Small job - About 6 hours of work

I dont know rodman but i would charge the 360.00. I always do bid work I average $100-125.00 per hour if i told a customer that is what i get per hour they wouldnt give me the job.. If the ask how long it will take I say as long as it takes does the price seem fair to you? I can just look at some thing and say yup 2 hours plus disposal . That will be $250.00

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

This is another example of the more great minds to express themselves on here the better for all of us

__________________
- Subscribe to my Lawn Care Marketing Blog Feed and get daily tips sent to you. Free!
Download your Free trial of Gopher Lawn Care Software.

[FourSeasons]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I always do bid work I average $100-125.00 per hour if i told a customer that is what i get per hour they wouldnt give me the job

Of course they wouldn't. If you told him a per hour rate I think people think about what they make at their own job think its outrageous. They don't realize that there is costs to running a business and that $100/hr doesn't go in doesn't go in your pocket. A good part of it should though.
Wow $100-125/hr bidding off of thats some good $$$$.

Is that you by yourself or do you have an employee?

Isn't it a good idea to have contracts for One-Time Projects just to protect yourself, i've seen too many instances where the customer wasn't happy, like "You trimmed too much" and I'm not paying for that. I always make the customer show me where they want something cut, just to save me, but I also do think its a good idea to have these special projects in writing. Any good templates for a 1 time project contract?

[FourSeasons]

I think another reason to have even one time contracts is so that customers can't constantly ask you to do this over here and that over there. After a while that starts to add up time.
That way you can state plainly when they sign it that the only work to be performed is stated in the agreement.

My price also is due to where i live, and if you are closing more than 10 percent of your quotes you are to low. Price is dictated by where you live i know guys that get more and less it is all realitive.
I wont do hard prunning in the summer i do mainenance pruning new growth only. If i have to take a 30 year old shrub back i do it when it is dormant, over the couse of 4 winters. That price is for me. Now one thing i had done to get my rate higher is this. What i used to do is roll in to do a cleanup or prune etc w 4 men includding myself. I would charge the home owner a fair hourly rate per man hour. So lets say i charged $45 per man hour times 4 men . That is $180.00 per hour all equipment and dumptruck that we are there. So 2 guys on mowers, two guys on blowers. One mower has a JRCO dethatcher, both mowers are BObcat ZTR 61 deck w/ gas trac vac. So i go into a yard 2 hours spring cleanup done plus .Diisposal $410.00 . I did this for years and would send out my maint agreement to the customers so with increases lets say this particular customer is up to $430.00 now. The job used to take 2 hours w 4 men or 8 manhours. I can go in and do that same job by myself in about three hours. Also I am a huge fan of the one man mowing crew unless doing huge all day commercial jobs. I can back this up I had a 20 ft car hauler 2 guys on ZTR one guy runs the trimmer. First ZTR back to trailer blows the drive or if trimmer is done starts to blow off driveway. Mowers loaded gas up weedwackers if guy is still blowing. Bing bang boom out of there. With this method we could cut and $80.00 lawn in 40 min then travel time to next job then unload so say 10 min to get to this acount and 10 minutes to get to the next so that 80.00 job is one hour of travel and work time to keep it simple or 3 man hours. So that job pays 26.67 per man hour for that job. WAY TOO LOW. One mancan do that same lawn in 58-60 minutes everyweek. I still have windshield time 20 min so 80min or 1.33 man hours The job now gets charged $90 per cut or $67.67 per man hour . so if you send the 3 guys in different directions they make more individually 3 individual crews @ $65.00 per hour I would be making over $180 per hour instead of their combined $80 per hour on this example of one of my lawns.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]My price also is due to where i live, and if you are closing more than 10 percent of your quotes you are to low.

Where do you think the sweet spot is? What % of the quotes should you be closing?

[Little's]

If I closed 10% of my quotes I would be broke and out of business. I close 50-75% of my quotes and still pull in $60-$100 hr depending on the job. I think it would depend a lot on where you live and the type of market you have for landscape services.