He wrote, “today I went into my garage just to start up my mower. It’s winter here and there is about a foot of snow on the ground. I figured I would just start it up. Well the engine didn’t turn over. I was a little concerned so I got a space heater to warm up the garage. Later I went to start up the mower again and it wouldn’t do anything.

I accidently left the key in the ‘on’ position. The battery was dead. That really wasn’t a problem. The real problem was the mower hour meter read like 2,173 hours!!

I had about 146 hours when I put it into storage. What can or should I do???? My new machine is reading like an 8 year old work horse???? What now??? Help!!!”

One lawn care business owner wrote “call your dealership and explain you left the key on and what happened and you want the hour meter reset. They should be able to do it for you. Otherwise the resale value of your mower will be next to nothing.

I have seen this happen on tractors so I know it can be done, but get it done. It is very, very important in your case. A few hours is one thing but 2,000 hours is going to really cost you come the time you sell it.

I suspect you have may have burnt the points out of it by leaving the key on that long. ”

A lawn mower dealer shared “First I will address the points and condenser issue and then I will tell you why you probably don’t have to worry about that in this case.

To answer the question about the points, if your engine has points and the ignition was left on for any extended period of time (and the points were closed), the points are most likely burned up. When the points are closed, it creates a complete circuit that is in essence a dead short. If that is the case, not only are the points probably shot, but so is the rest of the ignition components.

The problem with leaving your ignition turned on is that the dead short will cause your points to burn up and can ruin the coil and possibly other ignition components and wiring. I have seen points welded together as a result of the key had been left on.

I would recommend you not try to fix this yourself. In this case the mower is too new and still under warranty. if you take anything apart, the warranty  will most likely become void. A lot more than just the points could have gone bad. Take it to the dealer and have them service it and explain what happened so they can reset the hour meter.

Not all mowers will experience such issues as their hour meter is wired to the electric clutch. So the meter is running only when the blades are turning. The few hours when the engine is idling is not important. Such mower wirings will keep an accident like you described from happening.”

She wrote “My husband and I started our lawn care service a little over a year ago and we’ve been able to obtain some lawn care accounts including a few larger accounts through our local municipal government.

From what I have learned through my dealings with the local government, persistence and timing pays off. We never gave up and kept presenting proposals to the municipalities.  As we did this, we found that apparently a couple of them were having issues with their current lawn care contractor’s work so we were given a chance.

So not only did we find that there was plenty of local government property to mow and maintain, there were a lot of programs we could get involved with that paid well. For instance, one of the municipalities we found has a vacant home program in which the municipality maintains the lawns of the vacant homes when the owners won’t so they contract that work out. Another municipality has a senior grass cutting program that they contract the work out to as well.

So in the end, we found it pays to contact your local government and get your business on the list of contractors that can perform these services. You may be surprised at how much work you get from making such local contacts.”

One lawn care business owner wrote us and shared how his landscape trailer, with all his mowers and other equipment was stolen. He said “I was doing great and my week was full. I had just gotten 2 new commercial lawn care clients. I updated all my equipment and had a recently purchased a new enclosed trailer. Life was good until….

Driving back home from a mowing account, my truck broke down and I pulled off on the side of the freeway. I called AAA to get my truck towed. They came out at 4:30 pm to tow the truck and said they couldn’t tow the truck and the trailer. AAA only covers towing the truck. I put the coupler lock on the trailer and left it there. Got the truck towed to repair shop and went to U-haul to rent a truck to go get the trailer. When I got back out to where the trailer was at 5:30pm and it was gone. The entire trailer with all my equipment is now gone.

I called the police to see if they may have towed it and they said they didn’t. So I filed a stolen report with them. After that I called my insurance company. They said I can get some money to replace the trailer and equipment but it will take 4 weeks before everything goes through. 4 weeks!!! I can’t wait 4 weeks.

I spent most of the next day calling clients and letting them know what was happening. Now I will have to start my business all over. I don’t have the money to go out now and get everything I need to get up and running again.

Whenever I get back going again and I get a new trailer I am going to buy one of those boots to but around the wheel and look into putting a LoJack or something like that on mny trailer, this has totally wiped me out.

What lessons did I learn from all this?

I do have insurance however I don’t have the coverage I thought I was getting. Lesson #1 if you don’t understand all the legal wording in the insurance forms get someone who does.

So basically the insurance has a loss of use coverage and they pay for all equipment under $500.00 like yours. However it is more of a reimbursement than a coverage. Basically what I found out was that my choices are to replace all my equipment out of pocket and they will reimburse me after things go through there system or wait until it goes through the system and get money to replace equipment. The clause in the policy is what is holding me up now.

I now understand if anything is stolen I have to wait a certain amount of time to give law enforcement a chance to recover stolen items. This supposedly helps in fraudulent claims so people don’t double there equipment by reporting false thefts. So I do have insurance just not the right kind or the right company.

Lesson #2 I learned was, just because your car insurance company offers business insurance it may not be the best for you. Make sure you know what they are offering and what they cover. It may be a little more expensive to go with a different company but they may have better coverage. I went with my car insurance company because they were in the middle price range. They also gave me a discount because I have my home and cars through them. The bulk discount may not be your best bet.

Make sure you know what insurance you have and don’t just go with the cheapest. My insurance company wasn’t the cheapest but they were less expensive than others and I already had my cars insured with them. However, their business insurance is lacking. I still like the coverage and service I get with my autos but I will be looking elsewhere for the business insurance once I am up and running again.

Lesson #3 don’t leave your trailer on the highway, ever. The towing company said they could have towed my trailer for an additional $55.00 hook up fee and $5.00 a mile. In total, it would have come out to around $130.00 for them to tow it. I thought I would save money by just renting and U-haul to go back and get. The rental only cost me $45.00.

I talked to another guy here in town and he said that he once had to leave his trailer on the road. So he took whatever he could fit in the back of his truck out of the trailer. He then jacked up the trailer and took one of the tires with him also. Not a bad idea since then it can’t go anywhere.

The towing company said that anytime you are pulling a trailer and need a tow, make sure you let them know so they will send a flatbed out to get it. Then they can put the truck on the flatbed and tow the trailer behind.

Keep these lessons I learned in mind the next time you are out pulling a trailer and have a break down. They just might save your business.

He wrote “There is a mobile home park in my area that is up for bidding. It has approximately 70 to 80 mobile homes that are spaced 20-30 feet apart.

• Trimming 125-140 ft per mobile home
• I have a 42in deck mower (will be expanding if i get the job)
• Edging none
• There are about 40 trees to cut and trim around the property

They want to find out from me, how much I would charge per mobile home. I was thinking about $15 to $20. Is that to low, too high or just about right?
What would you charge per mobile home?”

One lawn care business owner shared “I currently mow a mobile home park with 14 trailer about 107K SQFT. It takes me 4 hours to trim and mow. I charge $20 per trailer.”

A second business owner said “that could easily take 2 full days to complete with all that trimming. So if you figure it takes, oh lets say 20 hrs to complete and if you base it on $60/hr, that would be $1,200.00. That would be my lowest price doing it solo.”

A third lawn care business owner said “I currently mow 15 mobile homes in a park I live in. I charge $20 for each one. None of them take me more then 15 min to do by myself. I did it at that price to get more customers and referrals and it has worked for me. I still make a profit off of each one but it is very small profit. However, the referrals I get from the job make it worth it.”

A final view on it was “$15 -$20 seems reasonable. If the trailer park owner  wants to know how much for each, go and make a list of the ones that are smaller and have less trimming. Price those at $15 and the bigger ones or with more trimming, price at $20. It’s hard to imagine them taking more than about 20 minutes to mow.

You are looking at $1050 - $1600

Approximately 18 to 28 hours worth of work… 2 to 3 days depending on how fast and how long you work.”

He wrote “I had a few messages on my phone today that I listened to on the way home after a long day. One shocked me, it was the school board from my town wanting a quote on lawn care. I was thinking this was strange as it should have to go for tender but the man sounded pretty agitated with the current provider. I know this lawn care company well as I have taken a few of their accounts. As much as it hurts, I am going to have to pass on this job though. I know the company that does this job uses 4 trucks, three WAM’s and a pile of ZTR and push mowers. Adding another 16 employees to perform this job doesn’t interest me. My company is already putting me in a situation where I have become an office manager, which I don’t like and won’t do. I have been thinking for a while now that I may need to downsize.

Money is not the issue in this case nor is getting equipment. Prepayment is not an option with government contracts. The problem is that it’s a massive account. I currently have a staff of 17 and do not want to even be this large, you wouldn’t believe the amount paper work that is involved!”

I am sure many lawn care business owners will wrestle with this issue as they grow. Do you think there is any rule of thumb as to when to go with a job and when to pass?

I am sure there is money in this job that would certainly make most jump all over it, but there seems to be a downside to having to scale up so quickly.

How can you hold yourself back when presented with something that might be outside your businesses comfort zone?

“Yes there is money in the job. The school district is willing to sign a five year contract, subject to a performance clause in the contract which is fine by me.

We are already as big or bigger than I want to be. I am flattered they called me and we spoke twice today. They seem pretty intent on my taking over but I am honestly not interested. It might be next year but I have to find someone to manage the business as I would rather be out working. I hate being in the office. This isn’t why I started my business.

I handle a situation like this by being very straight forward. This year I have 159 landscaping projects, 196 lawn spraying clients and close to 90 lawn mowing jobs. I simply do not want to expand any further at this time.”

