Lack of clean ups

I have been very suprised at the number of phone calls that I have received from new customers. Now these customers are not my customers that I maintained for the year. Instead these are customers of other lco's calling up complaining that their current lco hasn't even been to their house once for a clean up. Heck, I have been out to most of my customers places 3 times, some even 4 times. It's not like they have an excuse either. We had a very early fall, and so it's not like they have to wait for more leaves to fall. I am really surprised though

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Do you have any thoughts as to why these other LCOs haven't been doing the cleanups?

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Again...too many customers.

I am sorry, but either LCO's need to add more employees and more crews to cover these customers, or they need to downsize. When an LCO has one crew, that works 50+hrs a week, it's time to get another crew.

[Steve]

Very interesting point!

When you do the fall cleanups like this, do you try to sign them up for more services for next year?

It really depends on the situation. If I can fit them in as a lawn maintenance customer, I try to sell them on that

[kc2006]

I haven't gotten a ton of calls this year for one time clean ups, maybe 5-8 a week. But I see what your talking about. I think alot of guys weren't ready for it. I was the second or third guy around here to have the leaf box on my truck. I hardly saw anyone with leaf equipment out until first week of november. And at that time the leaves were about all down. I was doing a few cleanups in mid October and was full bore by the third week of October.

Now it seems like these guys are running around like crazy trying to get it all done. In the past 10 days we've had 6 or 7 days of rain so I'm even running around trying to get the final clean ups done. It amazes me how these business owners don't pay attention to their surroundings.

[Steve]

Do the towns you are in offer curbside leaf vacuuming?

Nope.

If you want to, you can put them in lawn bags (what a joke!!). The lawn bags are equal to about one bagger full on my WB mower. That is why you basically have to haul everything away if you are a company working here.

Now the city just north of us about 15 miles provides pick up, the city 15 miles south provides pick up, and the city 5 miles west provides pick up. Yet, we are the only one in the area of where the city does not pick up the leaves. The only thing the city picks up, besides the lawn bags, are sticks and branches.

[Steve]

Tell me this, would it be worthwhile to offer a service where you drive by and suck the leaves up for a flat fee?

I know of two companies that do this in the area. The only problem is that they have around 150+ customers each, so trying to fit someone in I think would be hard. They can bearly keep up with their current customer base.