How to Charge for Fall lawn clean-up -When you don't have the right equipment

You will not always have the right tools to do your landscaping or lawn maintenance projects. We cover how to handle this and also what to charge in todays lawn maintenance landscaping video. The real bid on this Fall leaf clean-up.

The Landscape Business Pro Podcast- The Voice of the Landscaping and Construction Industry.

Linked In- Hit me up!

Facebook:

Email:

Dirt Monkey:

2 awesome channels I recommend are :

And my Personal Favorite: Elliot Hulse

Links to Episodes of Landscape Business pro:

Profit First, Pumpkin Plan, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

Search for us using some of these terms for Landscaping
retaining wall, retaining wall construction, retaining wall on slope, retaining wall ideas, retaining wall installation, also retaining wall blocks, retaining wall corners, retaining wall drainage, retaining wall failure, boulder retaining wall, boulder retaining wall construction, how to build a boulder retaining wall.

We also list under , landscape, landscape design, gardening, landscaping ideas, mulch, garden design, garden ideas, landscape photography, landscape architecture, backyard ideas, lawn care, patio ideas, patios, patio designs, patio pavers, DIY, How to.

More categories include: landscape ideas, beautiful landscapes, front yard landscaping, lawn maintenance, backyard designs, backyard landscaping,front yard landscaping ideas, garden landscaping, landscaping ideas for front of house, landscaping business, landscaping trailer.

[BillyGoatLawnService]

I have been doing leaf removal for 4 years now. I have tried different equipment over the years and the only thing that deep cleans yards is a high end backpack blower. From leaves to sticks, pine needle to acorns, a professional leaf blower is your best investment. More guy/gals you have with blowers the faster you will get the job done. You will leave a property 99% leaf free guaranteed. Do not waste your time and profit, riding around tearing up yards trying to use a vacuum method. You will still leave small debris scattered across the lawn that a customer may not be happy with. No matter what method you use, be sure to talk to the customer about their expectations before they hire you.

Sad to say, I charge only $35 per man hour. My service area is mainly lower income households plus there is so much competition between other lawncare businesses advertising on Craigslist. I have seen ads for 3 guys for $99 for 99 minutes.

[billpotter]

I live in pines I blow into windrows pull long skinny tarp alongside, fork or rake, needles dog turds and trash onto tarp and drag to trailer. I live in country so I hook tarp to mower or golf cart and drag it to dump site in woods. Blower does an emaculate job.

[ethanwilliams]

You are right on the money with your hourly rate. I charge $50 per hour per man and that is the going rate around me. Luckily a lot of the chronic underbidders in North East CT are gone and the market is in the landscapers favor right now. The best thing I can tell a landscaper is don't be afraid to lose an account. I do this for side money and I have $240 a week lawn and a $50 a week lawn. My $240 is 3.5 hours mowing and 2 hours weed whacking and my customer toward the end of the year thought I was charging too much and wanted me to lower the price. When I went to meet with him I told him that I couldn't lower my price and then I informed him that I didn't charge for double cutting portions of the lawn when required and I never charged extra for picking up sticks for an hour or so after storms would go through. After pleading my case I walked out of the meeting with my price intact and I still had the lawn because I wasnt afraud to lose it.

[ronhughley]

Agreed stan. tired of all these low baller lawn guys.

[DEmersonJMFM]

These prices for the basics still completely wow me (probably why some don't want to pay it). Imagine skipping work for a few hours (or even double that), doing this myself in the same time and still end up making a net profit (I don't have to pay you for a service that costs more than my time working for a paycheck). Too bad I can't make $65/hour magically appear so I can pay myself.