Do you think it ever hurts customer relations when you turn work down and possibly say you are just too swamped right now and you can’t take on anything more?

Is there a bad way this could be handled and should be avoided?

“Yes and no. Many understand and they really appreciate your honesty. Some don’t understand and wonder why you just don’t expand further.

This business was supposed to be a fun retirement hobby business for me. I wanted to work with my son and perhaps employ a few of his friends, however, the company took on a life of it’s own and it’s been desperately difficult for me to manage. I receive 4 to 11 inquiries a day, every day that in itself is a full time job.

I think the worst way to handle this is to take on the work without having the ability to do it. I have been in business long enough to know when to put the brakes on or something will blow up.”

He wrote “I realize that everyone will handle this situation completely different but here in the south, lawn care is year round. During the winter months, mowing may slow a bit and be about half the frequency (bi-weekly), but I keep busy all year. My question though is, what’s the best way to keep my lawn care customer base along with me into the next year?”

One lawn care business owner shared “I use a lawn care contract that handles this problem. A while back it occured to me that If I have to go to each client & point out ‘hey your done with 12 months! Thank you, now would you like to sign up for the next 12?’ It raises the question, ‘Do I want to continue?’ Why wave this flag? Why make something that is a non-issue suddenly an issue?

When you sign up for cell service for 2 years they don’t call you up on the first day of year 3 and say ‘do you want phone service tommorrow’ do they? No, they just continue to provide their service at the same rate & everyone is happy. They have already had you for 2 years & covered the initial cost of the phone, so now most likely you will continue under the same contract until your phone breaks.

Our situation in the lawn care industry is similar but different. In my case, I have my clients sign a lawn care agreement and here is how I have it worded. My customers are required to pay each month in advance on the 1st.

This agreement will continue in effect as long as both parties are satisfied. To cancel service client must provide written notice 30 days in advance of intended cancel date. If you do not wish to have us continue a 2nd year simply notify us & do not pay the 13th monthly invoice. Otherwise the 12 month cycle will automatically restart with the same conditions as the 1st year.

Another lawn care business owner shared “with cell phone contracts, at least here it’s month to month after the initial term. One can word into their agreement the contract will automatically renew for a period of 12 months unless 90 days notice is given however, once again, at least here you can’t enforce the automatic renewal in court should you have to go that route. I understand laws can very greatly depending on the area you live, so it’s worth checking your local laws before you do this.

Instead of contracts, why not focus on superior service? I personally see my interactions with clients more as relationships rather than just a check/payment etc. I send a letter to my clients every quarter updating them on what I and the company are up to. When these letters go out, I usually receive quite a few emails back.

Having said that, we all lose a customer for whatever reason from time to time. But I know the work is there and will continue to be there so long as you treat your customers well and do the best job you can. I don’t tend to concern myself so much about them leaving at the end of a contract, term or year. Focus on quality at a fair price and the rest will take care of itself.”

A new lawn care business owner wrote “When is the right time to get lawn care customers? I am planning to open up a landscaping company and want to know the best time to attract customers.

Spring seems to be ideal because that is when people think about lawn care, BUT, the customers that get yearly service usually sign a seasonal contract over the winter, therefore leaving no room for me to convince them to switch.

Next I was thinking possibly at the end of the summer. I can go door by door, talk to the homeowner and sell my services in advance, so that they remember me for the following year and they don’t sign the contract with the other lawn care company. The following spring I could then go back to them and have them sign one of my lawn care contracts.

Now, I know that they might forget about me from August all the way to spring time and might end up signing a contract anyway with the other company. So I was thinking, what if I write down the potential customer’s address down. I could then send them a Christmas card in the winter which would remind them that I’m still around and that I still consider them a future potential customer. The card would also help me because they would see I took the time to send them a Christmas card.

Do you think this is a good approach? Anything I can add to this idea”

First off, you can tell this marketing plan is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY over thought. It is way too busy and too complex and needs to scraped. Other lawn care business owners agreed and offered advice on what should be done.

One wrote “the best time to attract lawn care customers is every chance you get! Any time you get 5 or 10 extra minutes, walk up to 5 houses and introduce yourself. Do this a few times and you will start getting calls.”

A second said “I feel it is always the right time to land new clients. Every time you service a new customer you should ALWAYS ‘Clover Leaf’ the immediate homes around it with fliers, introducing your company.

Clover Leafing means you hang door hangers or flyers at neighbors of your customer. The flyers should say something like ‘TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR NEIGHBORS, THEY USE OUR SERVICES. GIVE US A CALL WE PROVIDE FREE ESTIMATES. Then list a few services you provide. CLOVER LEAFING WORKS! Hang 2 or 3 house to both sides, do this across the street and behind the house. Most people try to keep up with the ‘Jones’ as they say and it is true most do. When you provide great service, word of month advertising will kick in.

Clover Leafing works for me, it has worked for 25 years, and will continue to work! You NEVER put anything IN the mail box, instead you HANG it ON the mail box or door.

We had a goal to increase our client base by 20 to 25% this year and it was surpassed by that much before the season even started! So I know it works. Experiment with changing the ad on your flyers. There are many different ways to do it but you will find there is only a few ways to do it right, that makes it effective. Only through experimentation will you find this out.

The bottom line is, anytime is the right time to market and bring on new customers. ALong with any new customer service you perform you should be trying to market this service to the homes around it as well.

Look at it like this, if you leave out one house or one neighbor that means you have left out one potential customer even if that customer was a one time customer. Isn’t it nice to have several homes on one street so you don’t have to drive and waste time and fuel going from one customer to the next?

We service 4 major upper class communities and on one street we have five customers out of 8 homes, so we can park the truck in one place and services all of them from there. This saves me a lot of money.

If you are looking for commercial clients, depending on their budget setting time frame, send a request letters to be placed on their bidders list. Most commercial facilities set budgets in Jan, July, or Oct.”

Let’s take a look at one lawn care business that a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was looking into purchasing. Studying this example may help you if you find yourself in a similar situation.

The new business owner wrote “over the last month or so, my husband and I have decided to start a lawn care business. He currently works at a full time job, but is looking for a more flexible schedule. To do this we only want to replace his current income with the lawn care, but some extra money would be great (especially with 5 kids at home).

I drive a school bus and he would do the same in the winter. So that would help pay the bills during the slow seasons. He has talked for years about wanting to mow in the summer, and I think now is the right time.

The plan WAS for me to get the business going by starting out specializing in edging only (an old friend did that years ago, and she was quite successful at it) and doing the work myself, since my husband still has to keep his job. We would take on a few mowing jobs for my husband to do after work to get it going. Then, if we built up enough income in edging to replace his income, we could add the mowing/maintenance service and try to get 60 or so weekly mowing customers.

Since I am not new to the business arena (having run my own specialty painting/faux finishing business for 7 years) I started networking with some business contacts. By doing this I found a friend of mine who owns a contracting business had purchased a used lawncare outfit a few years ago (truck, trailer, mowers, equipment, plow, yard vacuum, etc.) to supplement his services. He has since decided to get out of it. He found that after the expense of paying someone to do the work, he wasn’t making much money.

He’s including the client list, will include marketing the business in a newsletter for 1 year to help me out, and will send any calls for business to me. His truck already has nice logo and I like the name of the business, so we would probably keep that.

I am currently waiting to hear back on the cost, but he said it wouldn’t be much since all the equipment is good, but used. He even said would take payments since we are friends.

Any words of caution, things I should look for, when considering jumping at this chance? Or, would I be better of starting from scratch, and keep going down the same road I was headed?”

One lawn care business owner responded “well the fact that the guy is willing to take payments implies that he is relatively confident you can make enough to make the payments and that is a plus. However, if he said he’s not making enough to make it worth his while, it’s probably not enough for you either. He may be under pricing the jobs or may be managing it poorly. You need to find out which!

If he’s under priced and you buy the business & jack up the rates, you may lose a good percentage of his current customers. You need to find out if his current customers paying per service or contracted monthly?

Another big unknown here is the cost. It’s impossible to even weigh this opportunity out until you know the cost. How much equipment does he have and what it’s worth? How many customers does he have? You said a snow plow is included but you said you want extra income in the summer only. If that is the case, there will be equipment you don’t need or want as you’ll be driving a school bus in the winter. Also you need to check if he includes plowing in the winter time for the current customers. Would you be locked into having to provide those services like it or not?

When I was getting started, I looked at other businesses for sale too and ultimately decided to start from scratch with no loan over my head. The business I looked at had about $10k in used equipment. Plus he had about 130 customers that paid per cut & no contracted customers. I decided against it because he wanted $60k for the biz.

I thought to myself, well many customers are going to be loyal to the guy who’s been servicing them so when a new owner comes in, I figured it was fair to guestimate I might lose 10-15% just because I wouldn’t be the same guy they were used to. I also knew most companies on average get lazy & do a lousy job & or become unreliable. So I figured that I could build my business from the ground up by doing a great job everytime, offering competitve rates & better service.

So that’s what I’ve done so far & it’s working for me. I was able to buy most of the equipment with some cash from savings. A used trailer, new trimmers, edgers, blowers, chain saws, pole saw & hedge trimmer. I financed what I couldn’t purchase in cash, which was a new commercial mower.

Instead of 60k overhead I only have about 1/8 of that debt. In less than a year my business is about half what his was already. Every situation is different and I wish all the best of luck to you! But keep in mind, you will have it easier than me. I had no other income and had to start from customer #1 & build it up. Luckily you are just looking to supplement your income, so this process could be easier for you.”

