Vinyl edging installation price help

[mikenelson08]

I am looking to see what everyone charges to install black vinyl edging. I am not a fan of it and most times try to talk people into something else, but for those times that they insist on vinyl I still struggle with what to charge because I am still new to bidding. Right now I am looking at roughly $2 a foot plus materials. Thus far I have always installed by hand, but I have a 300 foot job coming up and I am thinking about renting a bed edger. Do your prices go up with rentals like that or do you keep it the same because the process will speed up. I work around the twin cities area in Minnesota.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[echeandia]

Do not charge based on time unless you charge $100 per hour. If the job takes you 8 hours to do and you charge $40 per hour you will net $320 (8 x 40). If you rent the machine for $70 and the job now only takes 4 hours you will net $160 (4 x 40) plus some amount for picking up the machine. In both cases the customer has the same result, but you have billed for a full day in the first scenario. I this case I would charge the $320 + $100 for the machine.