[TheShadowtitanX]

A good method would be blowing out of beds/trees, get the mower with side discharge and mow only one direction, double mowing each stripe to get ss many leaves out. Then get your working area down to the square feet and work from there. I mulch it as much as possible to haul off less, then i get a tarp and rake the debris left onto the tarp and put the tarp on the trailer. Repeating this step with multiple tarps to make unloading easy later. Then just do a detailed clean up in that area with the blower to get micro leaves out of the grass and you're good to go. Remow if you want to. Loading less debris, make the machines do the work, then unloading is easy, no dump trailer needed

[jasondow]

I have a dump insert with big Sanford and son side boards and a loader on my chev 2500works great

[robertswift]

i try to charge by the job so my hourly rate is covered, i know how long it is going to take me to do it and i try not to sell my quality of service for less, , if they are not happy with my quote then they can get someone else and end up calling me back anyway in the end

[JohnSmith-qdzp]

Hi stan, please explain, you said $65x3.5 hours is $227 that you charged customer for 1 man. Well you said if you had 2 guys you would charge $130x3.5 which is $455 that you would charge the customer. My question is, wouldnt 2 guys cut the time in half? In which case you would still bill the customer for $227 but you would be done in 1 hour and 45 min?

[milesoflandcare]

Stanley, it is hard to charge that much per hour and factor in each man as well. I did a job this year for one of my long term clients and after I told him the price ($225) he looked at me and said "Thats pretty steep. You're telling me if I hire you for the day it costs $300.00??" I said yes. He replied with "Here is $160.00 bucks. Im going to pay you cash so this is enough". And he is well off! This business is very hard to make big profits. For my area at least...

[omnimous]

For some reason that "Junk Cam" made me uncomfortable lol. I tend to bag my leaves and grass and either bring it home or leave it at the clients house.

[Michaelzeleznik]

I built a "gravity dump" insert for my trailer out of wood... What this is, is a diagonal tank for leaves that when you open the rear doors the leaves just fall out due to gravity. If you would like a picture, there are many on google when you search "gravity dump trailer"

[Velvethamma]

Some vac systems don't have the same suction ability as others for sure. Deck material blowout happens more on some than others. Where we have to take leaves away, we do like you did with a tarp on the trailer. Most of our places have woods or have curbside leaf pickup from the city. Also, lower cutting heights provide better vac abilities too

[rbljackson]

Ironic that I found this video again...and here I am 11 months later throwing another comment that matches the one I made right below it...LOL....bid ANOTHER job this year. Figured I left enough on the table to get some profit, and will still probably break even and make nothing on this job....UGGG>..frustrations. its tough to compete in an area where people will work cheap for cash. it brings the whole market down. My comments speak to the fact that Stanley is right...we underbid WAY more often than we overbid jobs....take that info and REMEMBER IT the next time you (AND I>...LOL) go to bid a job.

[frankieboyo]

No dump trailer? Convince the customer to build a leaf cage to make leaf mould for their garden. You could then sell them chicken wire fence and posts.

[markrymer]

great video stanley! one of the biggest obstacle I encounter when providing quotes for leaf removal is getting the customer to understand why the price is "$×.××/hour/man" some tend to fight back why the price is based on man hours and they can't understand what goes into the job and each employee. some think of leaf removal as an easy "non-skilled" task. I like to provide quotes based this way because if it is a new property, you may not know how big of a job it may end up being. before we had a dump trailer we tarped the leafs into the trailer as well as the truck bed which had sides constructed for more capacity.
thanks for the video!

[colinburfeind]

Oh gosh I made a Terrible decision with pricing, well more than one but last fall there was a pretty small lawn that needed a cleanup and I thought it would be easy but I charged 40 dollars don't even ask ok but I ended up doing all the blowing them bagging the front yard and side area and part of the back and my brother covered like 20 square feet and that is it so I got mad at him because he barely worked but he got mad at me because we bacillus did five dollars per hour so don't make that mistake anyone

[perryschmoll]

Brute trash cans and then I take them to a dump site.

[josephrobichaud]

I use a Trac Vac 580 to suck up the leaves, it will make the yard as clean as if it was raked, long before that I start posting ads on facebook in just my local area stating how great a mulch it makes for gardens. So most often I suck them up in one yard and dump them in another at no cost for a dumping fee. If it's just pine needles I use my pine straw rake and charge one customer to clean up there yard and charge another for a load pine straw and for spreading it out.

[zackgaines]

Where do you guys dump your had waste at? Land fill? Pay for it?