How behind are you??

[General Grounds]

:blob3: just curious to how behind everybody is this fall. still trying to finish last weeks mows so we can start blowin beds next week. the phone is ringing off the hook asking if we forgot to come last week, unbelievable. just curious cya tony

[yergus]

all the leaves fell at the same time, way behind, but luckily the customers know that we willl get to them as soon as possible

[mdb landscaping]

Im way behind. Its been raining every other day. Every clean-up i do the leaves are soaking wet. Cleanups are taking twice as long as usual. I have tons of people begging me to do their leaves, but i havent even finished first round cleanups for my own customers. All the oak trees dropped at the same time and its a mess. Ill be doing leaves well into december. Everyone i talk to says they are way behind as well.

[wriken]

about 15 clean-ups behind, would have been about done for the year but the rain/snow has slowed us up. Oh well theres always spring clean-ups.

[AGG Lawn Maintenance]

I feel your pain!!! I might have lost a customer over it.We stopeed doing her leaves the end of October. She said I'll call you when they all fall. Well she called me tonight and I told her that I can't do them until December 4th. She flipped out. I'm a steady customer. i told her between the rain and Thanksgiving next week the earliest I can come is December 4th. She said well I'm a steady customer. I told her that I have a couple 100 steady customers. She said well that closes that.:blob2:
Is she from another planet??? It has rained and rained and rained somemore. Travis

[KenH]

Im running about 2.5 weeks. Now they say rain Friday, windy saturday, rain monday and tuesday. Then we have the holiday....:dizzy:

[Art Stubbs handy 58]

:dizzy: So far behind my back end is catching my front end, hehe

not enough hours in the day and it seems to be getting dark around 4:30/ 5:00 ........... still have around 10 cleanups and 10 aerating. plus window washing, powerwashing and so on and so on.... so we are way behind........ anyone with any extra time on your hands, i got extra room to sleep......:D but not complaining could be sitting on my duff looking for the work...... hope everyone is as busy as well.....:D

[Turfdude]

General,

We're in the same boat here. We kept up w/ all accounts weekly until last week. Mon, Tues & Wed AM - Rain. Didsome landscape work Tues & Wed, Clean ups Thurs & Fri. Sat- Rain(Sun too so schtuff got even wetter & heavier). Decided to "skip" any jobs done last week until just b4 Turkey day. So far, we're 3/4 a day behind w/ the skips and some reports are calling for rain again Fri, Sat & Mon.

Can't ever remember a fall like this one, or a summer like this one either. If it rains again tomorrow, I have a truck & triler full of shrubs ready to be planted. Just pop some ibuprofin & don the raingear.

Bob

[Green Pastures]

Since it finally stopped raining for like 5 days straight, now I'm only about 1-1 1/2 days behind. It was way worse than that before this week. Started raining again today at about 2:30, so I had to pack up and leave the job 1/3 done. I hate that, I like to finish what I start. Oh well I certainly cant control Mother Nature.

[beck]

I have 2-3 customers that love to call and tell me they need their leaves done. We did both on a friday, one called on tuesday the other on wednesday. we cant get back around to them if we were just cutting grass, I explained that leaves take 10-14 days cylce and we will just keep going through the customer list.
Sure enough the one of them called again, to tell me that her leaves were really bad and that there was a chance of rain. The bad thing about her is that she is on budget billing, not no more, so it does not make me anymore money to go over their more often.

[General Grounds]

:blob3: turfdude, where about in south jersey are you, im up by freehold.

being behind would'nt be so bad if the people would understand we dont work in the rain, and that we are behind. tony

[Doogiegh]

Phew.. I thought it was just me that was behind in their cleanups being this is my first full year doing them..

Ok, so I do all my work on weekends, Saturday and Sunday.

This past weekend, 11/16 + 11/17 I took off to go to the Springsteen concert in Greensboro.. Worth every single cent (in case anyone cares...) (I'm from Central Jersey)..

So I took my last week of VACATION from my current full time job just to do leaf cleanups and catch up this week..

So, come back ready to catch up on Monday.

Well, Monday 11/18 here it's WINDY with 40+ mph winds.. Forget leaf work, I built an awesome leaf box for the front of my trailer though so the day was productive.

Tuesday and Wednesday, did my regular weekend customers, but they took longer to do than normal cause of wetness and quantity.. Thank goodness I got a good early start both days..

Today did some more cleanups, problem is I go back to my "regular" job on Monday.. so I have Friday, Saturday and Sunday left. Working from 8:00 to 5:00, that's 27 man hours and I work solo.. I have 11 accounts still to go to, woo-wee am I screwed. <G> No way is it all getting done.

