hi and help please

[ahs property care]

hello all, I am new and I am the owner of assisting hand services. I been in the business for 1 year. I have learned so much and most of it the hard way. lesson number one is dont buy cheap equipment. translation the stuff at lowes is not for commercial useage LOL. Anyway, we do landscaping, (mostly lawn maintenance at this time) but we are adding other stuf slowly. We also paint, powerwash, etc. Basically we are a handyman type o company. well i dont know where to post this for sure, but I would really like to hear some ideas on how to price edging for peoples homes.. I would really like to have a linear footage type of price. love to hear from anyone with insight. Please feel free to visit assistinghandservices.com we got a new site that is working but still unnder construction.

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Welcome to our forum. but I would really like to hear some ideas on how to price edging for peoples homes.. I would really like to have a linear footage type of price. love to hear from anyone with insight. I'd suggest playing around with the online calculators. Figure out what your operating costs are and then you can apply it to services such as edging. Once you do a few edging jobs, you can break the jobs down to know that 100ft of edging will take you X amount of minutes. When you have that figure, you can then multiply it by your hourly operating expense costs and you will get your answer. Try them here. http://www.gopherforum.com/showthrea...3299#post43299 lesson number one is dont buy cheap equipment. translation the stuff at lowes is not for commercial useage LOL. This is a very good point. What kind of equipment did you buy and how long did it last for?

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[ahs property care]

well i bought various items ranging from trimmers to blowers... poulan, troy built, etc standard lowes inventory. Dont get me wrong. I love the service I get at my lowes but the machines just arent for me. If I was just using at home maybe.

I never had much of it long as I reutrned it to store within 30 days. ANd kept ugrading my stuff as I saw this inferior equipment was costing me time which ment money. I did get a good deal on a troy built trimmer 4-cycle. one of those type that you can buy the attachements for. The manager out there had one in a combo box that came with a edger attachment. I got it out the door for 159 and the trimmer by itself was 230ish. They just wanted it gone because that store didnt care it as a combo and couldnt put it in inventory right because of that. Someone had returned it to them after buying at another lowes store. so good for me, and it does do a good job.

however, first I had a poulan backback blower ( it had carb issues) returned it and bout a troy built that was a littel stronger.. worked okay till igot into some heasvier leafs. Still did the job just was a bit slow. So I sprung for a stihl with 500+ cfm and it was night and day. So I learned about buying commercial tools for commercial work cause time is money. Needless to say I took the troy built back also... gonna buy another stihl soon I hope.

[ahs property care]

I see you calculators... been new they are a little intimidating really, as I am still really learning my operating costs and such as I go... things are okay and I am adjusting.

What I was really hoping to learn is an industry average on edging, cause in the end I will have to adjust my pricing according to my overhead and time. Right now I try to price my lawn care service on the $1 a minute principal and I have had to learn that sometimes you gotta take no. Not everyone will like you price or understand oyur overhead.

Our focus is service, above and beyond. We often change light bulbs, take out trash and other little 2 minute jobs for our customers when we show up. I think the little things make the difference. I may not be as expensive as the big guys, but their are guys with no insurance and such who can doa lawn for 25, that I cant do for less than 30 or 35.... So im making our service my focus.

I created the following tag line to portray that point:
"assisting YOU is our business"

This works I think, because we are not just a lawn service, we offer various services, very handyman like.

PS I got a suggestion of 25 cents a linear foot.. does that sound in line with $1 a minute to you?

[Steve]

I got a suggestion of 25 cents a linear foot.. does that sound in line with $1 a minute to you?

It would depend on how long it takes you to edge per foot. How long would you say it takes?

When you are edging a home, with 50ft of edging? How long would you have to be there for?

[ahs property care]

well steve that I really dont know and I suppose some are better than others. truth is I didnt do any edging this year but would like to in future..
my best guess is I can do 4 feet in a minute.. but I was wondering what others are charging

[Steve]

Check out this average pricing page for lawn mowing.

http://www.gopherforum.com/uploaded-...rage-price.php

This should help you see what others are charging nationwide.

[ahs property care]

wow steve that was super neat... really appreciate it and love this site. Ihope it helps me along the way... sure seems it is going to.

do you have any other places like that one.. I am personally working on a sq ft pricing strategy but ultimately it is based on a per hour rate...
Still would like to know if 25 cents per foot for edging is inline..

any suggestions are greatly appreciated... think Im gonna invest in the calculators soon too, handy tool... just need to watch expenses for a couple weeks till we get some snow. got my money tied up in snow equipment and cant get a return until it flies

[Steve]

Still would like to know if 25 cents per foot for edging is inline..

Well if you can do 4 ft per minute.

$.25 x 4ft per min x 60 min = $60 an hour. If you can get that, good for you!

I would think the edging would fall into the other services you are offering. So if you were mowing, edging, trimming and blowing you should include it all in one bill for the customer.

[ahs property care]

so steve does your calulator factor in these things when bidding alawn job?