Efficiency

[drmiller100]

Under the end of the "I did it thread" I posted some of my thoughts about crews and efficiencies.
I am starting this new thread. My basic premise is that equipment is a LOT cheaper and easier to get then good labor, and pretty much anything that saves time will pay off.
John Deere and others are giving equipment to anyone that passes the mirror test. I truly believe anyone cutting more then 3 lawns a week with a 21 inch mower is a lot tougher then me, more dedicated, and not working very smart at all.
Rather then raise prices, I believe that LCO's should become more efficient. If you aren't making money at 25 a lawn, figure out how to adjust your practices so you can, or buy equipment.
I've got a spreadsheet I'd like to post, but Lawnsite won't let me post .xls files. Anyone have any suggestions?
thanks,
Doug Miller

[J Hisch]

I totally disagree, you can be profitable with any equipment you have. For example say one crew cuts 30 lawns a week all 21 push mow work, those crews usually are paid less and equipment cost are extremely lower. So they could be just as profitable as the larger commercial crews. Now put a ztr on the push mow route for the same money and you will lose some of your profit margin. so then ask your self who is making more now? It is not all finding the fast way to do work, while production is a very important part of the scheme, it can also be the part that breaks the company. In order to have the highly productive equipment you better be grossing enough to justify it. By reducing your time it may not make your company more profitable. Yes you say then I can take on more work, ture but have the work first. I have 1 crew 2 man 80 accounts 2 ztrs 52" 61" and all the hand tools, ther route was built out of the yellow pages. Then I have the route I work, 1 man 48" rider, 36" walk, 21 push mower. 45 accoutns. tight route built by referral marketing. I am more profitable than my 2 man crew. meaning becasue my route is tighter 1-3 minutes between stops 1 clear more on the hr than they do. so the 1 man route is more profitable, even though the sales are not as high as the 2 man crew, they do more dollar but my margins are higher.

[TJLANDS]

J Hisch, I think you are wrong.
You can buy a good ztr 52-60"
at $10 a day easily. (23 days a month @ 10=$230.
230x 36= 8280, puts you in the low range, lesco etc.
$12 a day puts you in the high range. Walker dixie exmark.
If you can save 1/2 hour a day with larger mowers with a two man crew,
it pays for itself. Any more time savings is more profit. With the terms and warranties available today you would be wrong not to look into this.
I am a believer in replacing manpower with machine power.

[drmiller100]

jhisch,
i totally agree a one man crew is more efficient then a 2 man crew.

i disagree someone is better off to build their business with 21 inchers. Do you have a vehicle to drive around between jobs? Why? you could use a bicycle until you had saved enough money to buy the truck.

If you want to make 15 bucks an hour, and it will take 2 hours to mow a lawn, you need to charge 30 bucks for the lawn. but if the value to teh owner is only 25 bucks, you can't do it. OTOH, if I show up with a ztr and can do it in 12 minutes, then I can make a lot of money at 20 bucks to mow it, and the homeowner is HAPPY.

I respect very much people mowing yards with 21 inchers professionally. that takes dedication, hard work, and sweat. Me, I'm in this to make money, and money is my reward. Not sweat for sweat's sake.

[drmiller100]

i thought of anohter way to think of it. In your example one crew cuts 30 lawns a week. just for fun, lets say average lawn is 20 bucks.
Lets say labor is 5 an hour (dream on). crew is two people, week is 40 hours, total of 400 dollars in labor, then add workers comp, ss taxes, etc, and you are most of the way to 500.

so you dealt with two whiney employees for 100 bucks profit that week.

Plan B. buy a ztr and hire a guy part time. Pretty lame that a guy couldn't mow 30 lawns in 2 days by himself with a ztr. Payment is 60 a week on mower.
say you have to pay the lone guy 20 an hour, cuz it is SOOOOOOOO much tougher to drive a ztr around then push a 21 incher.
two days, 20 an hour is 160. round to 200. add payment of 60, for total of 260.

owner deals with one whiney employee 2 days a week, and increases profits from 100 bucks a week to 340 dollars.

