to pay everyone involved. They make it really hard to have good pricing.

Chris

[VALLEYWIDE]

when a customer calls me for an estimate i always say my starting rate and that for both our safety im insured for a million dollars. that way the low lifes with no insurance have no chance

[AllieLawn]

Hey Valley

I bet that does work. If you dont mind the question. In what scale do you pay for the insurance? Isnt it x times however many men you have times how many hours they are working?

Chris

[Stephen M.]

Well I totally agree with time is money kind of thing. Our fees for lawn work have stayed the same for years. I can barely get a standard price for a yard anymore. Is there a high rate of fly by night companies in your area? Alot of the hispanic crews here are killing me. They do the same work for a cold beer and a sandwich. I see them all day long and cant figure out how they can afford to pay everyone involved. They make it really hard to have good pricing.

Chris

The way you take care of fly-by-night operations is to turn them into your state dept. of revenue for tax fraud. Most of you are aware that government is always looking for additional tax revenue, so make the illegal compitition into real competitors and even the playing field. That's what I do in my spare time when I'm not on this site. I have effectively cut the illegal competion to a trickle and I share my results with the other licensed guys in my area. We all have seen increased business from my efforts. One word of caution, make sure you don't live in a glass house when you start throwing stones!!
Always add travel time, even for the lawn next door; you need to pay for thr time getting ready for the day and ending the day. We do that because we employee people; a one man band is The employee of your company.

[AllieLawn]

Wow that'll work!! If they dont run their numbers on their truck how do you get it. Act like a walk up customer? What kind of qeustions do the revenuers ask?

Chris

[Stephen M.]

Wow that'll work!! If they dont run their numbers on their truck how do you get it. Act like a walk up customer? What kind of qeustions do the revenuers ask?

Chris

Acting like a customer works. The more info you can give a tax enforcement officer, the better: address if known; phone #; license plate and make of vehicle; places they work; etc. The other best sources of info is community bullentin boards that are at places of business and newspaper classifieds.
In Washinton state, newspapers are suppose to run a notice at the start of "Work Wanted and Services" section that require a state business number and a contractors number if applicable before one can advertise. In Jefferson County where I live, our weekly newspaper refuses to follow state law because the editor doesn't want to be the "policeman for the state". So I have to do their job to ensure that the illegal business don't drive us legal guys out of business.
I've been doing this for about 2 years and I'm starting to get help from another contractor in the area. If you guys don't actively protect your business interests, nobody will do it for you!!
I'm not sure how the state guys do their investigations since all investigations are confidential, but they do get results. I have a couple of repeat offenders who I keep turning in because they are like the "Borg" and keep morphing into something else.

[AllieLawn]

Thank you that is quite helpful. There is nothing more frustrating than losing a job over 5 or less dollars.

Chris

[AllieLawn]

Well thats alot cheaper than I was quoted. I cant remember the exact number but it was told to me as per man per hour. I do remember that it confused the crap out of me. Also there was no way I could afford it. I couldnt ever get just a base coverage.

Chris