Most of my weekly customers prefer multiple cleanups over one big cleanup. I usually do biweekly until all the leaves are picked up. I also mulch the leaves first before I bag everything. Mulching is a huge help. Reduces the amount of times I have to empty the bags in the mower and I can haul more leaves in the back of the truck if they are mulched. I was being able to fit 2 to 3 times more leaves if I mulched them first.
I try to be fair. I work in upstate NY and we get lots of leaves. I am a one man operation and here in November it is a transition between regular mowing and total leaf clean up. My work area has town bulk leaf pick up from piles at the road, so I can use my mower with a bagger, dump them at the road and I’m not doing any haul away…..thank you Niskayuna!! My billing is a progressive scale that depends on how much time and labor a property requires but as a general rule I shoot for at least $75 per hour when I am just doing a bulk clean up not doing a full blow out of all non grass zones. Once I get into the final clean ups when all the leaves are down and I’m doing a full blow outs my hour rate goes to $100 plus. I refer back to my work journals for what I charged a customer last year to keep my business consistent yet while adding in a cost of operation increase. As a 65 year old one person work force I typically can fit like 8 properties into a work day and average $700 per day depending in how well the leaves pick up. I try not to charge my customers for how wet or dry the leaves are, after all that’s not their problem I decide when to do their properly, leave work is exhausting but now that I don’t plow anymore in the winter and ski full time instead I can recover for next spring!
Hi we are in central Massachusetts and our rates are just about the same. We price by job and add travel time into the man hours so we are getting paid to drive to a job even if it’s ten minutes away. We usually give our selfs 100$ buffer so it covers our time if the leaves are wet/ or a a lot of shrubs need to be blown out etc. I am a member of the lawn academy and your services helped me double my business this year. We grossed 175,000 this year and I plan on leaving my town job next year so I can focus on working on the business and not in it. Thanks for everything you do brian you have changed my life. I am sure you here something like this all the time but it means a-lot to me and want to thank you.
Just started watching your videos. Nice to hear how others in the industry are doing things. We bid our fall clean up per job based on the size of the yard, how many trees (this will let us know how much leaves will be on the ground when they eventually fall) and we include annual removal and perennial cut backs. We blow leaves into the wooded areas if they allow or if they want removed, we charge extra. Our avg all inclusive clean up cost is$400-600 per job. We run a 3 man crew and can usually get 3-4 done in a day. We also generally schedule the jobs with more trees in the yard toward the end of the season to ensure most leaves have fallen. The yards with less trees we do earlier.
We do our clean ups for a season kinda like residential snow plowing. We do 2-3 smaller clean ups for that price and usually give them a range for those as well, that’s the best way we found to do it. Plus we are super efficient so hourly rate wise we try to stay 130-200hr for 2 man crew or 65-100 per man.
Great video Brian. We charge 125/man hour for leaves with a 2-man crew. Mainly, this is for the leaf cleqn ups. If they are mow customers, once grass stops growing here in nw arkansas, we will still run over yard only, and pu leaves to keep yard clean until all are down. Once we start cleaning out beds, that is where the man hour rate comes into play. I too charged way to cheap when starting out but now i may seem a bit pricey but as you said leaves are not easy and if i am not making money on the job then i will just move on to someone who is willing to pay for our quality of work. This year we have filled up my dump trailer about 15 times. It holds around 12 cu yards of mulched leaves per load.
Im solo in november i will charge double for my mowing customers to come biweekly blow out beds and bag leaves with my cub cadet 50 inch. Most places around here have leaf pickup so i just dump at the curb. Never really had a problem. For people who i dont mow, just charge 60 per hour plus a dump fee. This is enough for me i dont kill myself but i stay super busy and make enough to pay for my truck trailer mowers each month. I make sure i let people know my schedule depends highly upon weather if you need a specific day for it to be done i dont do the job. Wind, rain, morning dew, temps outside, all play a factor of when you stop mowing and trasition into leaves. Nobody ever gets upset and yards always look amazing. Equiptment is fairly low my mower with bagger brand new 5k, enclosed trailer 9k, new truck bought after a lease 35k. Push mowers and my john deere 375r bought off someone with 9 hours for 2500. I know this isnt the best equiptment but i can manage to get most jobs done pretty efficiently. Sometimes i do feel im in over my head on some bigger properties.
Hey Brian, great video! Couple questions. 1. Are your dump fees factored into your $175/man hr for 1st hour (based on 2 man crew), and $75 per man/per hour after? 2. You mentioned your average weekly lawn cut price was $45. What's the average lot size of these properties and how long does it take for a 2 man crew to mow these lawns? Many thanks, Steve.
I sold my business last year but we used to charge in October a leaf cleaning fee prior to mow of $50-$100 per mow and with 200 accounts it was a additional $10k per week and it basically took the same amount of time because weed wacking slowed down so the wackers would be on the windstorms blowing off Then clean up we charged $75 per man per hour plus $150 every truck dump and a lawn cut Extra for perennials clean up $400 fall clean up minimum Here in New Hampshire
Great video Brian I am at 75 per man hour with the Ferris 3000 blower and 4-5 guys with backpacks going like a swarm of hornets ! Dump fees are extra. We do about 80 places 2 times late October - Dec in Mass.