A lawn care business owner wrote us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and shared a difficult situation he found himself in with a customer. He wrote “Ok so this lady has been a thorn in my side for the last 2 months. I should have seen it coming but I did not. Here’s the situation.

I work a full time job and try to do all my mowing on Friday. So about 2 months ago on Friday morning about 9am I get a call from this lady that she would like an estimate for lawn care. I told her I could come by around noon and give her a quote. That wont do she says and wants me to come by at 3pm. I say ok.

So 3pm, 91 degrees, been up for 24 hours, humid as all h e l l. She agrees to the estimate and wants me to cut it right then. I am money hungry so I go for it. As I am finishing up she comes out and wants me to hit the weeds in her flower beds with the trimmer, ok fine. So the next week goes by without incident.

Then on week number 3 she comes out and follows me around and starts pointing out all the weeds in the flower bed that I did not ‘trim.’ As I finish the lawn this week I think to myself, next week I’m gonna talk to her about this trimming the weeds crap.

So the next week she calls me at 11am and wants to know if I am coming out ‘because my grass is really high and it needs cut.’ I told her that I had one more lawn before her and an estimate to give and I would be there around 12:30pm. So I get there and her power is out due to the previous nights storm and her sister died this week and the wake is at her house tonight and all these people are coming over and… yea OK just trim the weeds and get the heck out of there. The weed talk can wait a week.

So the next week is the 4th of July and I told her before I left that I was going to try to mow on Thursday because I was going out of town for the holiday. It poured down rained on Thursday. I called her and told her I would come over on Monday. So Monday at 10:15am she called (sounded really nasty) I need my lawn mowed and if you don’t want to do it just let me know and I’ll find someone else.

I’m thinking what the ??? So I get to her house around noon and she’s not there. I mow and trim (even the darn weeds) and leave. I’ll get paid next week.

So on Tuesday, she calls and leaves a message, I don’t need you to mow my lawn anymore. When I called her back she said it was because she had to keep calling me to mow the lawn. Now bare in mind that all her calls were before noon on the day she was scheduled to have the lawn mowed. I was baffled. So I went to pick up the final payment. We have a contract that stipulates a 7 day notice in writing to cancel service. I mentioned this to her and she went ballistic. I cashed her check as soon as I left her house and I did not go back a week later.”

Another lawn care business owner shared “you are going to run into these of customers. What I have found is that if you can afford to get rid of them, do so. I usually include basic lawncare-mow, edge, trim, & blow off in my monthly & annual agreements. I have a few who demand trimming & pruning be rolled into one monthly rate rather than billed separately as needed.

So in each case where I am asked to do extra trimming throughout the year, I estimate the length of time it will take to trim everything on the property and multiply that by my hourly rate, multiplied by 4 services a year then divided it by 12 months. I then add this figure to my monthly lawn rate. Still with me here? So where customers have me trim & clean up 2-3 times a year, I figured I do it more often (4 times annually) & keep it looking good.

I have one customer who seems to give a damn less about the lawn & is neurotic about the trimming & prunning? All summer last year every 2 weeks he was like ‘aren’t you gonna trim these damn hedges again?!’ I would reply, ‘No sir I did it 2 weeks ago.’ He would then counter ‘well I’m paying you to have them maintained all year long….! There’s a few sprouts sticking out there! blah blah…..’ ‘Yes sir I’ll knock those off for you….’

In the winter he kept saying stop running that hot mower (whatever the hell that means) over the lawn it doesn’t need it! The grass is dormant then, but the weeds get a foot tall over a 2 week period. Then he says ‘do some trimming while your here instead!’ Last week I got a similar speech ‘the rain makes the ground too soft to mow….. do some trimming instead!’

It’s more like the guy wants 30 some odd trimming visits a year & 4 mowing visits instead of the other way around. We hit the end of our contract last month. He called me & where I should have just dropped him, we agreed to just trim more & mow less. We stayed at the same rate & continued another year. While the whole situation aggrivated me all year long, the guy does like my work & even sent me a tip around Christmas. We just had a difference in expectations. In the end the customer is your boss (so to speak) so what the hell….. we’ll try it his way! Hopefully this year wil be better with him.”

He wrote “I restarted my lawn service last year. I used to have about 12 yards in high school, but girls and the beach were way more important than cutting grass and my business failed because of it. After that experience I worked for a landscaping company through college. Later I worked as a regional manager for a cellular dealer for 9 years until that got old.

During that time I save up some money and left that line of work to restart my lawn care business. From the advice that I got on this site, I now have 4 hotels, 2 resturants and 47 residential.

The 2 restaurants I got by just going up to the managers and asking them who is doing there lawn service (because it looked awful) and they said basically they didn’t have anyone. I gave them a price and showed up the next day and started edging and mowing. It was that simple! So as you drive around town, keep your eyes open and don’t be afraid to walk in the door and introduce yourself!

I got the 4 hotels from the signs on my landscaping truck & trailer. The property manager for all 4 hotels called to get a estimate for his house. While speaking with him I told him I provide commercial lawn services as well. From there, he told me what he did and said he wasn’t happy with his current landscaping company….so for about a month we went back and forth on prices and the only way to close the deal was to throw in his house lawn service for free in the whole deal (his yard only takes 25 mins to edge and mow..no big lost there), so I said yes and sealed the deal.

I made the graphics for my trailer on my own computer and emailed them to a local sign & banner company. We decided to put them on the side of my truck for people to see when my trailer was off. I have the same sign on the back of my trailer also! This is such a simple step, every lawn care business should be doing this.

Next season this hotel company is opening up 2 more hotels and I also got the contract to mow those properties as well. Another marketing angle I was able to work is reaching out to all the employees at each hotel. I was able to put up a flyer in there break room and send a flyer with there pay check! Example: ABC Hotel employee 10% discount on yard service! This made him look good and also got me more local residential lawn care accounts.

When I need more residential lawn care customers, I knock on doors that needed bushes, mulching, mowing and egding done. This works great. While I am there I will offer my weekly or bi-weekly lawn care services. Once I get them as customers I ask for and start getting referrals.”

He wrote “today I was thinking about the concepts of bidding lawn care jobs. Normally, if a customer does not accept an initial bid price, it’s probably better for the lawn care business owner to walk away instead of doing it for an unprofitable price. But there are occasions where you might want to reconsider and accept jobs which you know ahead of time will be unprofitable.

One I can think of is for cash flow issues. Sometimes, a lawn care business owner needs immediate positive cash flow into his business today in order to cover expenses.

A second could be in order to retain employees. Depending on your climate and where you live, many lawn care business owners will lay off employees during winter due to a drop off in the demand for their services. Any employee that is laid off will often find other work and may decide not to come back to work for you in the spring. Accepting some unprofitable jobs might be able to bring you in just enough cash to pay an employee so he won’t leave to find other work during winter.

A third reason might be to trim down stock that would go bad over the colder months. For example, lawn seed can be expensive. To reduce cost your costs, you may purchase lawn seed in bulk. If you buy too much seed during the year, you will have a surplus that may last you into winter. If the unused seed is being stored, it may go to waste or possibly take up valuable space in your shop. If winter is coming, you may agree to take on an unprofitable seed job in order to get rid of the excess seed.

Lastly you may find an unprofitable job may bring with it the promise of future work or advertising. This is probably my least advisable reason for taking on unprofitable work. Sometimes a lawn care business owner feels a customer will have more jobs in the future if he will give a really low price on the first job. Before you go ahead and do this, realize it is a dangerous proposition since that extra work often fails to appear.

With all these reasons stated above, I am not advocating you take on unprofitable landscaping jobs. Each job has to be examined on a case by case basis. If you take on too many unprofitable jobs, you will soon find yourself out of business. So, be wary and take on these jobs for specific reasons that you can rationally make sense of.”

Another lawn care business owner shared “I would never take on a job if I knew in the very beginning it wasn’t a money maker. Sometimes jobs don’t turn out the way you thought they would and those become money losing jobs. If this is something that couldn’t have been helped, you mark it as a lesson to be learned from and you go over everything in detail about that job 100 times until you find why you lost money on it. Then in the future you can fix it and not make that same mistake twice.

When times are tough, they can be made tougher by taking unprofitable jobs. If it’s just labor lost then is it really a losing job? No. It just means you didn’t make as much as you wanted to. If you find your family getting hungry then yes I would do a job for less money if labor is all that was involved. If I had to buy materials of any kind for such a job, then no I wouldn’t do it.”

A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his aggressive lawn care marketing plan. You may want to compare your plan with his and see where you could improve. He wrote “this year I decided to go big, come hell or high water. I started aggressively marketing residential and commercial. Because of the new contacts I made, I just recently had the opportunity to bid on 5 large apartments. These jobs will be very good money and could launch me into the six figure income range. I will hopefully be signing the contracts next week.

I am keeping all of my residential customers as I grow my commercial side. I will definitely have to hire some more help this year. I will also have to buy more equipment. I have found the key to success in the lawn care business is similar to any other industry. You have to aggressively market your business and strive to do the best job possible.

As far as marketing I do it all. I use lawn signs in locations that I want to drum up more work. I run newspaper ads in the local paper. I visit all real estate companies. I also drive around town and look for more customers. I stop at apartments, doctors offices, truck stops etc… I will stop and ask for business wherever I can. I hand out cards to everyone I meet and give cards to all my friends and family to hand out.