I just remember what you guys have told me time and time again..
Take care of my everyday customers FIRST, take the 1-time cleanup people second.. If they don't like that I can't get there until November 30th, December 1st or even December 7th or 8th, too bad.. Find another LCO to do it.. Like ANYONE else has time for more accounts right now.. <G>

Next year, gotta get a 48 with Trac-Vacand a leaf loader for the trailer. :)

[jnjnlc]

Behind is not the word for it. We have already had a customer cancel on us because we can not keep up. I am glad we got the rain buy we need a few days of dry to get caught up. I think we will maybe about Christmas.

[EJK2352]

I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I died and went to leaf HELL!!!!!!!!!! We have had rain like every other day. All the tree's were holding on till last week, then they all dumped at once. I'm really beat up from these soaking wet leaves!!!!!! :) ;) :) ED

[Evan528]

Amen EJK! In all the years ive been doing this i can never remember the leaves being this bad!!!! Ussually I do 3 cleanups for my customers. Each one has pretty equal amount of leaves. This year the first round of cleanups was fast because the trees held the leaves late this year. This week I started the second round of cleanups and we are overwelmed by the amount of leaves! And to make it worse there wet!!!!!!! I think im gonna see leaves i my sleep for a month!!!!!

[Doogiegh]

What will you do on the third cleanup since you are now on the second one and all the leaves are down. At what time of year do you do the third?

Gary

[Jusmowin]

Im about 2or 3 days behind due to the rain. But I swearI have never seen sooooooo many leaves fall at one time, and have had a hell of a time trying to get them all up.

[bilbo7021]

Ok, so at least I know this year isn't normal :) I just spent the last four days catching up on all the ones I should have gotten to last week (including a shrub cutting that "had to be done" by this past Wednesday.......Gawd that was a pain. Lucky for me, another job was right next door and I was able to work in the same spot for a couple of days. And yes, WET LEAVES ARE A PITA! And I still have a Dr. who said to call me when I can get to her. That wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have two others who have been waiting for a week. And to top it all off, I have another new customer who wants me to check with them on doing work on Monday!

Can we say "doing leaves in December"? :dizzy:

[Evan528]

Gary, As of now id say about 90% of the leaves are down. We will start round 3 in the begining on december and work untill mid december. This is the cleanup where we get every last leaf and twig on the property and make sure everything is perfectly immacualte for the winter months.

[HarryD]

ill be done this weekend :D . we had vary high winds today that nocked alot of the last leaves off the trees

[Brother1]

Wow - glad to hear we're not the only one's with this problem. We're way behind and the phone keeps ringing with new customers. Even some of your regular lawn customers who usually do their own leaves have been calling this year to have us do their cleanups since they can't get it done themselves with the way the leaves decided to drop this year. To top it off it's raining as I type here in NY and supposed to be a washout tomorrow than 40 mph wind gusts on Sat. Nothing like blowing those leaves around all day to watch them blow back at ya. Gotta luv that game.

[Greatdane612001]

I'm still just mulching the leaves on the lawns, And everyone wants me to do clean-ups but I tell them I can't untill all the leaves come do It's point-less to do clean-ups when there's a tree by ur house that hasn't fallen yet!

[TJLC]

I was behind from June to Oct but now I'm caught up for the most part. I remember from living in Ohio how bad the leaves can get. Good luck to all you guys who have to deal with it.

[LAWNS AND MOWER]

It's nice to know I'm not the only one behind. It's overwhelming how much work I have to do. Still have projects I promised people in the spring. I have 45 cleanups to do, not to mention other jobs like mulching, hedgetrimming, one-time weedeating jobs. Makes my head spin just to think about it. Weather isn't helping either. This time last year I was halfway through my cleanups. Just started my FIRST one yesterday. PITA work. Some accounts I have to trashcan the leaves and either dump in woods or beside road for town to gobble up. Just too wet to mulch up. Just hope these fall cleanups don't turn into spring cleanups.

[Doogiegh]

Question..

Everyone seems to be "behind"

Behind compared to WHAT?

Last year?

Is being BEHIND bad?

Doesn't that really mean that there is more business then you can handle and things economically are great.. I've LOVE to continue to keep on working right on thru December *IF* my customers keep wanting to pay me for jobs.

If they are on a contract, which none of mine are, then I could be beat cause these cleanups are INTENSE with no extra money.

I had 3 people call me yesterday about an ad that ran in a weekly paper here 8 DAYS ago.. The "new" edition of the weekly came out Wednesday and on Thursday, people still called from 8 days ago.. I couldn't believe it..

Once everyone is "Caught up" and no longer behind, what do you do in January and February, other then possibly plow snow, mother nature willing?

Thanks,
Gary

[Got Grass?]

Behind mother nature....
In a normal year I sould have been finished the first week of Nov. I still have 3 cleanups to get done if at all possible. To wet... Today/tonight were expecting 3-7" snow....