I know you use postcard mania, but any tips for marketing these sort of last minute? I don’t want to be the guy sticking cards in peoples mailboxes, but just got a new setup.
Me and my friend are young teens and have had our lawn care company for 4 years now and we use paper yard waste bags for leaf cleanups and we were only charging 60 dollars but we just recently raised prices
This is my first year with fall cleanups, mind you I own a pressure washing business not landscaping. But, quoting leaves is pretty difficult I learned because some of my cleanups now get me $175 an hour, two or three I was way off and I’m at about $70 an hour. Definitely Definitely a learning experience. Mind you, I know $175 an hour for just me is premium, $70 is probably more realistic for just a single man crew.
I love it. Great content. I completed a $400 cleanup recently, started a $300 one and have a $400 and a $400 one next door to each other to knock out. I got sick this week and i wish i had a debree loader. I have monster piles of leaves to move to the dump site somehow.
Charge by the Hour People!!! You bid a job today, 2 weeks from now the neighborhoods leaves come into that yard. NOW you have to do it at that price? F that! I charge by the Hour - $300 and hour 3 man crew. Oh it snow and it's wet? So that 2 hr clean up takes 4 hours NOW? No the conditions vary. However, I GO ABOVE AND BEYOND for my contract customers. I get 50% plus leaves during the mow season. But they pay min-pricing. I sort of loose money the last week or 2 of October November in the mow season. grinding leaves for the mow clients. Today was our last mow day. Next week, I'm not unloading the mower for less than 300 an hour. Got 80 something clean up's to do. 80% WILL BE DONE IN AN HOUR. 6-7 300 dollar jobs IN 1 DAY is banging money.
Only charge by the hour if you have absolutely no idea how long the job will take. But anyone who’s been in business for any length of time will tell you to bud everything in contracting by the job. That is why we said from the beginning to give the client ranges on prices, because of the variables involved. That does NOT mean charge by the hour. That’s a very bad approach.
@@BriansLawnMaintenance How many times have you went out and bid a leaf job in October? And come back mid-November and see the neighborhood leaves all pile into that yard? This has happened to everyone of us in this business. You think the jobs only going to be and hour and half and it ends up being a 3-4 hour job? We all have done this. What's the point of doing an estimate in October, when you know the yard wont even look like this when you come back to do the job. The majority of the leaves may blow out? The neighbors leaves might all blow in? Your safe with minimum pricing for all jobs with this formula. Your lawn customers lawns you know what you got. You been taking care of that yard the entire year, probably doing your due diligence and chunking leaves through October. So you can come in and get done quickly. Instead of a homeowner who calls you, and abandons ship on the yard and wont do any maintenance on it in the month October. This formula per hour is not for your or mine lawn clients. It's for your call in once a year clean up customer. Your protected from wet or frozen leaves, and all the variables with this method.
Yes need to know how to charge right, cause your labor is high. Cause everything as went up, so charge higher it’s okay cause it’s higher now.well thanks for telling see ya on the next video see ya bye.
Always great videos Brian. You are a blessing from the good Lord above if you don't know it already. I called you in 2016 for some advice and it has all came to fruition. So, thank you so much for being just a kind person kiddo. Location, location, location is key here in my area at $65 man hour after covid/inflation and $75 small backhoe man hour. Now if you head an hour North or South from my location you can double and triple that. Considering work comp, unemployment and 100% ethanol free fuel in truck, equipment and everything I charge time and material on all side work out of mowing and snow removal. A lot of customers are o.k. with this scenario once you gain traction in your location and build a level of trust in the community. They know the bill is hard work hours and etc... In my area you can pay every single expense and still get 10% plus profit margins. Which I am o.k. with, and my clients are also. Transparency is key here, tell your clients you're in the business to make money, not go bankrupt. Thanks again Brian, Have a blessed season and Holidays. P.S. 100% out of $250,000.00 of debt. Watch this kids videos and you'll thank him later in your life.
I have a job it’s a fall clean up charged $450 small yard lawn mow Small pricker bush removal and blow leafs into the woods just starting out getting my foot in the door
This is a great video Brian. I am fairly new in the industry, but not new to running a business. Always interest me when people charge by the hour, rather then per the job. Full disclosure, I am a flat rate per job guy. Your 'range' concept is intriguing to me however, and wonder how some of my clients would take the concept. The reason I am not a fan of hourly is because I have decent money into equipment that makes me more efficient. If I am hourly, my investment in more efficient equipment is a disadvantage for me, unless I increase my hourly rate. Do you let your customer know your hourly rate? If you let your customer know your hourly rate, do you increase it with new equipment that makes you more efficient or does your customer bill go down due to your investment? Example if I had a 6-Man hour job billing at $65/Man Hour that would bring in $390, however lets say I got a new blower, and bigger bagger for my mower, and the new equipment drop that same yard down to 5 Man hours, that would only bring in $325, and I just lost $65 due to the better equipment. Maybe hourly works better for established businesses not really investing in new equipment, and are already set up with all the cool stuff :) Just wondering how you would handle this. BTW: I flat rate estimate my yards at $65/Man Hour, and just estimate how long it will take. I am getting pretty good at estimating time, so my jobs are typically winning me money. I still mess up a few, and I let the customer know, that it was more work then I expected, and although I will keep my promise, just be aware that next year I will need to charge more. 99% of those customers agree and flat out tell me they completely understand and thought that was pretty low already. So far I have not lost a single customer with this approach (I know I will at some point, but so far it is proving to be solid).