I have found it to be very important to market to my existing customer base. This type of marketing is different because they know you and trust you. Marketing to your existing customers other services. For example I offer weeding of the flower beds, trimming low hanging trees, pressure washing, and gutter cleaning. I even cleaned a backyard pond and painted shutters. These are all services that I look for when I am on a job.

I always go the extra mile to help my customers and make their yards the best in the neighborhood. This helps me to go to them and ask them to help me find more work. They recommend me every chance they can. I ask them to refer me to there friends and family, even if they do not have a lawn service at this time. I find that if they can get me in contact to offer a free quote I can work my magic and find more work. Once the door is open I have the opportunity to sell. Most people would love to have someone cut their grass but think it is to expensive. I show them that it is not to expensive and that their yard can look a lot better. For every new contract that I sign from them, I give them a $25.00 Visa card. I also advertise that I take Visa and Mastercard. This is a very good selling point for a lot of customers.

Much of my new buisness comes from the phone book and newspaper adds. This is also the most costly form of advertizing that I do. Again one or two annual contracts pays this for the entire year.

In addition I became a member of the Service Magic group. They do the advertising and when a job comes up in my area they send me the contact. I in turn pay them between $5 and $18 dollars for the contact. This has worked out extremely well. I have not changed my cost at all when using this service. I bid against other locally approved companies. I don’t get every one, but with the cost of the leads being so low, I can quickly make up those costs. One annual contract more than pays for the full years worth of leads that I get from them.

I am not shy about my business. I tell everyone about it and I ask for the work.

A lawn care business owner asked his question on office space on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and got quite a few responses. He wrote “I am new to the lawn care industry and this is just my second summer. Last summer I had 50 residential yards on my schedule and expect a lot more this summer. I was thinking of moving my office out of my basement and purchasing a small office building to look more professional. Do you think this is a good idea? Do most of you operate your office out of your houses? And where do you keep your equipment? Any advice will help me a lot.”

One lawn care business owner replied “I have just over 5 acres of property with four buildings on it. I keep my gear indoors during the winter. In the summer, excavators and tractors almost always stay on job sites. Mowers, blowers, trimmers etc. are parked here at my home at night with the company vehicle.

I used to have daily meetings in the morning here at my home, however we have moved to a local coffee shop not far from my house. Generally we all talk for 15 to 30 min about the day ahead, issues from the previous day, equipment issues or questions and then head out. The guys are allowed to switch the crew they are on as long as they are trained in each others job. Sometimes I will quickly lay out upcoming jobs in the very near future. To me it’s all about team building. I am no better than anyone on the team. On job sites we are all equal, it really works.

On Wednesday evenings we go to an all you can eat sports bar. I generally have one beer with the guys, something to eat and that is about it. The guys are all good and take the work for the coming day very serious. I never once had an employee call in sick or not show last year. I am very proud of the team. Another added benefit from meeting in a public place is that I discovered we were picking up business when we met. There are generally 12 to 14 of us along with four vehicles at the local coffee shop, so it has been amazing marketing. Local residents quite often come up to me while we are meeting to discuss issues they are having with their property.”

A second lawn care business owner said “I built a 12X14 steel building to keep my equipment in last year. I got tired of always loading and unloading so now I just keep the common equipment in the truck and the other stuff like the equipment which is rarely used stays in the shop. I only bring the equipment needed for that day to minimize my loading and unloading times. My office was in a spare room of my house, but now as I am expecting my third child, I gave up the room and have the office is a make shift office in the laundry room.”

A third business owner said “personally, I can’t justify any additional overhead at this point. I would love to have a store front type office in the future, something that would allow me to offer more than just offer lawn service. I want it to sell anything that one could buy for their yard, lawn furniture, fountains, special nick nacks and other things as well as offering our service.

For the time being, I’m operating out of my apartment. My equipment is stored in an enclosed cargo trailer that is almost always attached to my truck. Any equipment not in use such as snow removal stuff in the summer or mowers and such in winter I store in a storage unit I rent. I also use the storage unit as a shop during the summer months. The equipment storage costs me less than $100 per month.”

A fourth business owner said “having an office away from your home will cut into your profits. Don’t do it unless you absolutely have too. If looking professional is all you need, there are much easier solutions. A nice web site and a virtual office. Lawn care customers will never be coming to your office anyway.

I run my business out of my home and have my wife answer the phone, handle my mail and messages. I should mention this method is dirt cheap compared to the price of office space and staff. Get your family involved if you have the option. You will feel good about it and they will feel good about it.”

He wrote “I built this gate assist for my trailer so the gate would be easier to lift. I used a garage door spring that I had laying around. It didn’t take long at all to put it together. Maybe at most, a few hours with the tweaking to get it working just right.

Parts list:

• a few links of heavy duty chain
• I use rubber coated cable
• cable clamps
• a eye hook
• garage door spring
• 2 1/2 inch PVC pipe

Tools needed

• A welder
• hack saw
• drill”

landscape-trailer-gate-assist-1

landscape-trailer-gate-assist-2

landscape-trailer-gate-assist-3

landscape-trailer-gate-assist-4

landscape-trailer-gate-assist-5

One lawn care business owner suggested “around here a cubic yard of top soil is about $25 wholesale. It runs about $50 bucks a cu.yd. to deliver it within 9 miles if I don’t pick it up myself. I recently bid on a property that came to 1,806 sq feet. I figured I would need 13 cubic yards or about 5.5 tons of topsoil. The cost for the topsoil came to about $425 after delivery.

This job required me to remove the old sod, haul it away, pay for disposal etc etc. I double the costs of the materials to $850 then I needed to add 20 man hours at $65 an hour. Keep in mind this is some back breaking work, to remove sod then spread the top soil. I figured $300 to remove the sod from the site and dispose of it. It came to a total of $2,400 for the bid.”

Another lawn care business owner said “as a topsoil supplier, I found most customers want to do the job themselves. They just need materials. Larger jobs requiring a tractor rather than shovel and rake are bid between $65-$125 hour plus soil. I always bid or estimate jobs, portal to portal. This means include the total cost of your time to get there and back to your place of business as well as materials used.

Almost without exception if I deliver topsoil or mulch on a street and dump it in the front yard, shortly after wards I will get calls from neighbors for more work. I leave at least two business cards with every invoice, so the customer can hand them to neighbors. Short loads of 1 to 3 yards are always delivered in a pick-up style dump. During the planting season I am constantly on the road delivering top soil.

Quite a few times I have seen lawn care business owners simply don’t know how to calculate the cubic yards required for the job. The simple formula is:
square feet x inches of thickness needed x .0033 = cubic yards

Using the example of a job requiring 40′ X 50′ of top soil, that is 2,000 sq.ft.
If I assume a 2″ topdressing depth, I get the following equation:
2,000 X 2 X 0.0033= 13.2 cubic yards.

The formula gets really simple for 1″ depth. Just multiply the square footage by 0.0033. In his case it would look like this:
2000 X 0.0033= 6.6 yards

If you’re in the business of topsoil & mulch you can create a cheat sheet based on depth. Then you can just plug in the square footage. This is handy for your secretary to use when a customer calls and doesn’t know how much they need.

1″: SF X .0033
2″: SF X .0066
3″: SF X .0099
4″: SF X .0132
….and so on….”

He wrote “A few years back, I was getting ready to retire from the the Army after 27 years of service and decided I needed something else to keep me busy. So I decided to start a home maintenance and repair company in my spare time. Three years later, it is now doing really well for me. I deal with a lot of property managers and Realtors. As I explored more, I found there was a need for curb appeal in the housing market. So after some thought, I started a lawn care division and was blown away by the response from home owners needing service for their lawn care.

To date I have landed enough weekly, bi-monthly, and monthly accounts to keep me busy. I am now considering the possibility of offering snow removal this winter too.

One of the things I have done to promote my business was to partner up with a national painting company in town. Not only does this other business help me spread the word about my company but they I am able to return the favor and  spread the word about their company too. This other business owner has several property managers he works with that are always looking for people to maintain their property during vacant times.

A second activity I took part in was I became a member of a networking group in town. We meet every 2 weeks and there are always new faces there. The potenial to expand my business’s exposure is great! From this group I got a tip to sign up with a leads generating company that provides me with daily leads to new customers. So far this has the been the greatest bang for my buck.

Thirdly, I use a lot of free internet advertising networks. I am on two different local community forums as well as post daily on craigslist. They are both free. The internet can also be a great way to pro-actively look for potential commercial clients. When you find them in your area, save their contact information to a datebase and reach out to them with future mailings and phone calls. In the slow winter months I use direct mailing.

For people who have never run their own business before, my biggest piece of advice is don’t easily give up. In the long run, perseverance will win out. Spend as much time as you can on marketing, marketing,marketing. I still handle all my marketing. It is the only way to keep marketing cost down, which is important your first few years.

Another piece of helpful information for everybody starting a business is this. Listen to your customers. I was at a customer’s house mowing her lawn and she happened to be home, so I took a few minutes to talk to her. I asked how she liked our service and if there was anything we could do to improve. She replied that she was very happy and we exceeded her expectations. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to hear what your customers want. During our initial conversation, all she said was she was allergic to chemicals. With that information in mind, I made the effort to find organic fertilizers. In our next conversation, I told her I had found an organic fertilizer that I would be appyling to her lawn in the spring.

She was thrilled that I had paid attention and that I was looking out for her health. She also thanked me for edging her drive way because her previous lawn guys did not perform that service. Over time, due to the lack of edging, the dirt and grass had grown on to the concrete and it detracted from the home’s curb appeal.

