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Curbside leaf pick-up

3K views 18 replies 16 participants last post by  kutnkru 
#1 ·
I read that most all of you do leaves, but it also sounds as if most grind and haul your customers leaves. I did not realize how nice I have it here in State College, Pa. All of the local municipalities have curbside pick-up on a weekly basis for the entire leaf season!!! I still get a good buck for blowing leaves, and all I have to do is get them to the curb. Anybody else have this kind of service? I'm just a little curious....
 
#5 ·
Some parts of my area have this. Put it in a pile at the street and they come by and suck them up. The turn it into compost and then give it to the nurseries to sell in the spring. I've used the leaf compost many times. It makes a great topdressing.
 
#7 ·
My son-in-law lives in South Sacramento and each week the municiple comes by and takes all the greenwaste at curbside. Only problem I see is that a strong wind could cause a nasty blow-back of debries. Otherwise, great plan!
Hawaii has set aside special days of the month in each respective neighborhood to pick up greenwaste. Only two days a month, but they will take bundled brush and palm fronds along with bagged grass clippings.

Aloha,

P.Y.S.
 
#8 ·
Most cities I work in have the curbside pickup in spring and fall. Otherwise they will only pick up tree branches if you call.
There is a compost site where you can also bring the stuff and dump for free. It was open 24/7 until some people ruined it by dumping junk and things that don't belong. Now it has limited hours which are more of a pain than a convenience so I don't get there much.

As for picking up and removing, lets say doubles and a mulch kit reduce the bagging load from 10 to 1 and if they want em hauled 9 parts are left somewhere in the grass, 1 part goes in the truck.:D
 
#9 ·
my town doesnt do cubside pick up. most of my lawns i can blow the leaves into the woods, but there are a few i have to haul away from. got to get a leaf sucker pretty soon:p . the town next to me does pick up the leaves. i only have one lawn in that town, but i always just blow the whole yard to the curbline. nice service to have
 
#10 ·
My county/city has leaf pick up but, the leaves are only picked up twice during the season and most customers don't want to see that big pile of leaves in front of their house for weeks at a time. But I have it good I have an agreement with another LCO that has a loader who I can call to pick up for a small fee, which I pass on to the customer.








:D
 
#11 ·
Most of my customers have curbside pickup, or woods to put the leaves in. It makes it easy to do cleanups. I have one customer though, that didn`t want to have the leaves in front of their house for a week until they were picked up, and asked if I would haul them away. I told them I could, but I could only do it with bags, 1.00 a bag hauled away. They agreed. I ended up with 72 bags of leaves. Had bags packed in bed, and also in the cab of my truck. I like the money that I made off the job, but curbside pickup makes it a lot easier.;)
 
#12 ·
Here in SE PA(Philly) we have every conceivable way of handling leaves. Every municipalty is different. One wants leaves in the street, one wants them on the curb, one wants them 10 ft from curb, some don't want leaves at all, some want you to put them in bags which you have to buy from the township, and some make you haul the leaves to their site only. You learn what the rules are and adapt. Of course, the townships who haul away the leaves are the better places to work than the places where you have to haul them away for the customer. Although the customer pays for it, it is not unusual to sit for a couple of hours waiting in line to dump at the landfill. What we do if we can get away with it, is to work a house where we have to haul the leaves away first, then go to a house where the township removes them and dump the trucks at the designated area, then take that residences leaves and pile them on top to camoflogue what you have done. There are township inspectors who are trying to catch you at this.

By far the worst township's who make you buy their biodegradle bags, which you can't put more than 20 lbs in each and never more than 25 bags per week. You spend your winter putting bags out each week. It is only a matter of time before they outlaw leaf blowers. Mulching leaves here means of instead of picking up one leaf, you will be picking up nine pieces instead. It is not unusual for customers to spend more money for one leaf cleanup than they would in 5 years of grass cutting
 
#14 ·
Well Henry, sometime it sounds that way. Some of these inspectors are the town's arborist or shade tree commisioner. It gets kinda dicey when half the pile is pine needles and there isn't a pine tree for blocks. The situation that a lot of these townships find themselves in is that their green waste tonnage triples in one years time while the number of houses and trees in the township remains the same. When landfill costs are 47.00 to 125.00 per ton we are not talking pennys.
 
#15 ·
We have curbside pick up every week of the year..............very seldom do I put anything in the back of my truck. We also have a grinding point where "homeowners" can take their debris but commercial cutters cannot! Seems to me it would save the City money by letting us use the site but for some reason they don't...........oh well................I pile it up and let them deal with it.
 
#17 ·
When I first started out in this biz i thought that curbside pick-up was a gawd-send. After a few years of this, we had an 8inch snowfall for Halloween one season. Even after the snow had virtually dissapated the leaves were so wet and frozen to the ground that we had to replace the curbside lawns of those we had serviced that week.

I just mulch them up and haul them away and charge accordingly for such services above and beyond the mowing price. To date we have not done much bagging other than "by-request" and the mulching has made productivity even better.

I will bag the properties upon the renedering of the final clean-up. Last week many LCOs were trying to bag properties during the high winds and if you went back thru the areas an hour later they looked just as unkempt as before they got there.

Kris
 
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