Totally my friend! Even if we’re more efficient, we still price per the job. And that’s the idea with reinvesting into nicer and more productive equipment. There’s times where we can do a $450 cleanup in an hour and a half, but that’s because of our efficiency. Similarly, that would take the home owner two 8 hour exhausting days of work. Always price by the job, imo!
@@BriansLawnMaintenancethat’s what I was thinking. If you start with a regular person’s equipment you’ll know what that type of job will take the homeowner to do themselves. So even if you have nice equipment that’ll do it in a fraction of the time always think of it as how much time it would take standard equipment to do the job and use that.
im a kid and my town in the suburbs has a weekly pickup for leaves on the curb. i have charged 20$-40$ on like yards that are farily meduim size. i do it bymyself with a rake a tarp and a leaf blower somtimes. am i charging to much or too little
I live in North East Ohio, and yesterday a guy turned down my bid for $165 for an acre with 19 big maple trees, and he wanted me to haul the leaves away, so I can’t always charge those prices, but thanks for the video, it is nice to see that you are making lots.
He turned me down because he claimed I was too high, I think he thought I was too young to be changing that much. One of my recent videos got a bunch of comments because I mentioned that one of my regular clients was too cheap to pay me to do leaf cleanup, but around here, most people won’t pay that much to an 18 year old.
Question for you Brian. When you pull up to a property for a mowing service in the fall, some leaves may have fallen (before a full blown leaf clean up) and cause you extra work to clean up and make the property look right. Do you add say $15 to your mowing price of $45.
Would you normally wait until most of the leaves are down at a customers site or would you go back a couple of times to cleanup a yard? The weather here in Central Illinois has been crazy lately, today 11/8 it was 70 degrees. The leaves are not coming down. I am waiting until most of them fall before I am going to go do leaf cleanups. Do try to include the price of fuel into the hourly rate? I charge $60.00 a man hour to do a fall cleanup with a $25.00 dump fee. The place where I take my yard waste charges by weight. I am getting pumped up about this weekend, can't wait to shake your hand again.
north of you and its been the same here, half the leaves are still on the tree's. At this point this year, especially with how aweful the close rate has been on leaf clean ups I just started adding a "mess tax" to my bills to do several extra passes and mulch the leaves into dust and blow it into a corner to be collected later.
First year I do hourly. Next year I know roughly the amount of hours it takes. From there I increase the invoice total by 15% yearly. If it costs $1000, the next year it will be $1150 and it usually takes us less time once we know what works good on that site.
This is a great question because I have been dealing with leaves for the last month. Turns out my fall clean up isn’t that many leaves to justify high dollar work to make it up.
We only do one large cleanup for our clients. If the leaves get bad, you can always offer multiple cleanups! Our clients don’t really spring for it though. You may end up finishing your mow schedule late October if the lawn just is caked with leaves. Happens!
Metro Detroit Michigan. Minimum $195 w no debris removal. Shoot for $100 per hour for my equipment and I. Flat rate charge… bid high to make up for bad weather.
Hi Brian, Another great video! What do you think a fair price per hour for a person on a Billy Goat Z3000 stand on blower? Want to see if my math is close to yours. Thanks!
$80 a man hour plus disposal gotta have at least $160 to bring out our setup and hauling rates. Flat rates for snow kick in in December so payment year round
Hey Brain's lawn maintenance great video man keep up the hard work. can you do a video on how to market and do sales training for your lawn care and landscaping business this is just an video idea for you Brian
Not sure if you'll even get to read this but I had a question for you how do you charge for insane amounts of pine needles and they want them all removed and taken away? I'm in Minnesota and I just have no idea what to even start at I already did the yard and I want to charge him $800 because it was hours and hours and hours of cleanup and it was tarping the whole load and Hauling it away and it was a half acre residential lot with a lot of crap in the yard
I dunno if suburbia in my area has gone bust, but almost 90% of my leaf clean up quotes this year have had horrible close rates. I'll be shin deep in leaves in a half acre lot and these jokers will be like "i want it done for 200" and its so hard not to laugh at them. I had one dude who had such a messy yard look shocked when I quoted him 500, and he said "I thought it was only gonna cost 50." its so weird this year.
