how do your time your lawns

[J&R]

Most on here say it takes me 20-30 min. to do a lawn. When do you start your time. My time starts when we get back in the truck from the lawn you just compleated then drive and cut the next lawn get back in the truck Thats how long it takes to do one lawn. not just the time your at the lawn cutting. I charge for drive time also.

[work_it]

I would be compelled to say that everyone knows, bottom line, what you make on each yard. As far as billing for drive time I always take that into consideration. If I'm bidding on a lawn outside of my normal areas I also take into consideration the possibilities of prospecting in that area. If the area is new and I have a lot of opportunities I will bid a few dollars lower just to get a foot in the door. More exposure means more business. Just be careful not to underbid the lawn. Neighbors talk.

[dvmcmrhp52]

We look at the end of the day to see what our hourly rate comes out to,Drive time included.However knowing how long it will take to do a prop is important as well for quoting purposes.I do time new props after the third or fourth cut to see where things are at
because the first 2-3 cuts will not give you an accurate time until you get a system for each individual property.

[mower_babe]

we write down our times on a sheet that starts from the time you pull up to the job to the time that you get back in the truck. There is no charge, per say on travel. We have a good route and the out of towners, we have a cluster of jobs there too - so you are not driving for one. We generally do not bill hourly it is a flat rate. If it takes longer in the spring - so be it. If it takes less time in the fall - so be it. It all evens out if you know how to bid. We keep track of our times and at the end of the season - compute the overall hourly rate for each job and raise accordingly the next spring.

[GroundKprs]

In your plan, if you drive 20 minutes to my property, then mow one the same mowing time in the next block, I would pay for 15 minutes more than the second one. So I go with someone else, and now you have to raise his price by 15 minutes.

A better pricing plan would be to set your hourly rate to cover all the prep time to be productive. If you track that in an average day, you spend 10 hours on the clock, but 3 hours are consumed by loading, unloading, dumping, travel time, etc., then you must charge an hourly rate (or a stop rate plus an hourly rate) for the 7 hours of production to cover 10 hours of work. But of course, you would still charge an out of the way account for some excess travel time, if they especially want your services.

[David Haggerty]

Hour meters on the equipment.
wristwatch for the handheld stuff.
clock in the truck for travel time.
They're all priced differently.

Dave

[double e]

I just look at the bottom line at the end of the day
The guys keep me informed when a yard is starting to take longer than usual

[fraz001]

i 'm stell working on how to bill a lawn???

[TotalCareSolutions]

1. Typical lawn on routes have travel figured into a regular price.

2. Out of the way=little more.

3. Dont have to reload, 5$ off a regular route lawn price.

[Willmow4dough]

We are a smaller business so I look at drive time as sales time. We encourage our people to stop when they see a lawn that need our help and say hi and leave them a flier. As for charging the next guy for that I can't . It all works out in the wash.

[AztlanLC]

I hope you're kidding when you said that you charge for drive time, how about trafic, a flat tire, guys stopping to the deli, pump gas, go back to the shop if they forget something.

I price my lawns by yearly contract, all I have to do is look at the property, measure, count how many trees it has, how many are going to need trimming, how many around it, if there's a place to dump the leaves, how big are the trees, what type of trees, gutters, what type of grass, how much trimmimg, edging, etc.

Then I keep track of all the time involved daily, weekly, monthly, yearly for aech property.

[HOMER]

I enjoy the drive between houses........gives me time to catch my breath!

[J&R]

What i tried to say most of the guys here say it just takes me 20-30 min to do a lawn but they don't add the drive time thats how long it takes I can cut a lawn in 10 min but it takes me 10 to drive there so i took me 20 to do the lawn.

[MacLawnCo]

Originally posted by J&R
What i tried to say most of the guys here say it just takes me 20-30 min to do a lawn but they don't add the drive time thats how long it takes I can cut a lawn in 10 min but it takes me 10 to drive there so i took me 20 to do the lawn.

And what we are trying to tell you is there is a much better way to do it. Yours isnt necessarily wrong, but it leaves alot of room for unforscene variables.

[tiedeman]

we start out time when we pull up to the job, and once we have everything loaded and back in the truck

[lawncare3]

I time it from when I get out of the truck till I get in. It usually takes 10-15mins on avg.

[MacLawnCo]

Originally posted by J&R
but they don't add the drive time

In accounting terms, drive time goes into overhead. You should know that of every hour of clock time you will get x number of production minutes. From there, you will spread the costs of your overhead across all your accounts.