When you are beginning your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a subject that was recently inspired to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you have not done so, log towards the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your range. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in your area can give you the going rate. You may also want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the career? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
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 you have to a lawn then ask a friend to obtain a few estimates to service their yard works lawn mowing service. When own three estimates, you may have a good idea how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you discover the square footage size of your lawn and can certainly divide that out to figure how much to charge per square ft. Individuals . give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you ought to run your lawn care business can drastically are different 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 square foot or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, has been walk the property and be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when I got there I was in for a surprise. I did not know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need for you to become manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still puzzled out to what I wished.”
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 short it’s better to say “I’ll perform these associated with services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than health “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you can use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t need to pass those pricing information on to the customer. You wouldn’t like the customer watching the hands of time and as you get good at 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 on to smaller sections if I want to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I have to make from the property and put a price together from that. A lot of times commercial properties are usually broken up into several mowing areas, I get it easier to just calculate the time it needs for each and then figure out the total time plus drive your time.”
Another more advanced method to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a little more experience, because it is crucial your formulas are effective.