@@aprilgeneric8027 nah not really an option, around here you burn leaves and the fire department shuts you down real quick. they snobs about smoke. im not sweating it either, leaf season around here is always weak, just the economy for over an hour in every direction, so I tend to just go super hard sun up to sun down mowing, then just spend the late fall and winter working on personal projects or adding more credentials to my arborist license or get more licenses to work with more chems in the summer on lawns.
same way you would a house, dump fee is the dump fee so that dont change. Also you gotta look at how big the property is and how much leaves is on the ground, is the yard slopped so the back is a soggy mess and you cant put a heavy blower/bagging unit on it? look at it, take ya best guess on how long its gonna take ya based on what your looking at it and add up the labor hours+ dump fee.
75 per man hour all left at the curb. (Town has vacs that go around) or we take them for 125 per truck load. Some times I think we’re too efficient though and should get more $. Oh well.
I charge 1.25 per minute per man , which is $75 per hour but I take a picture when I get there and take a picture when I stop , then add up the minutes and times it by 1.25 per minute for each man , that way no matter how long you are there your making $75 per hour per man
When you say 125 minimum for solo operator than 75 hr after that what do u mean. What does the 125 cover and when the 75 kick in? Sorry if my question sounds stupid lol
@@brandonfrench9315if you start at 2:30pm and finish at 3:20pm, charge the $125, if you are there till 5:30 charge $125 (min 1hr) + $150 (75x2hrs)= $275
@@brandonfrench9315 in my area, 125 minimum is the "show up fee" its to cover the price of your equipment gas and travel, the 75 an hour you add on from the moment you start cause thats what your paying yourself.
My close rate would plummet if I charged what some of you do. $75 and up per man hour? That would be great! Depending on the job, I charge for material if applicable, my hourly rate at $75 and add what I pay in labor.
I think you need to do one for Solo operators ....they are a large percentage of landscapers and just mulch and or blow leaves. Tell them how to blow out around the house and onto the lawn and use a gator blade and chute blocker to pulverize them and then spread them out if need be.
You are similar in rate to where Im at in NJ. Im at $80 p/p per hr. Some guys impose a minimum charge, some guys give a flat rate(which makes no sense imo). How do you bill incremental time? (Say you were there 1hr 20 min, you bill prorated or round up to 2hr?)
I don’t try to get too fancy with it. Round up to the half hour, that’s fine. Usually it just depends on how much a PITA the job was whether or not we round up or down, but we always try to be fair.
I mean no disrespect and I know that this video was not geared towards me, I live in suburbia and I'm just trying to stay afloat financially - eventually things will get better for me, fingers crossed. I'm unfortunate enough to have a huge Silver Maple in my backyard, it produces a crazy amount of leaves every Fall and it's always the last tree to drop its stupid leaves. The deal is that I cannot afford to hire a company to take care of the leaves, thankfully I'm still healthy enough to do it on my own, BUT if I HAD TO farm it out due to health reasons I would seriously hire an arborist and have that tree taken down, pay once cry once. I will NOT let a tree put me in a place where I can lose the house. This is from a fellow Michigander whose going through some rough times, I suspect I'm not alone...
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Hope these tips were helpful as you guys bid fall cleanups!
What’s some tips you’d add to the list? Comment below!
Most of my weekly customers prefer multiple cleanups over one big cleanup. I usually do biweekly until all the leaves are picked up. I also mulch the leaves first before I bag everything. Mulching is a huge help. Reduces the amount of times I have to empty the bags in the mower and I can haul more leaves in the back of the truck if they are mulched. I was being able to fit 2 to 3 times more leaves if I mulched them first.
I try to be fair. I work in upstate NY and we get lots of leaves. I am a one man operation and here in November it is a transition between regular mowing and total leaf clean up. My work area has town bulk leaf pick up from piles at the road, so I can use my mower with a bagger, dump them at the road and I’m not doing any haul away…..thank you Niskayuna!! My billing is a progressive scale that depends on how much time and labor a property requires but as a general rule I shoot for at least $75 per hour when I am just doing a bulk clean up not doing a full blow out of all non grass zones. Once I get into the final clean ups when all the leaves are down and I’m doing a full blow outs my hour rate goes to $100 plus. I refer back to my work journals for what I charged a customer last year to keep my business consistent yet while adding in a cost of operation increase. As a 65 year old one person work force I typically can fit like 8 properties into a work day and average $700 per day depending in how well the leaves pick up. I try not to charge my customers for how wet or dry the leaves are, after all that’s not their problem I decide when to do their properly, leave work is exhausting but now that I don’t plow anymore in the winter and ski full time instead I can recover for next spring!
Great feedback! Awesome!
Hi we are in central Massachusetts and our rates are just about the same. We price by job and add travel time into the man hours so we are getting paid to drive to a job even if it’s ten minutes away. We usually give our selfs 100$ buffer so it covers our time if the leaves are wet/ or a a lot of shrubs need to be blown out etc. I am a member of the lawn academy and your services helped me double my business this year. We grossed 175,000 this year and I plan on leaving my town job next year so I can focus on working on the business and not in it. Thanks for everything you do brian you have changed my life. I am sure you here something like this all the time but it means a-lot to me and want to thank you.
