leaf removal.. mulching vs removal?

[facework84]

Hello, This was my first year in the lawn care business and I am going to attempt to keep it going throughout the fall with fall cleanups, leaf removal, & gutter cleaning. My question is, should I blow/push the leaves into piles and mulch them, or should I remove them from the premises? Does this depend on personal preference, preferences of the customer, or budget for equipment? A mixture? One thought I had was that my "standard" service should be simply blowing the leaves into areas I knew were safe for the mower, then mulching them, and for an additional fee, actually remove them from the property.

[Fisher]

Lawn care business tips

I would like to see more on this as well, though I'm sure it's been covered in previous threads. I would imagine to mulch them neatly may require and be better if you performed it as a weekly/bi weekly service as they are still falling. I haven't provided a mulch only service for leaves. It's either been we had to dump them into a wooded area, into the ditch for the city to haul of or we had to haul them. I have actually became more interested in the curbside clean up and would like to see if anyone else has a nice set up to just go down the street and suck up the leaves that were either put into the ditch by the home owner, another LCO, or yourself after charging to clear them from the yard. How would you price this service?

[Liberty Landscaping LLC]

What I typically do is I keep "mowing the lawns" till October/November. I Bag all of it and it picks up the majority of the leaves. If it's the final cut or they wait till the end of the season or if it's a spring clean up and there is a lot of leaves I use my back pack blowers and a 8 hp Walk Behind mower and blow it all to the street incuding from the backyard if possible. I have a dump insert and now a dump truck. Last year I made a box two pieces of plywood on hinges that meet in the middle my dump body had tall sides. I have a Giant Vac Vacuum that I suck all the leaves up with and it throws them in the truck. Making the box cost about 60 dollars I bought the vac used for 750 16 hp. I bought the back pack Redmax 7001 for 250 each and the Push blower was 300. It makes clean-ups such a breeze! I am going to attach a pic of the truck before the modifications. Sorry never took one afterwards.

[Fisher]

Liberty, your set up is about what I had in mind but I was looking at a bigger loader to suck and blow the leaves.

Do you thing you would offer curb side clean up even if you weren't the ones to get the leaves to the curb?

[Liberty Landscaping LLC]

Hey if they are paying and I can make some money on it sure. I just have to cover the cost of dumping it takes maybe 10 min to suck up a big pile. I would bill them for a min of an hour to cover travel and hooking the hose up and disconnecting everything. Just make sure you don't end up doing it for free in the end that you charge enough. Last year one of my co-workers rented my truck I only use it one sometimes two days a week he used it the rest paid me 100 a day and had to return it full of fuel.