I will also do other extra things that are not in the the original bid, if I am ahead of schedule which take about 5 minutes worth of extra work. Things like cleaning up the street gutter in front of the driveway, picking up limbs in non-maintenance areas etc. Those extra 5 minutes during my weekly mowing shows my customers I am concerned about the looks of them and their property.

So remember to listen to what your customers have to say and that will lead to more job opportunities. I already landed 2 more jobs from this client and she has told me she is giving my name to a few friends who also are in need of my services.”

Don’t fret when it comes to improving the search engine ranking of your website. There are a few simple steps you can take to get your website to rank higher than it is now. The best part about these tips is they are easy to implement and you can ‘t use them right now.

A web designer shared with us his tips and tricks on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. He wrote “here are a few pointers to help promote your site and business.

1. Build links from as many related sites as possible to your site.
2. Make sure to always include a unique Title & Description for every page.
3. Include your most important keywords in the title and description.
4. Focus, don’t try to cover more than 1 or 2 topics on a page.
5. Every page should have an h1 tag.
6. Don’t use Flash for constructing your site, it’s Ok to include some flash content, but remember search engines can’t read flash
7. Never ever try to fool the search engines. No hiding white text on white background or deceptive practices.”

If you are looking for still more ways to improve your search engine rankings, why not make some short video commercials that promote your service and upload them to sites like youtube.com. In the video description, include your keywords, company name, contact information and web address. Having back links from popular sites like the many video hosting sites, can really help.If you don’t have the ability to make a video commercial, what about a slide show that is saved into a video file format?

Do a search for your website’s keywords like (your town & lawn care). Then make a note of how far down in the search results you find your website link. Afterward, start to implement some of these search engine optimization tips and track your search engine results after a few months. You may be pleasantly surprised to see your rank has improved!

He wrote “I am going to be bidding on 5 locations of a fast food chain. The work to be done is mowing, trimming and blowing off the parking lot and walkways of grass clippings, once per week. Each site is between 1.3 - 1.6 acres. I am estimating that each site will have about 30 min. of mowing.

To find this job, what I did was call up the restaurant, introduced myself, first name, and name of my business. Then I told them that I would like to put a bid in for their lawn care this season and asked who I could speak with about that. They gave me the name and number of their franchise owner and I gave him a call and left a similar message.

He called back that same day and said that he would be interested in getting quotes. An added bonus for me is that he said he owned four other locations and said he would like bids on those also.

Being new to commercial lawn care, this is how I have came to have the chance to submit all of my quotes. I literally drove around the areas that I was interested in. I wrote down information about the locations. When I got home later, I looked them up in the phone book or got the number off their signs. After that I started making calls. By doing that, I am now bidding on a church (6-7 acres), those 5 fast food locations, another fast food location, and a small hotel. I was nervous at first, but everyone has been very polite. If they do their own lawn care, I thank them for their time, leave my card and let them know if they are ever interested to please feel free to call.

For the fast food jobs, I figure it would take about 30 minutes of mowing for each site. Trimming, I am estimating about 10-15 minutes (most of the trees are mulched around). I think that by myself I could be in and out of there in about an hour. My payment terms are within 15 days of the invoice, billed the first of each month. I plan to stop mowing if payments are not received though. I learned a tough collection lesson last year and am still trying to collect $400 from a previous customer.

I measured the mulch beds and am quoting, they would need another 1″-2″ of mulch installed. I calculated the amount of mulch needed by figuring the total sq. ft. of each bed and dividing that by 165 to get how many yards I would need. Then I calculated how much to charge for this by doubling the price I pay for mulch to cover the time spent laying it.

As far as bush trimming I quote them per bush. Example: bushes knee high or less = $3.00 per bush. Knee to waist high = $5.00 per bush. Waist and higher = $10-$20 per bush. I am going with that method until I can get a better idea of how long it takes me to trim them.

So, all in all I will bid a price for mowing, trimming and blowing, then a price for bush trimming (each occurance) and another price for mulch. I did not ask about the trash removal from the parking, but I will see if they are interested in that service too. I would pick it up any trash if it were on the lawns. But I can already tell there will probably be a high occurrence of this so I need to account for the time to perform this in the bid as well. Here is an overhead picture of some of the properties.”

Commercial Lawn Bid

Another lawn care business owner suggested “your bid should include: mulching twice a year, bush trimming once a month, weeding twice a month, leaf pick up twice in the fall and litter clean-up every week. Make it a package deal, find out how much it would cost them for a full year and divide it by twelve and put them on a twelve month paying schedule so you get payed every month for a full year. Make sure you continue to do stuff like leaf clean up, litter pick up and stuff like that even through the winter months.”

He wrote “for many years I have been a professional auto detailer and am now getting into the lawn and landscaping business. I still do some auto detailing and I enjoy it but it is too dependent on the weather. The weather plays a large role in how often the customer will want his car detailed. When I detail a boat or auto, I call the customer back in 3 months time to schedule their next wash and wax. But their response will depend on the weather or if they have time.

When I looked around at the top detailers in the industry alot of them are upselling wax at $50 to $60 per car. I don’t want to do that and I have found it is hard to find an employee who can put wax on an $80,000 Mercedes and get a swirl free job.

I would much rather sell a service, like lawn mowing, once and service it over and over again. To me I enjoy the game of marketing and offering top notch customer service and sales.

One of the marketing incentives I am using now is I offer new lawn care customers a free wash and wax after the first 4 cuts. Then after six months I give them a free auto detailing. This will only apply to my first 40 annual lawn care clients and that is it. I use a contract for 12 months work of yard work. Also I focus on full lawn service. Not peice meal stuff. The average lawn will cost $200/month which will include mowing, fertilization and weed control.

I would normally charge $65.00 per wash and wax. A full auto detailing would cost $140.00.

Time wise, it takes me and one helper about 1 hour on the wash and wax. For the full detail, it will take 2 hours. These services will be done in the evening and will be one time incentives.

When I do my marketing, I use a marketing company that can narrow my search to certain criteria to get leads for my ideal customer. These are the criteria I look for:

1. $60000 income and up. The reason behind this is they have extra income.

2. 1 or no kid, because their kids aren’t going to be cutting the lawn.

3. A credit rating of 670 or better, because they pay their bills.

4. A House value of $150,000-$600,000, because they have a decent size lawn in a nice neighborhood which will help attract other good customer.

5. They have lived in their house for more than 5 yrs. This shows stability.

6. Their age is between 32 and up.

These are only guidelines remember LIFE IS ABOUT PERCENTAGES. IT IS ALL ABOUT THAT 1% better today than we were a week ago.”

This is just one example of how an auto detailer was able to use his services to attract new lawn care customers. With a little creativity of your own, I am sure you can think of a unique incentive to offer new customers who sign up with your lawn care service.

I have been tossing this very idea around a lot lately in my head. My personal situation is as follows, I am really not making any money. I am staying in the black but just barely. After gas and other expenses I may have like $5 per month extra that I can’t even touch but rather must put in the bank just in case another piece of equipment breaks down. Right now with our weather I only have one regular client who only gets his lawn mowed once per month for $40. So my business is taking in $40 per month right now. I am starting to just not enjoy it anymore. I figure that’s it I quit. I have a few other business ideas that I am thinking about experimenting with, so maybe I will quit and focus more on them but for some reason I keep going with my lawn care business. I say I quit but then tomorrow I get right back at it. It strange to me, I feel like I have
1- No money
2- No clients
3- Not enjoying it
4- Far less time with family

I have only been in business for 7 months. So far being under a year old and in a failing economy I am still managing to keep it in the black each month which I guess says a lot for itself. I just figure since this is not my time at starting a business I should have skipped a lot of early traps and pulled a profit sooner, I don’t know. I guess so long as it stays in the black maybe its worth hanging onto a little while longer. I feel the clear answer is QUIT but for some reason I just can’t. I don’t know its weird.

I guess I shouldn’t complain about too much. 7 month after my start up I am making a profit. I am just extremely disappointed on how slow things are going. I am holding down so much right now I know a lone man can’t do this forever so I hope to god this being my 2nd year that this really takes off so I can let go of my day job and finally relax for 3 minutes a week. Right now its just go go go go from 5am until nearly midnight every night 7 days a week. Lawn care is making me so little right now, which is why I believe it has a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like I have tried everything so far and nothing has worked for me. I understand every situation is different and what works for one won’t for another but nothing seems to work for me.”

One lawn care business owner said “If you’re not succeeding/excelling in this business after 1.5-2 years you might consider getting a job working for someone else.”

Another suggested “Here is what I recommend for you. After only 7 months, do not give up you are half way there. However, as a start up you should not be hiring anyone, keep it a solo gig until you can’t handle it anymore by yourself. You really should work alone for 1.5-2 years to get the company off the ground before  you can hire someone.

Later you can add a part time helper, for one day a week, only when you really need it or you feel yourself burning out. One a month tops, unless you get some big clean up job that requires extra help.”

A third lawn care business owner said “when you are new in the business, there is a tendency to think big however, thinking about being a million dollar company after 7 months is a bit absurd. Most companies don’t even turn a profit for the first 5 years. I’m sure you’ve heard of the 5 year business plan.

After enough time, there is no reason a properly run and operated lawn/landscaping company can’t be a multi million dollar a year business. I know of several of them. You are just not going to see it over night or out of most companies.

