My name is Gary From WV Hello all

[outdrsmn]

Hello,

My name is Gary Posey and I am from West Virginia. To give you a little history about myself. I have been in the Information Technology field for several years. I was raised doing hard manual labor and did lots of mowing and just plain hard work. My employment with IT is very shaky and I am getting burned out. I would like to work for myself in starting a lawn care business. I have to start out small and grow but I am not sure on what to charge. Being it is late in the year I was thinking of leaf cleanup for customers. I am going ot invest in a vacumm/mulcher..but I do not know how much to charge. Reason I am writing is I like your website and it does give me a lot of information. I would like to start this soon. I have a business plan in place but being that my work is shaky right now I would like to jump right in but I do not want to fail either. I can do the work its the pricing of jobs when first starting out that I am concerned about. Any help I would greatly appreciate. Thank you.

Gary Posey

[Hedgemaster]

I feel your pain. I'm in much the same boat.
I'm told by someone who has been doing this for a few years that hedge trimming (around here) is priced at $1 per linear foot. To me, that sounds like too much (if I were the one paying). Today I trimmed about 50' of 5' tall hedges that were 4-5' deep and it only took me an hour... $50/hr? Seems nuts, but I guess people pay it.

[outdrsmn]

any ideas on leaf cleanup on what to charge?

[Chachi]

You have a few things to factor in. Hourly rate + disposal fee if any + fuel + taxes. Might want to offer gutter cleaning with your leaf removal. The biggest thing you have to decide is what you want to make per hour. As and Idea most of us here charge 30+ a hour.

[outdrsmn]

I was thinking around that charging around 30 an hour or more.

[Steve]

Hi Gary,

Welcome to our forum!

Early on, it may be easier for you to bid jobs based on the amount of time you think they will take. After a few jobs, you should get an idea how long the jobs should take.

To get an idea on what your expenses are, experiment with the online business calculators here.

http://www.gopherforum.com/showthread.php?p=43299#post43299