Just started watching your videos. Nice to hear how others in the industry are doing things. We bid our fall clean up per job based on the size of the yard, how many trees (this will let us know how much leaves will be on the ground when they eventually fall) and we include annual removal and perennial cut backs. We blow leaves into the wooded areas if they allow or if they want removed, we charge extra. Our avg all inclusive clean up cost is$400-600 per job. We run a 3 man crew and can usually get 3-4 done in a day. We also generally schedule the jobs with more trees in the yard toward the end of the season to ensure most leaves have fallen. The yards with less trees we do earlier.
Just purchased an 18hp Debris Loader. This video is right on time. Thank you
Great to hear!
I live in northern Michigan. I charge $85 a man-hour plus 120 for Leaf And small brush removal. Typical yard is 340 to 460
Thank you. I need to raise my prices to not undercut anybody. I was charging between $50-65/man hr with a minimum $30 dump fee
We do our clean ups for a season kinda like residential snow plowing. We do 2-3 smaller clean ups for that price and usually give them a range for those as well, that’s the best way we found to do it. Plus we are super efficient so hourly rate wise we try to stay 130-200hr for 2 man crew or 65-100 per man.
Great video Brian. We charge 125/man hour for leaves with a 2-man crew. Mainly, this is for the leaf cleqn ups. If they are mow customers, once grass stops growing here in nw arkansas, we will still run over yard only, and pu leaves to keep yard clean until all are down. Once we start cleaning out beds, that is where the man hour rate comes into play. I too charged way to cheap when starting out but now i may seem a bit pricey but as you said leaves are not easy and if i am not making money on the job then i will just move on to someone who is willing to pay for our quality of work. This year we have filled up my dump trailer about 15 times. It holds around 12 cu yards of mulched leaves per load.
I’ve been charging 8x mowing price. Including 1 load hauled away $75 per load after. But raising prices now.
Im solo in november i will charge double for my mowing customers to come biweekly blow out beds and bag leaves with my cub cadet 50 inch. Most places around here have leaf pickup so i just dump at the curb. Never really had a problem. For people who i dont mow, just charge 60 per hour plus a dump fee. This is enough for me i dont kill myself but i stay super busy and make enough to pay for my truck trailer mowers each month. I make sure i let people know my schedule depends highly upon weather if you need a specific day for it to be done i dont do the job. Wind, rain, morning dew, temps outside, all play a factor of when you stop mowing and trasition into leaves. Nobody ever gets upset and yards always look amazing. Equiptment is fairly low my mower with bagger brand new 5k, enclosed trailer 9k, new truck bought after a lease 35k. Push mowers and my john deere 375r bought off someone with 9 hours for 2500. I know this isnt the best equiptment but i can manage to get most jobs done pretty efficiently. Sometimes i do feel im in over my head on some bigger properties.
Great video, great tips , thank you sir ! Have a great fall brother!!
Hey Brian, great video! Couple questions. 1. Are your dump fees factored into your $175/man hr for 1st hour (based on 2 man crew), and $75 per man/per hour after? 2. You mentioned your average weekly lawn cut price was $45. What's the average lot size of these properties and how long does it take for a 2 man crew to mow these lawns? Many thanks, Steve.
I sold my business last year but we used to charge in October a leaf cleaning fee prior to mow of $50-$100 per mow and with 200 accounts it was a additional $10k per week and it basically took the same amount of time because weed wacking slowed down so the wackers would be on the windstorms blowing off
Then clean up we charged $75 per man per hour plus $150 every truck dump and a lawn cut
Extra for perennials clean up
$400 fall clean up minimum
Here in New Hampshire
Thanks for the information. Really like the pricing videos.
I’m sure Lawn Maintenance crews, will appreciate your tips Brian. Thanks 🙏🏾💯😀💜✝️🙏🏾🇺🇸
Great video Brian
I am at 75 per man hour with the Ferris 3000 blower and 4-5 guys with backpacks going like a swarm of hornets ! Dump fees are extra. We do about 80 places 2 times late October - Dec in Mass.
I know you use postcard mania, but any tips for marketing these sort of last minute? I don’t want to be the guy sticking cards in peoples mailboxes, but just got a new setup.
Me and my friend are young teens and have had our lawn care company for 4 years now and we use paper yard waste bags for leaf cleanups and we were only charging 60 dollars but we just recently raised prices
Good stuff @Brian !! Thanks brother!! Stay blessed!!
This is my first year with fall cleanups, mind you I own a pressure washing business not landscaping. But, quoting leaves is pretty difficult I learned because some of my cleanups now get me $175 an hour, two or three I was way off and I’m at about $70 an hour. Definitely Definitely a learning experience. Mind you, I know $175 an hour for just me is premium, $70 is probably more realistic for just a single man crew.
Awesome video Brian! Thanks for all the info and help you have given over the years!!!
Happy to help!
I love it. Great content. I completed a $400 cleanup recently, started a $300 one and have a $400 and a $400 one next door to each other to knock out.
I got sick this week and i wish i had a debree loader. I have monster piles of leaves to move to the dump site somehow.
good luck 🍀
@@therealjoeymatilla got one big cleanup done today, thanks!