There are a lot of people in the industry because they can’t get a job anywhere else. Because of that, they are not business educated nor do they have any interest in making more than a bare minimum of cash. I am not one of those people, my net will surpass 6 figures this year. A true entrepreneur should always be striving for more! I will be starting 2 more companies this year also in the service industry. While some might make more money than others, it’s foolish to close any business, other than a complete loser. Give it time, work on it and you will see your business grow.”

Here are three quick basic rules you need to follow:

1. The top line of your classified ad is your headline. It MUST be something that freezes a readers eyes in their tracks and stops them from continuing on in their scanning of the page. If you fail to do this, you have lost any chance you had at them reading further.
2. The next few lines of your ad are your body. The text found in there must keep the excitement going and build up the momentum to get the reader ready to act.
3. End with a call to action. Tell the reader what they should do to get the great offer you just made.

With those rules in mind, let’s now jump to a classified ad that fails this test.

ABC LAWNCARE
888-555-5555
all calls returned
spring special 20% off first month of new lawn service
services availible: mowing, edging, mulching, powerwashing storm clean up

First off, using your business name in the headline WILL NOT GRAB THE READERS ATTENTION. It absolutely fails rule #1. Business owners do this all the time because they are proud of their ad. They are proud of their business name. They want to show the world how proud they are. This is a huge reason why such ads fail.

Second line is the phone number. As I read it I have to ask myself, why would I call this business? Let me look to the third line which says ‘all calls returned.’ Well I certainly hope all calls that come into that business are returned. That is not enough for me. Most readers would pass right by this ad.

Now on the opposite end of the spectrum is the classified ad that reads:

FREE LAWN MOWING
I will mow your lawn for free.
Find out how! Call now!!
xxx-xxx-xxxx

Free always seems to be the key word in advertising that stops a reader dead in their tracks. If you ran an ad like this, you would most certainly get more calls than the one above. With this ad you could have a promotion where if a lawn care customer signed up with you for an annual contract, they could get 1 or 2 free mowings throughout the year.

The customer would benefit because they would be getting something they could use for free. You would benefit because you would get a lawn care customer that would generate revenue all year long.

The more outrageous the offer, the more response you will get. Sure instead of free mowing, you could say, free estimates. But won’t the reader know that everyone gives free estimates? Put yourself in the consumers position for a moment when you think about this. Which offer would get you motivated to call? If one stands out over the other, use it!

You will also want to experiment with the ad’s position. Some newspapers allow you to pay for a higher ranking ad. If you can afford to go with the first spot, go for it. Also experiment with using the business services section of the classified ads, over the services offered section. It seems when newspaper readers are looking for contractors, they look in the business section first. The reason is readers feel these advertisers will be legitimate vs. someone simply working out of their trunk.

As with all your marketing efforts, test them. Try something, track the results and then change one element of your ad to see if it increases the response rate. If it does, experiment again by changing one more element. Keep this experimentation cycle going and you will find much growth in your future.

He wrote “I started my lawn care business as a part time extra income deal. I really enjoy it and want to expand it to be my full time income. I didn’t start until late June and currently have only 7 customers. I feel I will need to get to approximately 50 customers to achieve the income I need. I have already obtained my business license and am in the process of getting insurance. I really need some advice on when would be a good time to start marketing to residential customers. I don’t have much money to spend on it and I feel like my timing is very important. If I am too early, will my flyers be misplaced or if I am too late, will they get some else. Any advice would be helpful.”

One lawn care business owner said, “in my opinion, there are two ways to do this, either you go for pinpoint shots or you go for shotgun blast marketing. If you are going for shotgun blast marketing, you have to expect it to bring lower returns for more money. You will have to figure out your budget and if you only have the money to do one round of fliers or door hangers, you should distribute them right before the season starts in your area. If you got enough to hit them more like 2-3 times then I would start a month before the season then do it every 30 days. You’ll need a min of 5,000 fliers if you get a 1% return and then it’s up to you to close the deal. I would say you need 10-20,000 if you want to do more than one round.

Around here it will take you about 20 seconds per house to hang door hangers. So 3 houses a minute. That’s 180 an hr. Or 1440 in a 8hr day. Do that for 3 days and you knocked out 4320 hangers. At 1% that’s 43 call backs. 2% would be 86 call backs. 43 + 7= 50.

If you are going for pinpoint marketing accuracy, you will need to spend time talking to people, but also less money. Personally, I like the idea of anything where you are making person contact with your potential clients. That does more than one thing. First, it lets you leave a good first impression. Second, if they let you give an estimate, you can do a better follow up and in one way or another, possibly get the sale with your contact right there.

For me personally, if you mail me something, or hang something on my door, I will probably file it with all the rest of the junk mail. If I can connect a face and a name to it, have a need for what they are selling, and if I like the person, I am far more likely to hang on to their material than if I get it in the mail, etc. I am also far more likely to use them on the spot. I tend to reward a good sales person, if it is done right and in good taste (if I have a need for the product or service).

One thing I would like to mention about placing anything on a garage door is that I have noticed a LOT of people open their garage door when they pull onto the street or when they are like a block away. Now I know that is a terrible idea, safety and security wise, but people do it so their door is open when they get there and are ready to drive in. Now lets think what if going to happen to that magnet or flier if it is stuck on their garage door. The door is going to be all the way open before they even get close enough to see that anything was on the door. Just a thought….

So with all that said, consider going out in the evenings (or Saturdays) and knocking on doors for a couple hours. When I have a slow day, I will do this all day long. I find that after about 6pm or so people tend to be home. There are down sides to this as well but in my opinion, this is the best time to do it if you want to make contact with the person and probably going to be the time when you get the best results as well. Something that I would caution you on is, when it starts getting dark outside, STOP KNOCKING ON DOORS! When people can not see you without turning on the porch light, they do not want to have you knocking on their door. Especially not to sell a lawn mowing service. Besides, at this point you would not be able to get a good look at the yard anymore to give them a good estimate.”

He wrote “I want to start getting into offering concrete pressure washing services. I think by adding a service to pressure wash driveways I will be able to make more profits out of my current customer base but I am not sure on a few issues. Can anyone tell me what too charge per Sq Ft? I’m also considering  purchasing a mechanical concrete cleaner. Is this a good idea?”

Another lawn care business owner shared “I am located in Central Florida and I offer pressure Washing to my clients. You can offer many services when you have a pressure washer. I offer to clean driveway, sidewalk, whole house (from grass to soffett), pool area, screen enclosures and patios (wood or concrete).

A great tool that helps out a lot when doing the driveway is a buffing machine or a surface cleaner. It cuts down on the time spent on site, makes the job so much easier and in the end makes it more profitable. If you use chlorine to help clean the area, buy it from a pool supply store in the 2.5 gallon container. Dilute it with water when you add it to your sprayer to pre-treat the area you are about to clean.

pressure washing surface cleaner

The costs I charge are as followed”

1. Driveway / Sidewalk .10 per sq. foot (Avg. size DW 12’ x 100’ SW 4’ x 50’ ) Generally most of the jobs I do are about the same size. I don’t measure all the time and charge $150 per job.

2. Whole House $150 - $200 per house (grass to soffit) Avg. house 2000 – 3000 sq. ft.

3. Pool Area / Screen Enclosure depending on size $75 pool area $150 pool & enclosure. If there is mildew on the aluminum enclosure and requires scrubbing and getting on a latter, then I add $50- $75 more to the cost.

4. Patios / Decks Concrete or Wood 10’x 50’ size $50 - $75

I hope this helps you out. My prices may be high or low in your area but it works for me where I am at and I make a good profit for the amount of time I spend doing these jobs.

A surface cleaner can be used on any hard flat surface. You just need to know your machine and the surface being cleaned and adjust accordingly. DO NOT use this on wood unless you want to do a lot of sanding. Asphalt is softer than concrete so it requires less pressure.

It has multiple spray nozzles underneath that rotate under a shroud that cleans faster than you can with a wand. I have used them to clean sidewalks where it took me 1 minute and 40 seconds to clean that would have taken 15 to 30 minutes with a wand. With the surface cleaner you can clean an average sized driveway in under 30 minutes. After you clean all you do is rinse the water off the surface and you are done. That is unless you have a recovery system that negates the need to rinse because it picks up all the dirty water. It is kind of like a mower blade with a spray nozzle at each end of the blade spinning at a high rate of speed.

At another job site I cleaned a strip mall, it had 18,000 sq ft of concrete. I used one surface cleaner and had a man rinsing behind me and removing the gum. It took about 5 1/2 hours… to me that’s pretty fast! On this job it equaled out to be just over $200 an hour

For those that are considering adding pressure washing you should see a demo of the equipment in use at a local dealer.

He wrote “I just got a call from another landscaping company in town who has been doing yard care as well as landscaping. He wanted to know if I would be interested in taking on his yard care clients as he has decided to concentrate on landscaping only. He is willing to turn them over to me, however I am not in the position of being able to handle them all. It would increase my client base by 200%, which would require hiring guys. The extra work would be awesome, but here are my issues.

• Hiring guys might mean a constant rotation of employees. There have been a few lawn care businesses I have heard comment that they have trouble maintaining employees. I am not sure if the reward is worth the headache.

• Secondly, I have built my business on quality. In the years I have been operating, I have gotten the reputation of being the company in town that does some of the best work. Not being able to be totally hands on might cause issues with the quality of workmanship.

• This could be a big break for me and be a chance to build on what I have started. It could turn into me being able to take some more time off once the new employees know what and how I want things done.

I have to add that I also find this somewhat scary. Too many lawn care companies have grown too big too fast and in the end it ruins them.”