[J Hisch]

I am going by numbers in the bank not on the hrs in a day saved. I am not saying that Ztr's aren't faster, we all know they are what I am saying is that it may hurt the business by taking the debt on the mower instead of staying the same, yes you will finish faster, but now you have to think about other issues like more money being put back for capital reinvestment etc. I would point to just mow it, and I would say he is profitable, why? lower overhead, less training hours and less payroll. less of a headache on losing key people. I would also say we can make it all look good on paper however the man hrs versus money in the bank will tell the truth. Now in some cases a ztr is nessesary. But not in all cases. This is a great constructive post.

[HOOLIE]

Don't forget to factor in, you have to pay for the ZTR all winter long, when it's not cutting any grass.

[drmiller100]

cclawns posted my spreadsheet to his website. Thank you!!!!

http://cclawnservice.com/Personal/LawnFolder/bigmow.xls


Just plug in the numbers at the top. Does this make sense? In particular, look at sheet 2. On sheet two, I am assuming one guy with a ZTR can keep up with 2 guys with 21 inchers.
Feel free to put your own labor COSTS in. this isn't what they make an hour, but rather what they really cost you, which is somewhere north of 120 percent of the hourly rate. If you more then 16 weeks a year, then crank that number up.
As the other guy pointed out, that 10k mower sitting in your garage all winter burns some bucks up. That is why I looked at annual figures. The more weeks you mow, the easier it gets to justify that big mower. 10 percent is way high for interest rates, and for me 12 is way low for labor costs. But it illustrates something.
Basically what some of the old timers say about working alone with big equipment pencils out in a big way.
doug

[Eho]

I understand your point drmiller about investing in larger equipment rather than labor. I dont disagree with your theory, but let me point out why some people are happy to use 21s and employees. Number 1. reason.... not all lawns can be mowed with large ztrs. Many lawns that I mow are around 5,000 square ft of grass with small gates and landscaping. A 21 is pretty much all you CAN use on them. Also, even though profit margins are smaller, many people want to hire others to do the grunt work while they run the biz in an office. Another reason is cost of 21 versus ztr. Not only do they cost more...more expensive to maintain, you HAVE to have a trailer where one could run 21s out of a truck. Not saying your idea is bad b/c it can work, but not in all situations. Believe me, running a setup of nothing but 21s can work..do a search for justmowit. I really did consider buying a larger mower if i get more work instead of an employee but I realized that due to small lawns and small gates it wouldnt work. Now if all my customers had wide gates, I might consider it. Interesting thread I think.
EHO

[drmiller100]

drop the customers that have gates to where you can't get back there.

i have three employees currently. we only have 40 or so lawns, which my foreman does in 2 days. i don't like cutting lawns, but i did an analysis on how much money I'm making on teh lawns, and was SHOCKED. In those two days, we are making GOOD money.

[Eho]

You have three employees, yet only one guy actually does the mowing? What are the other two for? Anyways, this is an interesting debate, and I feel like if your gonna stay relatively small ( around two employees or so) it is best for you to invest your money in equipment and stay small, yet your production goes up with the larger equipment. If you are wanting to go big with multiple employees...thats when you need to invest more in employees and go BIG. I ve heard several times that to be big you gotta be really big. Dont get caught in between with 2 or 3 crews. I ve heard people on here say that when they were medium size they were making the same amount as solo but struggling to keep up with all the work. So instead of investing in one or two employees, invest in bigger equipment, but if you wanna go REAL big, you obviously need the employees.
EHO

[studentlawn]

dr miller, yoour point is well made and I totally agree that the cost of equipment is MUCH cheaper then labor. It still baffles me why some guys running around with cheapo equipment. In the long run, equipment is cheap.

However, I have found that one guy is almost never as effecient as two due to the fatique the solo guy hits. Two guys can work off each other and keep themselves working hard by sort of competing throughout the day. Me and my employee always have an unsaid competition between speed and quality. Sometimes it keeps us working top speed throughout the entire day and we can bust out 30 lawns. Yet the employee numbers change with size of lawns and drive time.

I bought a 36" for many of my smaller lots that I previously had to use 21's. I found 21's to be MUCH more effecient becuase I can rarely run my 36" at full speed like I can the 21's. There is a rime and reason for every size mower.. Well im starting to think that the 36" is a pretty big waste. I can get a much larger deck on any lawn that I can go full speed on my 36"

[Howard Roark]

drop the customers that have gates to where you can't get back there.

i have three employees currently. we only have 40 or so lawns, which my foreman does in 2 days. i don't like cutting lawns, but i did an analysis on how much money I'm making on teh lawns, and was SHOCKED. In those two days, we are making GOOD money.


