Road sides

[heather]

I'm bidding on cutting a residential road side. It's 3 miles of roads with an average depth of 20 feet. Not much trimming but it does need curb edgeing. Will cut biweekly. Any help would greatly appreciated. I burned myself on the last such bid.
thanks from the sunny coast!

[Brickman]

That is 316,800 sq. feet. I wouldn't touch it for less than $500 or $600 for the mowing. It will probably take one person ALL day to mow all of that, maybe longer, depending on how much trash, and other things there are to go around.
As for the edging I am lost there, not some thing many people ask for or do around here. You might consider Walker's deck edger attatchment. That way you are doing the edging with one of your mowing passes.

[steve122]

Brickman was right if the road only has one side. 2 sided road is 2 x'x his number or 14.55 acres of grass. How many acres per hour can you cut. We figure 1.5 acres per man hour using exmark lazer Z'z, 2760's. Can usually do much better, but use 1.5 for bidding. Next guess time on trash and trimming trees and bushes. It would take a person 2 to 3 hours just to walk 6 miles (both sides of 3 miles), not allowing time for trimming. This spring we bid on a 7 mile stretch of higway for one of the local villages, avg. 35 ft wide, pick up trash each cut, cutting once per month . We bid $1025 per cut, they had 9 other bids, low bid was $225 per cut. Go figure. Good luck on your bid. My advice, figure what you want, add 10% and don't feel bad if you don't get it.

[Brickman]

Steve you are right, I never thought about double sides. (That comes from too much work.)
Another good point Steve made, don't feel bad if you don't get the bid. A job like this could make a small company if bid right. Or totally put you out of biz if bid wrong. The bigger the job the bigger the chances of loosing your shirt on the job if it is bid wrong.

[TurfGuyTX]

Did you get the contract?