This is a very interesting topic. In the past, on the forum we have talked about how 20% growth each year is a ceiling you shouldn’t go above. Can you add enough customers to hit that mark and no more?

How many customers would you ideally like to add now and still feel comfortable with your growth? What’s your current workload and workforce?

One other thing to keep in mind is, adding employees is no guarantee you will be able to take some time off. Managing your staff to ensure quality and performance will no doubt, take more time than you initially thought.

“I’ve been handling 27 clients to date by myself. This other landscaping business owner is offering me 47 new lawn care customers. We didn’t discuss whether I was buying them, he basically wanted to know if I would be interested in taking them on. I got the impression he just wanted to make sure they were going to have someone looking after them, so I would guess they were free.

I think this is why it can be scary. I have had some growth this year already. I have been wanting to pick up about 5 more clients in addition to the new ones I got this spring already. He however wants to make sure this group of 47 would be looked after. I’m hesitant to even take a few more additional ones on. I guess it would depend on what he was charging them and if I could find enough help to make it pay.

Realistically, I was very happy with the growth that I had already achieved and wasn’t looking to take on any more customers. I can understand him not wanting to leave his clients in a bind, I would feel the same way, but this may be way too much growth for me.”

Maybe the best way to go about this would be to contact him, express to him your concerns and see what kind of deal you can work out.

“That’s exactly what I did. I chatted with him tonight and told him I would take on one group of his clients, 13 in total and all in one location. After some discussion, he told me what he was charging them and I can live with it for the summer. I might raise the rates next year just to get a slightly higher profit margin. I figure I can handle them with just one additional employee and basically these customers will pay his wages for the summer season.”

UPDATED INFO…

Two months later he wrote “the 13 lawn care customers I had agreed to take on did not happen. A new guy in town came along and scooped them up before I was given their names. From what the other company told me, he offered them a lower price. I have seen his work since and let’s just say “you get what you pay for.”

I have picked up several new clients from that company as he has been referring them to me. It has worked out reasonably well. I am still increasing clients but at a slower rate which is more in my comfort zone.

The employee is working out reasonably well, but I am finding I have to constantly remind him of little things now and again. He fixes them and things go well for a few weeks then he starts getting sloppy again. I figure this is just standard employee management.”

Lawn care business growth of 200%, a blessing or a curse? - GopherHaul 60 Lawn Care Forum Podcast

Lawn care business growth of 200%, a blessing or a curse? - GopherHaul 60 Lawn Care Forum Show

• One lawn care business owner shared:

Well for me taking into consideration I was mostly a landscaping business:

Truck $5000
Trailer $1000
Advertising $120
Equipment $700 (rakes, shovels, wheel barrows, etc.)
Truck insurance $300/yr
Company registration $100
Business insurance $700/yr
Truck registration $120
Trailer registration $70

So about $8000 in total.

• A second lawn care business owner shared:

Used pick up $1500
Used 21″ mower $75
Used string trimmer $50
Used blower $50
Used edger $50
Business license $80
1 mil. liability insurance $478 (yearly)
Truck insurance $150 (monthly)
Gallon of 2 stroke oil $10
5 gallon fuel can $10
2 gallon fuel can $8
7 gallons of fuel $19 (89octane)

So roughly $2,480 could put you in business legally and grow it from there.

• A third business owner started on the cheap and shared how he did it.

I started by using the car I own and pay on monthly. I use the trunk for my lawn care. It sucks but it’s better than nothing.
So….

Used car-$60.00/week
22″ mower $75 (bought off season) in season its $150
String trimmer (FREE) giving from a friend. Sells for $70 at walmart
New blower $100
Car insurance $18.75/week
2 gallon fuel can $5 (mower)
1 gallon fuel can $2.50 (Trimmer) 40:1 ratio oil/gas
1 gallon fuel can $2.50 (blower) 50:1 ratio oil/gas

So roughly $400-600 put me in business but I still need to go legal and most of the equipment I had already for my own yard. I just use it since I already have it. When I get more money I’ll buy what I need to expand with cash only, so there is not borrowing.

• A fourth lawn care business owner wrote:

Lawn Mower: $1,500.00
Trimmer: $500.00
Blower: $200.00
Marketing Material: $250.00
Cell Phone: $100.00
Gas Can: $20.00
Mix Can: $20.00
Trimmer Cord: $30.00
Eye Protection: $15.00
Grass Can: $40.00
Garbage Bags: $30.00
Rake: $30.00
Tarp: $15.00
Garden tools: $50.00

Total: $2,800.00

This does not include truck payments since I already owned it.

He wrote “there always seems to be a lawn care customer that wants to be cheap and let his lawn overgrow for two weeks during the growing season. Should I bill the customer my regular price for mowing but instead of weekly, only bill him twice a month? I asked a friend who is also in the business and he suggested to cut the lawn very low so it’s not such a pain on the return trips. He said the bi-weekly folks are great. They don’t want manicured lawns. You can just get in, cut it low and get out. I am not so sure about that advice as I want to continue providing a high quality service even to my bi-weekly customers.”

One lawn care business owner suggested “if you are going to mow a lawn bi-weekly in the summer, you need to charge more for it. I charge it as a cut & a half. So if a lawn is $30 weekly, it then becomes $45 bi-weekly. I have found it takes nearly twice as long to mow the lawn because it has grown a lot more since the last time I was there. It requires more gas and it’s harder on the belts & blades too. If you allow a lawn care customer to save nearly 50% on lawn care expenses by switching to bi-weekly cuts, they will never shift over to weekly & have it done right. There is a reason most lawn care business owners won’t do this (actually several).

1) You can’t make any money doing lawns bi-weekly.
2) These are usually the same customers that don’t pay or are very slow to pay.
3) It’s abusing the equipment, even though most of us run commercial gear that can take it, it will last longer if you don’t abuse it.
4) The lawn will never bring you any referals because they look bad almost all the time. By the time you get there after 2 weeks it looks like hell. Then there’s hay left when your done so it looks crappy after too. Or you spend extra time, everytime to keep cleaning it up.

Charge a cut & a half. It will cover the added expenses & they might then figure for the lousy 25% they save by going bi-weekly, they’d rather have the place look good & ask you to do it weekly.

Along the same lines…. when I get a call for an overgrown lawn I bid it pretty high.

Example: If the lawn looks like I would normally charge say $25 & it appears to have 2 months worth of summer growth on it, that’s approx 8 weeks that they should have spent $25/week = $200 so $125-$150 to knock it back down is not unreasonable. These lawns beat up your equipment, wear you out, and dull your blades to hell. My blades run almost $40 bucks a set and you’ll probably hit something you couldn’t see in there & ruin em’ anyway.

Which brings me to another point. I have a disclaimer in my estimate stating If the lawn is so tall that objects like sprinkler heads, landscape lighting, well pipes etc. are not clearly visible, we are not responsible for damage to such items (or anything they may hit when they come flying out). Cover your butt! You are gonna hit this stuff. I explain we try not too & we aren’t asking for a license to be careless but you can’t avoid what you can’t see.”

A lawn care business owner wrote “I have a lawn care customer that signed up for annual service with monthly billing in March. He owns a large cornor lot with a lot of plant beds, shrubs, & trees. Our agreement was $100/mo to include mowing, line trim, edge, blow off, & then trimming & pruning of all bushes & trees under 15′ in height. Weed control was not included as the client handled that himself. In mid June the client was going away for a couple months & asked me if he left out some spray & a sprayer could I spray the weeds for him? He said I could charge him extra if need be. I said no, I would spray for him and that there would be no charge, it’s not a big deal.

Between June 25th & Sept 25th in addition to our regular work I treated the beds with his supplied chemical & sprayer on 5 or 6 occasions. After using the gallon he had mixed I noticed it wasn’t working very well. When I went to mix gallon #2 I found the label on the bottle of concentrate was not legible as it was left outside. I called the client by phone & explained that it wasn’t working very well & that I didn’t know the proper mix for this off-brand product. He wasn’t sure what the mix rate was off hand either & said ‘I just mix some in.’ So I did, but it didn’t kill anything. Next I tried again and up’d the dosage & still nothing. So slowly the weeds overtake the beds despite the spray (Mind you I’ve called him about this already).

The client returns to town around the week of Oct. 1st. He comments then that the weeds are out of control & I said ‘I know, that’s why I called you, It wasn’t working!’ So he spends time out in the yard & pulls all the weeds. There were times I was there mowing, trimming & pruning while he was outside & he said nothing to any effect that he was mad at me. In December I call the client because he owes for the months of October & November ($200). He now feels that I am responsible for the fact that the weeds got out of hand & he’s pissed. He want’s to cancel our agreement on the lawn & bushes (because of weed control that wasn’t included. I sprayed them for a couple months with his stuff as a courtesy). The kicker to this all is the client refuses to pay the $200 he rightfully owes for the services rendered (that were actually in our agreement!) during the months of Oct. & Nov. He states he spent 5 full days & his cousin helped for 3 days pulling the weeds & that he feels this labor more than eats up the $200 in question.

I feel like it was a courtesy to spray, I didn’t charge him & on top of it he was NOTIFIED that it WASN’T WORKING. He feels that despite the lack of charge, I agreed to ‘take care of the weeds’ & had I not agreed he’d have found someone who would have to done it in his absence. But since I said I’d spray that it’s all my responsibility & that I should have pulled all the weeds or had my men do it.