If I dropped the customers with those gates, out of 108 customers....I'd drop a total of....108!

I think you're forgetting that not every part of the country looks like the neighborhoods you're servicing. With a 2 man crew we average 2.8-3+ lawns per hour. I repeatedly get calls requesting I use NO riding mowers, not that I could even get back there with the gates. Business is great, money is great, and we knock off 20 lawns before 3:30 pm, all without your beloved ZTR. 21s have their use, and some of us use them quite well. I do also throw in a 26 Metro sometimes, but it's so damn slow I don't think it's increasing anything but my desire to put it on Ebay. :cool2:

Best wishes, but why waste so much time worrying about what other people are doing?

[Mower63]

Great thread. However I disagree with the assessment of one person being more efficient than 2 or more person crew. One person mowing, trimming, edging and blowing is less efficient than a 3 person crew. 3 people is usually the most efficient (for us) since the mowing person finishes before the trimmer and edger and starts blowing off the property. Then as the next person finishes and starts blowing the last picks up trash, etc and then they all just about finish up at the same time, load and go to the next property.

Also don't confuse utilization with efficiency. Utilization = time worked / time available to work (e.g. equipment utilization for a mower = 2.6 hours run time / 8 hours of work shift). Efficiency = (actual time - target time) / target time.

You can convert these into $ to measure financial performance. Also remember if a mower cost you $23 / day and your utilization is 10% (.8 hour of an 8 hour day) it really cost you $23 for 48 minutes of use. Therefore you have to figure that into your profit calcs.

We run 3 crews (3, 3 and 2) and maintain 420+ houses per week (mostly associations). 1 crew is full service, 1 crew mows, 1 crew trims and then we re-configure to handle the extras like landscaping, weeding, clean-up etc. I agree that more efficient equipment generally will provide a direct positive impact to the bottom line. However if you have 2 yards out of 100 that require the use of a 21" (backyard for instance) and your efficiency is improved by 50% for those 2 yards your real improvement for all 100 yards is only 1/2 of 2% (1%)....convert that to $ to determine how long it takes to pay back the investment in the 21".

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any universal solution to determine if an LCO is doing well or not....except your balance sheet and bank account at the end of the month. The mix of customers, account types, travel times, equipment types, etc have to all be considered when making decisions that will affect the financial health of your business.

Yes, I used to be a consultant but now I own a landscape maintenance biz.

[drmiller100]

how would you measure the efficiency per person?

you do 420 houses with 8 people, or 54 houses per person per week, or about 10 houses per person per day. we do 35 houses with one person in 2 days, or roughly 17 houses per person per day.

If you were to use more efficient mowers, could you switch from 3 person crews to 2 person crews, and still get the job done as fast? It really takes longer to edge then it does to trim and mow?

My spreadsheet shows what an employee costs. What did you think of it?

sorry for the confusion on employees. I have 3 employees. we'll do 60 sprinkler systems this summer, haul 1500 yards of construction trash this year, and do some other odds and ends.
Out of it all, mowing is shocking me on how profitable it is.

-doug

[Mower63]

Doug,

I don't think you can compare houses. Actual work done is the only way to make a fair comparison; e.g. linear feet of edging, trimming is difficult (we trim around beds and other areas the mower can't get to, acres of mowing, hedge trimming is highly variable, square feet of beds to be sprayed, etc.

Additionally we have totally different kinds of grass and plants in SoFla compared to the rest of the country (closest to S. Texas and California). We have to trim palms (dead fronds, seed pods, coconuts), deal with lots of invasive plants in the hedges, and work with a slew of retirees from up north that don't have a clue about maintenance in FL.

The other day I had one old bird ask us why we don't stripe the lawns?? HAHAHAHA....can't do it with St. Augustine. They also want us to rake up the dead grass (we mulch with gator blades X setup)....I laughed and told him they would need to pony up some serious cash if they wanted all the dead grass bagged or raked.

You are correct on the profitablity of just mowing...pretty easy. But we have to compete with all the other full service firms down here so there is very little MBG type work. I think my Grandmother's hedges in Cleveland get trimmed 1X per season....we trim 1X / month down here....sometimes more depending on the plant species...again our customers pay for that service.

