Hedge trimming job I need to bid on.
Have you been called upon lately to bid on a hedge trimming job and then to apply mulch after? One member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was and he shared with us his bid workup. How does his bid pricing and hourly estimating compare with how you bid your hedge trimming jobs?
One lawn care business owner wrote “I received a call today to come out to give a quote on trimming a row of hedges and mulching underneath.
The client said the row of hedges are about 30′ long and about 4′ wide. I’m thinking I will need about 2 yards of mulch to go under the bushes.
So for the mulch price, I am going to multiply the cost of the mulch by 1.5 and then I am going to charge $100 for 2 hours labor for spreading it out. I’m not quite sure how long the hedge trimming is going to take. I am estimating it’s going to take 2-3 hours.
The grand total to trim hedges and mulch around them would be about $370. Does that seem like too high of a bid?
I am going to have the mulch delivered to her driveway. The delivery price is already included. The way she explained it to me she just wants the mulch laid down. I’m thinking 2-3 hours for trimming the hedges and 2 hours for laying out the mulch, so 5 hours total labor. I am only going to charge $50 an hour for labor since I am just starting out my business.”
A second lawn care business owner responded “bidding a hedge and mulch job all depends on how long it actually takes you.
I get my mulch for $26.75/yard. If I can just lay the mulch down and I don’t have to clean the beds out then I charge $80/yard. If I have to go through and clean the beds out first, such as the leaves and such, then I charge $100-120/yard.
Me personally if I have 2-3 hours labor in everything I would be looking about $200-275
Most all my clients are within 10 mins of where I dump and get my mulch from so I just include it in with the price of the mulch. If I were to be driving 20-30 miles out then I would charge extra.
I have calculated that it costs me .30 cents for every mile. So when I calculate for fuel costs I charge $1/mile. Helps compensate for fuel/time. ”
Read more about Lawn Care Business Bidding Tips, Upsells, And Disasters To Avoid. Learn how to improve your bidding process with this lawn care business book and be prepared before hand by knowing what you should be looking out for before a problem occurs.”
If you need help estimating lawn care or snow plowing jobs, get these lawn care and snow plowing estimation calculators.