The bottom line to me seems that the spray didn’t work for me, He says it works. I don’t know how thick he mixes it because I still don’t even know what the proper mix is!? The label was destroyed, & when I called he didn’t know either? It was not a product I am familiar with. ( I don’t even carry weed killer as I am not certified, though legally- if a customer supplies both chemical & application equipment it falls under a ‘yardman exemption’ & I can apply weed killer that way). I suppose I could have tracked down who sells that crap, got in the car, gone to the place & read a label on their bottle but hell? This was a courtesy thing after all.

The whole situation is frustrating as hell I can tell you that. The part that makes it suck even more is that during the last month (which he is refusing to pay for) I spent hours & hours there doing a full fall clean up & trimmed everything on the property! (which is included in the monthly rate but still that’s assuming that I’ll get paid). So everything is freshly trimmed for the winter & so he’s gonna try to skip out of paying me for October, & November on top of canceling a $100/month agreement going into the slower months….. agh! I bet he’ll probably let the place go completely neglected til march & then hire some other poor schmuck for next season.”

Another lawn care business owner suggested “it sounds like you are at one of those crossroads where you wonder if it is worth attempting to salvage this customer or just dump him and spend your time gaining other clients.

Here is what I have done in situations like this. Tell him your position once more just like you told us above and let him know that you truly feel like you handled the application of the chemical to the best of your ability. Let him know that you continued to maintain his lawn according to your contract and that you feel you should be paid in full for the duration of the contract.

Now comes the hard part. Once you feel he has a balanced viewpoint on the situation, trust him with control of the outcome. Ask his ideas for an equitable solution.

I think he is just frustrated, maybe at the weeds or maybe at something else in his life. He just wants to blame someone for it. Maybe he left the lid off the chemical and it rained and diluted the solution. Maybe it was old or never worked in the first place and he’s embarrassed to admit it.

Anyway, lay it out to him and ask him what he thinks is truly fair to both parties. My bet is that you will be able to salvage this business relationship. If not, live and learn from it and never repeat it again.”

That is what a lawn care business owner was concerned about when he wrote on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and asked “I have a question regarding billing customers. This is the beginning of my second season and I have picked up my first new customer of the year. I asked and she shared with me the reason why she left her old grass service. Last August she got billed 4 times during the month even though she only got her grass cut twice. I have heard that some older people get charged 32 weeks a year regardless if their lawn gets cuts or not. I only charge if I mow. If it is too dry then I don’t cut and don’t charge them. What is the industry standard? Do you charge on a per year basis? I just charge per cut and feel that’s fair. Otherwise I think there is a psychological issue the customers have to handle and that is they think at times they are getting billed for work that didn’t happen. What do you guys think?”

One lawn care business owner shared “I have both per cut & annual customers who are billed monthly. With the annual customers, I multiply the number of cuts typically performed during the year to service the customer’s particular turf type by the mowing fee. Then I divide that figure by 12 to get a price I will charge per month. The customer will then pay the same amount each month, year round. Heavy rains or a longer season means more cuts with no change in rate for them. A light year means less cuts to be done, still at the same rate. It’s done on an “average year”. If you are new, it may take you a little while to get these numbers accurate for your area.”

A second lawn care business owner said “I usually charge per cut. If I don’t cut due to weather then I don’t charge. I think that’s the best way to handle it. I usually go around once a week to cut. I mark down on a spread sheet when I mow, then I give out invoices at the end of the month.”

A third business owner said “I mostly charge per month. I just explain to the customer that I may work a little less through the winter, but it evens out when I am mowing their lawn in the summer and it is 115 degrees out. They understand that I have bills to pay all year. Most people are ok with it, but you MUST explain it to them in the beginning how you will be billing them.”

As you can see there is no lawn care industry standard concerning billing methods that I have seen. Each business owner does things their own way. One thing that holds true no matter how you bill is this. It’s always better to get paid in advance for your work than it is to wait for the customer to get around to pay you. So keep that in mind when you are crafting your lawn care businesses billing frequency.

He shared “I am obviously speaking from the other side of the fence, as an equipment dealer, but I have to say, if you are going to purchase equipment, purchase good quality equipment. Equipment does not have to say “Exmark” “John Deere” or “GrassHopper” or any of the other higher end brands to be of “good quality”. Just be sure the equipment you purchase is designed to do what you are planning to do with it. I have been servicing equipment for over 10 years and have seen the death of many cheap trimmers, mowers, and accessories do to one thing: they were being used for “commercial use” when they were intended for consumer usage. There is a big difference in the design between these different categories.

When I say commercial use I mean that you are using it for more than just your own yard. For example, Weedeater featherlite trimmers may be light and easier to use while being less fatiguing to operate, but what about the fact that they may not last all season? Or that it may die on you when you are half done with a job? Do you want to have to leave a good customer’s job half trimmed or half mowed just because you were to cheap to buy good equipment and it quit in the middle of Saturday afternoon? Granted, any equipment can quit at any given time, but good quality equipment is less likely to do so.

Then there is the matter of what type of business are you running? If you are the neighborhood kid who is getting his feet wet in the business or earning some summer money by push mowing a few neighborhood yards, then you may be able to get by with a simple, used push mower and a cheap $60-$70 Featherlite trimmer. On the other hand, if you are trying to operate a credible business, with real customers, you need to realize the customer is who feeds you. You want to attract customers who are willing to pay you and refer you to their friends, family, and neighbors.

I know each person is in business for themselves and with a slightly different point of view but remember, whether you are mowing 50 residential yards or 50 commercial lawns, you need to appear professional to your customer. If your customer drives nice vehicles or has a nice lawn, they are probably going to expect a decent looking piece of equipment on their lawn and a decent looking lawn care truck parked in front of their house.
Each brand and type of outdoor power equipment has a different life span. Most consumer equipment is typically not intended to run more than one or two seasons while only mowing one lawn. Commercial equipment is intended to be used all day, every day, for season after season. Some consumer models may last longer than others but none are intended to hold up like the commercial equipment. Many commercial products can have a lifespan greater than 10 times a consumer model’s lifespan.

Typically the deciding factor is in what kind of materials are used to manufacture the equipment. When you compare a cheap bigbox pushmower with a John Deere mower you will find the John Deere is heavier. It is made out of heavier and higher quality materials.

My personal favorite brand of 2-cycle equipment is Shindaiwa. Almost their entire line of equipment is commercial grade. Then when you compare Stihl about 1/2 of their equipment is consumer grade (chain saws: models like the ms200 are commercial while models like the MS210, MS230, MS250, MS290 etc are consumer grade).

The difference comes in the quality of materials. Shindaiwa uses the best materials available in their cylinders: Chrome plated cylinder with 2-ring piston. Most of their competitors use only one ring on the piston. Shindaiwa engines are built tolerances so tight that you can remove the piston ring from a new engine and start the engine with no ring. This is impossible on most other brands. Shindaiwa also uses bigger bearings than most other brands do and thus there is less wear on the larger bearing.

I would not recommend someone go out and buy $20-$30 grand in equipment the first year. But then again, it is your business and only you know what your expectations are. I can’t dream your dream nor can I live your dream. Just make wise, informed, and well thought out decisions.

A new lawn care business owner wrote “I am just starting up my lawn & landscape company as we speak. I’m planning on getting a truck and enclosed trailer to start. What width and length of a trailer should I go with? I’m debating on 7×16 or 8×16. Also, what equipment would you recommend to start out with. My area is 1/3 to 1/2 acre subdivisions.”

One lawn care business owner suggested “being that you are new to this and aren’t sure if you will do this for long, you should probably start out with the mower you use to mow your home lawn and a small 6′ x 12′ trailer or work out of a pickup. Instead of spending money on equipment now, put your money into marketing. Keep your eye out for used commercial grade equipment and trailer as you start to get more customers. There are a lot of really good deals online. My own biggest regret was spending money on two new mowers and weedeater when I first got started. I simply didn’t need all that equipment or those payments.”

Another lawn care business owner had different advice, “I was in business for about two weeks with a residential tractor mower I had, when I decided to go big or go home. I spent about $7,500 on a brand new commercial zt. It increased my productivity tremendously, increase the quality of my cut, and gave me peace of mind. I felt better knowing it was new & under warranty. I didn’t want anyone else’s old equipment headaches.

I don’t regret that purchase at all. In fact I bought a 2nd machine less than a year later and plan to buy a 3rd in the spring. For me, to be a professional in this industry I gotta be running professional grade gear. Yeah you can buy used commercial gear but who knows what kind of hidden problems you might end up with? My machines have paid for themselves many times over, even before they past their warranty. Any extra time you are able to use them after the payments & warranty expire (without major overhaul type repairs) is all gravy for your business.

The same thing applies to trucks. Some people, and I used to be one of them, would buy older cheap trucks and run them until the wheels fell off. Granted there were no payments but the headaches were nonstop. The brakes need to be replaced, transmission issues, battery, alternators, front end problems. Then I realized, I wasn’t paying a monthly truck payment but I was still making payments. $200 here, $80 there, $400 for transmission work, $100 for a muffler, $150 for a starter etc. I decided to bite the bullet & bought my 1st new truck  a few years back. Yup the payments still sucked but the damn thing started everymorning and got me to the job site on time. No headaches and no missed work while fixing it. I haven’t owned a clunker since.

I felt I needed to dive in head first to make sure I would succeed. If you half ass it & don’t invest much time, money, or energy then it’s easy to walk away. If you are all in, you will make it work.

As far as trailers go, I needed to be able to secure my gear at night & wanted to have the trailer all lettered to look like a rolling billboard. I run a 6×12 cargo craft enclosed. It has served me pretty well.”