Procedures unique to your company?

[robert payer]

What procedures might be unique to your company. Small, large no matter.

Few:
Mower operators never cut and run on crew to next house when doing multiple house streets. (One man gets left behind to tie up loose ends. No fun!) Time records can never be accurate doing this.

Employees never sit in truck when last man is finishing blowing.
Gas equipment, weed, change edger blade do something.

At gas station one employee checks oil levels (Truck, Mowers)

We use brown garbage collection bags to get rid of debris on the job should it be garbage day.


More to be posted soon.

[bart may]

Don't know if this is unique only to my company but I try to put all the employee chores at the end of the day ie.. Filling up the trucks and mowers with gas, scraping decks and getting mowers ready for the next day. You'll find that these chores get done more efficiently at the end of the day than at the begining. The guys want to get out of there and do them faster. I hate getting a late start in morning, lose way too much money to employees taking their sweet time in the morning.

[65hoss]

I do a few things almost exclusive to me. No way I would mention it here. Although, I HATE when people finish something and then stand there doing nothing. Do something productive. Check trimmer lines, fuel levels, close gate if mowers on, do a quality assurance run over the property, etc.

[bobbygedd]

yea, we have a procedure and it goes like this: if u dont pay yur bill, we drag u outside by your hair, and beat yur butt in front of all yur nieghbors, to set an example. so far, its working great

[hoagie]

One thing I do differently than most.... as far as the mow/trim/blow order goes....

Trim, blow, mow, then one more quick blow. Reason being... we vacuum/bag everything w/ walkers, so a quick blow after trimming to get any debris, pine needles, etc onto the grass for removal... plus, any clippings created during trimming are sucked up, rather than left looking sloppy.

The end result is a more manicured, neater look... takes about 5-10 minutes longer than traditional mow/trim/blow, but pickey customers dont mind paying a little more for it.

[Sean Adams]

I used to go to Sam's Club, Wal Mart, etc...and buy large cases of assorted fruit juices, snack cakes, breakfast treats, etc....

Every morning each crew leader took the route sheet for the day, one orange juice, one snack cake and a vitamin for each member of the crew.

Yes, I actually gave vitamins to my employees every morning. It got to the point where if we ran out and I forgot to pick up more, they were ticked.

It was my way of showing them that I wanted to help their day start off right.

[NewbieOwner]

One thing we're doing that's very different from other companies (at least all that I've seen) Is using technology to its fullest extent...

I carry a laptop with me, for doing estimates, printing off invoices for unexpected work, keeping customer notes etc. Having the computer with me makes life really easy, makes sure my customers have professional looking invoices (not hand-written) And there's no fear of lost invoices etc, get home, plug it into the network, and let the wife deal with the rest :D

Instead of getting tied up multiple times every day, talking on a 2way or cellphone, my wife (office) emails all those called in messages to my cellphone (So I don't have to stop what I'm doing to talk on the phone) Also eliminates the need for the scrap of paper on the clipboard where you wrote down the wrong address etc :) I do call in every few hours to make sure I got all the emails, but we have't had a problem with missed ones yet.

One other difference, mowing related, is that I carry at least 3 sets of blades for each mower every day, and I do use all of them. Nothing beats the cut of a ginsu-sharp blade!

Andrew

[GrassMaster84]

1. Blow off all equipment to get grass off decks at the end of each day.
2. Clean my mowers each week
3. Check oil before leaving in the morning

[strickdad]

Originally posted by bobbygedd
yea, we have a procedure and it goes like this: if u dont pay yur bill, we drag u outside by your hair, and beat yur butt in front of all yur nieghbors, to set an example. so far, its working great LOL! I LOVE IT!