The Grass Doctor

I have a lawn mowing service in prospering small town Iowa. Going to bid on a big job of 30 acres. How much?

Always had smaller jobs. But this is a big commitment and I will have to buy a big mower. But how much an acre should I charge? And there is a full day of trimming too. what to charge an hour?

Public Comments

1. if easy to cut 15 an acre other wise 25 an acre
2. on mowing you should charge 50 dollars trimming for an hour you should charge 20 to 30 dollars
3. You need to figure everything out ahead of time. How much will the new mower cost? How much is your time worth? How many other customers could you service during that time? How much gas will you use? How much will you have to pay employees? Once you figure all of your fixed costs, mark it up whatever percentage you want and there's your price.
4. -Figure out how much time it takes you to do the average small job. -Divide what you currently charge by the number of hours. -That's your hourly rate. -If you have to buy and maintain equipment, you need to build that expense into your charges as well. Figure out what those expenses will cost you in a year and divide that by the number of jobs you expect to complete. The purchase of the new equipment is going to cut into your profits the first season. But add this expense into the end total. I'd do some of the simple math for you, but without more info on what you currently charge, etc...you're on your own in that department. Good luck with the business. It's a growing industry this whole grounds keeping services stuff.
5. What NOT to do Price yourself out of the job Think of recovering any equipment needs in this one job (not the customers problem that you must buy equipment to take on the job) Then think about how often you will be performing this job, it is a one time clean up job? What kind of land is this all one big cleared YARD or just acerage that needs to be cleaned out. What kind of trim work, shrubs or weeds you get rid of on the back 40 (so to speak)? It really depends on what needs to be done and the intricacy of it, mow it down or pretty it up. I'd never bid it out on the hour but the job for 30 acres and I pay about $350 to have 40 acres mowed down on a consistent basis. That is just to keep it from growing over nothing fancy.
6. 2 to 3 thousand dollors for the season
7. I assume they want a total cost, rather than cost by the hour, although you may include the cost per hour in the final bid. Is this a new lawn, or were there other people mowing last year. You might ask to see previous bids. Is this job a straight lawn, or is there a lot of slow driving around obstacles? A tractor mower generally has a 40 inch blade. For that much lawn, they may advise you to buy an expensive 5,000$ mower. I mow 65 lawns here, by hand, but I am buying a new mower for 1600$. They are cheaper before the season starts. I am guessing it will take three days to mow 30 acres, and it will probably take a gallon of gas per hour (4$?) I would guess you would take 10$ per hour for labor, 4$ per hour for gas, and 5$ per hour to pay half of the mower off in one year, so I would guess maybe a good price would be 20$ per hour. But you should check with the mower dealer and see how much it will cut in one hour at a reasonable speed, how much the mower will cost, how much gas it uses per hour. You should also check the yellow pages for other mower services and ask them how much to charge for an hour. And then hope the mower doesn't break down and have to wait two weeks for repairs.
8. Convince them to buy a BigMow's. At $13,000 a piece you could clear $4,000 (difference of wholesale and retail) each after installing it for them. A BigMow is a robotic lawn mower that is starting to get used on golf courses to maintain them It is usually capable of of handling 5 acres a day. You would not have to spend the time out there cutting the grass and you could charge a small servicing fee to come out and check out on it. For more information on residential robotic lawn mowers you can check out http://www.bamabots.com I know http://www.robomower-robotic-lawnmower.com has some info on the BigMow at the bottom but not a lot.