Spring Cleanup

[McBride Services]

Originally Posted by lawnsalonforyou I just recently did a job similar to this...on Wed. We re-mulched...added a plastic edging to the mulch beds...there were no weeds to be pulled. Mowed..weed eated...edged..fertilized and blew off the hard surfaces when we were done. It took us an hour and 1/2 to do all this. There are only the two of us. We charged 189.50. We made $80. The rest went to supplies. Do you think I under bid this job? The yard was extremely small...so were the beds we only needed 18 bags of mulch. The plastic edging was a breeze we used our edger to till a trench and just popped it in. I felt good when I left, but now I'm thinking maybe we aren't charging enough? When ever we do a job that involves a lot of physical labor ie hauling bags of mulch... we charge 20 an hour vs the 15 for mowing jobs. Well if you billed out $189.50 for 1.5 hours you billed at a rate of $126.33 per hour. The job's I spoke of are taking between 8 and 10 hours. Using 9 hours for average and billing a flat $1200, I'm billing out $133.33 per hour. Not that much difference really. Then you say you made and $80 profit on the $189.50. That is a 42.22% profit margin. I profited about $400 on the $1200. That is a 33.33% profit margin. Seems to me I need to get some advise from you on how to charge $7 an hour less and make 9% more profit. Do you feel better now?

Lawn care business tips

I just Finished a clean-up job. It had 4 beds 6' x 4' bad weeds, all plants and hedges needed trimming, we re-mulched all the beds and did a complete mow edge and all, we charged $650.00 for this it took us 5 1/2 hours, spent 287 on mulch. you might not have charged enough, this guy told us we were 200 less then the lowest bidder he got. Originally Posted by lawnsalonforyou I just recently did a job similar to this...on Wed. We re-mulched...added a plastic edging to the mulch beds...there were no weeds to be pulled. Mowed..weed eated...edged..fertilized and blew off the hard surfaces when we were done. It took us an hour and 1/2 to do all this. There are only the two of us. We charged 189.50. We made $80. The rest went to supplies. Do you think I under bid this job? The yard was extremely small...so were the beds we only needed 18 bags of mulch. The plastic edging was a breeze we used our edger to till a trench and just popped it in. I felt good when I left, but now I'm thinking maybe we aren't charging enough? When ever we do a job that involves a lot of physical labor ie hauling bags of mulch... we charge 20 an hour vs the 15 for mowing jobs. we charge min. $60 an hour for any job, sounds to me you need to figure your value a bit higher. 15 an hour is way low for most i have heard of

[lawnsalonforyou]

That's some food for thought guys. One things for sure I can't wait to have all this down like is seems you guys do! Everyone here is sooo business savvy!!!

Thanks for all the advice and support!

[Steve]

you might not have charged enough, this guy told us we were 200 less then the lowest bidder he got.

Sherman what part do you think you underbid?