Charge by the Hour People!!! You bid a job today, 2 weeks from now the neighborhoods leaves come into that yard. NOW you have to do it at that price? F that! I charge by the Hour - $300 and hour 3 man crew. Oh it snow and it's wet? So that 2 hr clean up takes 4 hours NOW? No the conditions vary. However, I GO ABOVE AND BEYOND for my contract customers. I get 50% plus leaves during the mow season. But they pay min-pricing. I sort of loose money the last week or 2 of October November in the mow season. grinding leaves for the mow clients. Today was our last mow day. Next week, I'm not unloading the mower for less than 300 an hour. Got 80 something clean up's to do. 80% WILL BE DONE IN AN HOUR. 6-7 300 dollar jobs IN 1 DAY is banging money.
Only charge by the hour if you have absolutely no idea how long the job will take. But anyone who’s been in business for any length of time will tell you to bud everything in contracting by the job. That is why we said from the beginning to give the client ranges on prices, because of the variables involved. That does NOT mean charge by the hour. That’s a very bad approach.
@@BriansLawnMaintenance How many times have you went out and bid a leaf job in October? And come back mid-November and see the neighborhood leaves all pile into that yard? This has happened to everyone of us in this business. You think the jobs only going to be and hour and half and it ends up being a 3-4 hour job? We all have done this. What's the point of doing an estimate in October, when you know the yard wont even look like this when you come back to do the job. The majority of the leaves may blow out? The neighbors leaves might all blow in? Your safe with minimum pricing for all jobs with this formula. Your lawn customers lawns you know what you got. You been taking care of that yard the entire year, probably doing your due diligence and chunking leaves through October. So you can come in and get done quickly. Instead of a homeowner who calls you, and abandons ship on the yard and wont do any maintenance on it in the month October. This formula per hour is not for your or mine lawn clients. It's for your call in once a year clean up customer. Your protected from wet or frozen leaves, and all the variables with this method.
@@ccfonzie For clean ups, my quote is only good for 48 hours. Cause all it takes is one good wind storm and the mess is worse.
Stop stealing
@@BriansLawnMaintenance💀
Yes need to know how to charge right, cause your labor is high. Cause everything as went up, so charge higher it’s okay cause it’s higher now.well thanks for telling see ya on the next video see ya bye.
Always great videos Brian. You are a blessing from the good Lord above if you don't know it already. I called you in 2016 for some advice and it has all came to fruition. So, thank you so much for being just a kind person kiddo. Location, location, location is key here in my area at $65 man hour after covid/inflation and $75 small backhoe man hour. Now if you head an hour North or South from my location you can double and triple that. Considering work comp, unemployment and 100% ethanol free fuel in truck, equipment and everything I charge time and material on all side work out of mowing and snow removal. A lot of customers are o.k. with this scenario once you gain traction in your location and build a level of trust in the community. They know the bill is hard work hours and etc... In my area you can pay every single expense and still get 10% plus profit margins. Which I am o.k. with, and my clients are also. Transparency is key here, tell your clients you're in the business to make money, not go bankrupt. Thanks again Brian, Have a blessed season and Holidays. P.S. 100% out of $250,000.00 of debt. Watch this kids videos and you'll thank him later in your life.
That’s awesome brother congrats!
Thank you for the great info Brian.
Great video I appreciate how much you share.
My pleasure!
I have a job it’s a fall clean up charged $450 small yard lawn mow Small pricker bush removal and blow leafs into the woods just starting out getting my foot in the door
This is a great video Brian. I am fairly new in the industry, but not new to running a business. Always interest me when people charge by the hour, rather then per the job. Full disclosure, I am a flat rate per job guy. Your 'range' concept is intriguing to me however, and wonder how some of my clients would take the concept. The reason I am not a fan of hourly is because I have decent money into equipment that makes me more efficient. If I am hourly, my investment in more efficient equipment is a disadvantage for me, unless I increase my hourly rate. Do you let your customer know your hourly rate? If you let your customer know your hourly rate, do you increase it with new equipment that makes you more efficient or does your customer bill go down due to your investment? Example if I had a 6-Man hour job billing at $65/Man Hour that would bring in $390, however lets say I got a new blower, and bigger bagger for my mower, and the new equipment drop that same yard down to 5 Man hours, that would only bring in $325, and I just lost $65 due to the better equipment. Maybe hourly works better for established businesses not really investing in new equipment, and are already set up with all the cool stuff :) Just wondering how you would handle this. BTW: I flat rate estimate my yards at $65/Man Hour, and just estimate how long it will take. I am getting pretty good at estimating time, so my jobs are typically winning me money. I still mess up a few, and I let the customer know, that it was more work then I expected, and although I will keep my promise, just be aware that next year I will need to charge more. 99% of those customers agree and flat out tell me they completely understand and thought that was pretty low already. So far I have not lost a single customer with this approach (I know I will at some point, but so far it is proving to be solid).
Totally my friend! Even if we’re more efficient, we still price per the job. And that’s the idea with reinvesting into nicer and more productive equipment. There’s times where we can do a $450 cleanup in an hour and a half, but that’s because of our efficiency. Similarly, that would take the home owner two 8 hour exhausting days of work. Always price by the job, imo!