That's great on the sprinkler systems...are you installing?? We can't even touch a system down here without having an irrigation contractors license. Big fines if you get caught. I actually received a warning from a city police officer (as we were fixing a couple spray nozzles for a customer) but I think it was because he might have had a friend that does irrigation.

Anyway it is interesting that the different areas of the country require different thinking / approaches to running an LCO based on the landscape plants and customer expectations.

Cheers,

[Mower63]

BTW, efficiency per person is measured by taking the calculated expected production hours divided into the actual labor hours expended. So if you expect 35 yards to take 9.8 hours theoretically to complete the work (include drive time) and it took you 15.5 labor hours (total labor including drive time, breaks, etc) your efficiency would be 15.5 - 9.8 / 9.8 (58% efficiency). This means it takes you 58% longer than your theoretical target time....and by the way its likely you'd be losing money if you priced everything based on 9.8 hours plus 20% profit. Let me add that the 9.8 number can be very subjective depending on how it is derived....lots of arguments but if you use demostrated capability (e.g. 100 linear feet of edging = .08 labor hours) you can be more accurate.

Also we use 60" Dixie Choppers for mowing most of the time. One property takes 2 people on choppers for 6 hours clock time each just to mow. Edging and trimming takes longer....3 trimmers and 2 edgers for 7 hours clock time to complete. 8 people blowing off front, back, beds takes about 1.5 hours clock time. We also have to pick up trash, etc. so we are on-site at 7:30 and done usually by 4:30 - 5:15 pm depending on the occassional shower that blows through.

[drmiller100]

hmmm. great food to ponder. things are definitely different here. our season is about 3.5 months, and we have 5 feet of snow in teh winter. so, a lot of the perennial plants take a real beating.

as for efficiency. There are two approaches towards getting better. You can focus on the little stuff, or you can think outside the box and find better ways.
By one definition of efficiency, an 8 dollar an hour person pushing a 21 incher all day every day is more efficient then a 12 dollar an hour guy riding a 60 inch chopper for 45 minutes. After all, the 12 dollar guy has more drive time.

I think the goal for our business is pretty simple. Accomplish the most customer value for your time spent on the job.

Customers will pay based upon the value received. The value received has little to do with how many hours a job takes. It sounds like I'd go broke where you live given the model I do. OTOH, your customer list here would be very limited, and I think you'd go broke where I live given your service levels. Which, is a long winded way to state what you said....

so, along those lines, what is the most labor intensive part of a full service job? What takes the most manhours per day?

i'm really curious as to why a 3 man crew is more "efficient" then a one man crew. What part of lawn mowing makes it such that a 3 man crew can do a given lawn significantly faster then 3 times as fast as a one man crew?

thanks!

doug

[TJLANDS]

We use 3 man crews.
If a one man crew can mow a lawn in 20 minutes,
load up the mower and then weed wack and edge 12 minutes and then blow off 5 mintes, total of 40 minutes including loading unloading etc. A good three man crew can do the same lawn in 1/3 the time. Also if you have another house on the same block the mower(or mowers) never stop cutting.
It all depends on how many lawns you have to cut and how much time you have to cut them.
But to say that a one man crew is equally efficient I think is wrong. My three man crews mow 27-30 lawns a day and these lawns are $40-75 lawns

[drmiller100]

interesting. you don't pay your employees travel time?

my one man crew cuts 18-20 lawns a day. it always takes us longer ot weed eat then to mow.

[TJLANDS]

Sure they get paid for windshield time.
You said it takes "us" longer to weed wack then to mow.
Are you calling yourself and a worker a one man crew.
Anyway, things are different here, you could not mow any lawns I have
with a 21" so we really cant compare. Most homes are 15k to 25k sq ft.
There is a solo operator that I know with a 36" and he mows only 7-8 a day
and he works loooooooooooong days.
How long would it take you to cut a 5000k house(lawn area) with 150 ft of walk( with curb also) and a fenced property and a pool in the back yard. Owner wants grass in the back yard (2000k) bagged. Entire yard is irrigated
and chem lawn does the chemicals.
How long and how much?
Just to try and compare, we do cut this house and it is the smallest we have.