Billing for mowing and clean up.

[twstate]

Just wondering if someone runs in to a situation with a spring clean up job (Bagging leaves) and The Grass is already long enough to start mowing (it has been early spring in VT already this year) do you charge by the Hour for the Clean up and charge them for mowing. like if you get X amount per Hour for work and say $30.00 for the mowing during the regular season and obviously you are mowing with your system as you bag. do you charge for both? It doesn't seem right to but we usually dont get to mow until May in VT. it has Been in the 70s to 90s the last week and are mowing already this year. so I was wondering what others do in this case. Of course tonight we are getting Snow showers up to 2 inches of snow!!! ONLY IN New England right!!

[Runner]

ABSOLUTELY! The mowing is a whole seperate operation. So what if we use our mower to gather the stuff, too. Just remember the trimming while you're there!;)

[1MajorTom]

Yep, agree with Runner.

[AndyL]

Maybe I'm the oddball here, but for me Spring cleanup includes:

Leaf removal from beds, shrubs (all those nasty leaves down the middle), the perimiter fence. Then a "power rake" we actually used a vertical mower, worked better than the flail type power rakes, also left obvious 'lines' so the customer couldn't turn around and say "You didn't power rake". Then a Cut & trim (usually 1.5-2.0") just gotta make sure you get up all the debris from the power rake, and those horrid leaf mulchy areas where you bagged up all those leaves you dug up... Then a final cleanup to make sure the sidewalks/driveways are clean, do a quick handpick for those few leaves that didn't get out of the beds.

I'm keeping this same system now that I'm out on my own!

Then again, the LCOs we used to compete with threw in fertilizing and aerating, and tilling the beds and edging (with a power edger).

We charged 2-3x what the competitors charged, we were booked up beyond what we could handle by december. And by all accounts we did the best work in town. (Pretty amazing when even our competitors said that)

Andy

[MOW ED]

The bigger jobs +10k sq ft lawns are charged at 40 per man hour. They are all a minimum of 6 manhours. The smaller ones that get the clean/spring tine rake treatment are usually 100 buck lawns that take less than an hour to do. Either way its good change. I don't charge extra for a mow because I vacuum everything up with the Walker so it gets cut. Besides I have relatively dull blades in the spring clean mode and I am not gonna take the time to change into sharp ones to mow until I am set up to mow.

[Krimick]

I also do not charge extra for the mow.

But I certainly understand why you would want to. Here in central Ontario I have never had the riders on the lawns until roughly the last couple days of April. Last week the temp got up to over 80 and the grass is already 5" long in spots.

Over 80 degrees last week, grass is 5" tall, tulips are about 10" out of the ground and we had snow 2 days ago!

God I love Canada! ;)

[LawnLad]

Our seasonal clean ups are all billed T & M. Sometimes we'll throw in the mow with the SCUP or we'll bill separately. For our regular contract customers, we will bill 'em the weekly service visit price on top of the clean up if we cut. If we're doing a neighbor, we quote 'em a higher hourly rate than our regular customers and we'll throw in the cut since it cleans things up nicely after a thatching and clean up.