@@BriansLawnMaintenancethat’s what I was thinking. If you start with a regular person’s equipment you’ll know what that type of job will take the homeowner to do themselves. So even if you have nice equipment that’ll do it in a fraction of the time always think of it as how much time it would take standard equipment to do the job and use that.
im a kid and my town in the suburbs has a weekly pickup for leaves on the curb. i have charged 20$-40$ on like yards that are farily meduim size. i do it bymyself with a rake a tarp and a leaf blower somtimes. am i charging to much or too little
I live in North East Ohio, and yesterday a guy turned down my bid for $165 for an acre with 19 big maple trees, and he wanted me to haul the leaves away, so I can’t always charge those prices, but thanks for the video, it is nice to see that you are making lots.
That bid seems low. Thank goodness they turned you down.
$165/acre???? Holy that’s 650-750 my area all day especially with lots of big maples
He turned me down because he claimed I was too high, I think he thought I was too young to be changing that much. One of my recent videos got a bunch of comments because I mentioned that one of my regular clients was too cheap to pay me to do leaf cleanup, but around here, most people won’t pay that much to an 18 year old.
Then tell them to do it themselves.
You lucked out. That I way toooo big of a job for that price. I'm from Upstate ny
Man, you nailed it! 👏 Great video!
i been charging according . ! thank you for this. this is great confirmation
How effective is the Billy goat vacuum at mulching the leaves? or does it even mulch the leaves?
Question for you Brian. When you pull up to a property for a mowing service in the fall, some leaves may have fallen (before a full blown leaf clean up) and cause you extra work to clean up and make the property look right. Do you add say $15 to your mowing price of $45.
Great tips! First year doing leaf cleanup.
Excellent video
Thanks Brian this video helped a lot this is my first fall season.
Glad it helped!
Would you normally wait until most of the leaves are down at a customers site or would you go back a couple of times to cleanup a yard? The weather here in Central Illinois has been crazy lately, today 11/8 it was 70 degrees. The leaves are not coming down. I am waiting until most of them fall before I am going to go do leaf cleanups.
Do try to include the price of fuel into the hourly rate? I charge $60.00 a man hour to do a fall cleanup with a $25.00 dump fee. The place where I take my yard waste charges by weight.
I am getting pumped up about this weekend, can't wait to shake your hand again.
north of you and its been the same here, half the leaves are still on the tree's. At this point this year, especially with how aweful the close rate has been on leaf clean ups I just started adding a "mess tax" to my bills to do several extra passes and mulch the leaves into dust and blow it into a corner to be collected later.
Love this video, Packed with information!! Thank you Brian!
Glad you enjoyed it!
First year I do hourly. Next year I know roughly the amount of hours it takes. From there I increase the invoice total by 15% yearly. If it costs $1000, the next year it will be $1150 and it usually takes us less time once we know what works good on that site.
What’s the brand name of that Jacket you are wearing i I would like to get one myself 😊
you are a legend
Love the info...What to do when significant leaves fall early say mid October?
This is a great question because I have been dealing with leaves for the last month. Turns out my fall clean up isn’t that many leaves to justify high dollar work to make it up.
We only do one large cleanup for our clients. If the leaves get bad, you can always offer multiple cleanups! Our clients don’t really spring for it though. You may end up finishing your mow schedule late October if the lawn just is caked with leaves. Happens!
Awesome video brother 👍
Metro Detroit Michigan. Minimum $195 w no debris removal. Shoot for $100 per hour for my equipment and I. Flat rate charge… bid high to make up for bad weather.
Love it
Hi Brian, Another great video! What do you think a fair price per hour for a person on a Billy Goat Z3000 stand on blower? Want to see if my math is close to yours. Thanks!
$100+/hour if you can get it. $15k for that thing these days, gotta recoup that back fast!
$100+/hour if you can get it. $15k for that thing these days, gotta recoup that back fast!
$80 a man hour plus disposal gotta have at least $160 to bring out our setup and hauling rates. Flat rates for snow kick in in December so payment year round
Hey Brain's lawn maintenance great video man keep up the hard work. can you do a video on how to market and do sales training for your lawn care and landscaping business this is just an video idea for you Brian
You bet man!
Are you asking how to reduce cost of overhead?
How do you charge for just showing up with a debris loader and sucking up leaves curbside?
like if the customer put the leaves curb side themselves? I charge hour labor [solo] since its not worth my time to show up otherwise, and a dump fee.
Not sure if you'll even get to read this but I had a question for you how do you charge for insane amounts of pine needles and they want them all removed and taken away? I'm in Minnesota and I just have no idea what to even start at I already did the yard and I want to charge him $800 because it was hours and hours and hours of cleanup and it was tarping the whole load and Hauling it away and it was a half acre residential lot with a lot of crap in the yard
I dunno if suburbia in my area has gone bust, but almost 90% of my leaf clean up quotes this year have had horrible close rates. I'll be shin deep in leaves in a half acre lot and these jokers will be like "i want it done for 200" and its so hard not to laugh at them. I had one dude who had such a messy yard look shocked when I quoted him 500, and he said "I thought it was only gonna cost 50." its so weird this year.
