When you are starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a matter that was recently required to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Community forum. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you have not done so, log onto the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your areas. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in the area can give you the going rate. You could also want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the business? If so, ask them what they charge per yard works lawn mowing service.
Another response that was posted was to contact a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If be fit a lawn then ask a friend to get a few estimates to service their lawn. When you have three estimates, you could have a good idea exactly how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you discover the square footage dimensions your lawn and can certainly divide that out to find how much to charge per square ft. This could give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you end up being run your lawn care business can drastically alter from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you may well be wondering is should you charge by the sq . ft . or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, is actually walk the property along with be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Acquired there I was in for a surprise. I didn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need being manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still discovered to what I demanded.”
If you are an additional lawn care business owner, you may want to charge based on man hour. Author Joel LaRusic of mowboy.com suggests “you want to quote quality, not time. In plain english it’s better to say “I’ll perform these pair of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than condition expertise “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you should use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t have a need to pass those pricing information on to the customer. You should the customer watching time and as you grasp your job and shave a few minutes off of it, that should be to your advantage.”
Kurt explained further “What I do when estimating large properties is I figure out how long it’s going to take me. Break it into smaller sections if I want to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I must make from the property and put a price together from that. Sometimes commercial properties are gonna be broken up into several mowing areas, I feel that it’s easier to just uncover the time it might take for each and then figure out the total time plus drive season.”
Another more advanced technique to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a little more experience, because it is important your formulas are effective.