Economy is a little rough right now. You’ll end up closing less in these markets. The secret is to double your marketing efforts.
@@aprilgeneric8027 nah not really an option, around here you burn leaves and the fire department shuts you down real quick. they snobs about smoke. im not sweating it either, leaf season around here is always weak, just the economy for over an hour in every direction, so I tend to just go super hard sun up to sun down mowing, then just spend the late fall and winter working on personal projects or adding more credentials to my arborist license or get more licenses to work with more chems in the summer on lawns.
Big thumbs up on the video!!! 👍
Big thanks!
great video
I just had a potential client tell me her current guy that she’s not happy with charges 150 total to do 4 acres. It’s freakin nuts.
Nice!
What height do you do for the final cut? I'm thinking 2.25 in southern Wisconsin
2.5 usually, yessir!
You keep me so excited and motivated to get my own business started next year. I need to schedule a coaching call...what the process for that
That’s good to hear! They’re available at Lawntrepreneur Academy under store. Look forward to chatting soon!
How would you price a townhouse?
same way you would a house, dump fee is the dump fee so that dont change. Also you gotta look at how big the property is and how much leaves is on the ground, is the yard slopped so the back is a soggy mess and you cant put a heavy blower/bagging unit on it? look at it, take ya best guess on how long its gonna take ya based on what your looking at it and add up the labor hours+ dump fee.
75 per man hour all left at the curb. (Town has vacs that go around) or we take them for 125 per truck load. Some times I think we’re too efficient though and should get more $. Oh well.
I'm here in Southeast Michigan and I'm getting so much push back. I'm charging 160 per hour
same, when it comes to clean ups none of these homeowners wanna pay, my close rate has been doodoo this season.
I charge 1.25 per minute per man , which is $75 per hour but I take a picture when I get there and take a picture when I stop , then add up the minutes and times it by 1.25 per minute for each man , that way no matter how long you are there your making $75 per hour per man
So what if your a solo operator and its just you doing leaf cleanup?
$125 minimum and still $75/hr after that. But again, price by the job.
When you say 125 minimum for solo operator than 75 hr after that what do u mean. What does the 125 cover and when the 75 kick in? Sorry if my question sounds stupid lol
@@brandonfrench9315if you start at 2:30pm and finish at 3:20pm, charge the $125, if you are there till 5:30 charge $125 (min 1hr) + $150 (75x2hrs)= $275
@@brandonfrench9315 in my area, 125 minimum is the "show up fee" its to cover the price of your equipment gas and travel, the 75 an hour you add on from the moment you start cause thats what your paying yourself.
A question, do you guys charge one price for a full season of Fall cleanups or do you charge by each visit?
My close rate would plummet if I charged what some of you do. $75 and up per man hour? That would be great! Depending on the job, I charge for material if applicable, my hourly rate at $75 and add what I pay in labor.
Awesome! Know your market!
I think you need to do one for Solo operators ....they are a large percentage of landscapers and just mulch and or blow leaves. Tell them how to blow out around the house and onto the lawn and use a gator blade and chute blocker to pulverize them and then spread them out if need be.
I mean $125/hr solo to start/job minimum, $75 per hour after that + the same fees I mentioned.
No guess work
I’m trying to get into this service but most of my customers don’t really get a lot of leaves
And some don’t want to remove
Help them with what they do want! Cleanups in Arizona for example might be a bust, but maybe they want zeroscapes! Be a zero scape master!
Set your hourly. Punch in and punch out for the job then dump fees and dump time charged also.
You are similar in rate to where Im at in NJ. Im at $80 p/p per hr. Some guys impose a minimum charge, some guys give a flat rate(which makes no sense imo). How do you bill incremental time? (Say you were there 1hr 20 min, you bill prorated or round up to 2hr?)
I don’t try to get too fancy with it. Round up to the half hour, that’s fine. Usually it just depends on how much a PITA the job was whether or not we round up or down, but we always try to be fair.
Why wouldn't you add leaf cleanup to your annual contracts.
Because annual contracts are very risky. We don’t do them. To each their own.
What area of the country are you in?
Do you have mowing contracts with your clients during the growing season?
No money in leafs
Thanks bro helpful tips just started up my company this year in sterling heights mi S&A ProCuts thanks again
Glad to help
I mean no disrespect and I know that this video was not geared towards me, I live in suburbia and I'm just trying to stay afloat financially - eventually things will get better for me, fingers crossed. I'm unfortunate enough to have a huge Silver Maple in my backyard, it produces a crazy amount of leaves every Fall and it's always the last tree to drop its stupid leaves.
The deal is that I cannot afford to hire a company to take care of the leaves, thankfully I'm still healthy enough to do it on my own, BUT if I HAD TO farm it out due to health reasons I would seriously hire an arborist and have that tree taken down, pay once cry once. I will NOT let a tree put me in a place where I can lose the house. This is from a fellow Michigander whose going through some rough times, I suspect I'm not alone...
Wish you the best of luck both with the tree and financially mate!