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For homeowners yes but for commercial They are only good down south. Up here we have too many leaves. For that price 2000 about not worth it Used they are prob getting rid of them cuz they suck. Oak leaves will fill it up quick. Just stick to the tarps and barrels. And u said only about 6 lawns must be vacuumed. Don't buy a vac. Not with even 20 lawns. Like someone said the hose is just as bad a killer on your back as tarps.
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we mow weekly through christmas....or it goes dormant
on top of that it takes about 2 weeks to cycle through every one we start as needed on november 1st and stay on a 2 week cycle untill new years.then we go to monthly cleanups untill february when we kick off the15th back to weekly mowing services .as a whole we handle about1 million cubic foot of tripple shreaded leaves total and we dont have dump trucks trailersand only have a few vacs.
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Discussion starter · #23 ·
so your all saying tarp the leaves, but im not sure your hearing me say that i only have a f350 srw dump insert with a box on it. I also do have a 7x12' trailer that I could put sides on.
 
you dont read well i understand that now .

If you have a 7x12 trailer you can get about 12-14 tarps (10'x10') of mulched up and shredded leaves with out walls. The same as 30 dumps of a 9.5 bushel box . if you need more room then that you are not doing your leaves on the right schedule I have a 6.5"x 12'dove tail trailer and you can get a walker and 8 bags on it with no walls and on a 2 week visit with 20 trees on a 1/2 acre it is all on one trailer.

truth is business is about balancing wants and needs with the facts of costand demand . we all can be in debt to do a job but what did we gain ??? a sore back blistered palms and pocket change.
If i was your personal business advisor i would suggest this .
go out and sell leaf cleanups ( name a price yo ufeel should make $$ and stand by it this year) if you get 20 people saying yes then you may reconsider a vac but you cant base growth on a mayby or just in case . IF YOU DONT HAVE THE CLIENT BASE DONT THINK FOR A SECOND A NEW TOY WILL GET IT FOR YOU!!
 
We also have crews with walkers and 14' trailers ....we place a 4" high box on the front and you can get alot of leaves in it . It is all about baby steps . try a new method untill you find one that is BENEFICIAL to your business dont do something becasue everyone else does .

I tell all of my customers if they get a walk up estimate and they are asked what they pay ....it is a trick to low cut us and likely a failed attempt to take their lawn and be gone next season and if they ask just say $25.00

so you follow me and you believe we are cheap-o or they cant compete either way they are gone fast . So Dont believe what you hear and only believe half what you see.

Do what is best for your business and dont ask people who dont care your best intrest.
 
Discussion starter · #28 ·
well i'm not in this for short term i'm in this for the long haul, that's why i want to get good equipment.

i don't know why but using an open trailer to haul leaves just seems trailer trashy to me lol. but we all do what we have to.

--my business will and has grown, no if and or buts about it thats why i just want to start out with an easier (be it "lazy" way). Trust me being over a vacuum all day
is much better for the back than dragging heavy tarps out of a trailer.
 
well i'm not in this for short term i'm in this for the long haul, that's why i want to get good equipment.

i don't know why but using an open trailer to haul leaves just seems trailer trashy to me lol. but we all do what we have to.
Well then, you go buy a 4k piece of equipment you dont need. I on the other hand will be using a BR600 magnum, tarps, mowers and OSB board on my trailer. This years cost... about 70 bucks for the OSB board. Savings?...Just ask my kids on Christmas.
 
Discussion starter · #30 ·
anyone do solo fall cleanups?
i was thinking with a leaf vacuum it would make it easier to do them without help. But dragging tarps I would need help and I figured it would cost $100 day for help 3 days a week for 1 1/2 months cleanup that's $1800 OR the price of a 16 hp leaf vacuum, see where i'm going with this?
 
It is amazing how many come on here asking for help but know it all and wont listen

we use painted 1/2"plywood and its good for about 5 years (long hauler here too) for $120.00 or less i dont care the investment at this point
I like all the big looking small guy who knew it all we can usually buy everything they have within 3 years on E-bay.
 
Discussion starter · #32 ·
i dont read well wtf?:laugh:
 
I like all the big looking small guy who knew it all we can usually buy everything they have within 3 years on E-bay.
Thats why I'm debt free.
 
well i'm not in this for short term i'm in this for the long haul, that's why i want to get good equipment.

i don't know why but using an open trailer to haul leaves just seems trailer trashy to me lol. but we all do what we have to.

--my business will and has grown, no if and or buts about it thats why i just want to start out with an easier (be it "lazy" way). Trust me being over a vacuum all day
is much better for the back than dragging heavy tarps out of a trailer.
Yes dragging tarps does suck use to do it that way
My billy goat and mulching leaves in a row cuts the time in half and the lawn is cleaner
Making same amount per job but only taking me half the time
Yes I have more invested
But I always say to make money you have to spend it
 
anyone do solo fall cleanups?
i was thinking with a leaf vacuum it would make it easier to do them without help. But dragging tarps I would need help and I figured it would cost $100 day for help 3 days a week for 1 1/2 months cleanup that's $1800 OR the price of a 16 hp leaf vacuum, see where i'm going with this?
If by easier you mean you mowed/mulched for 2 hours then remowed with a bagger for 1.5 hours to turn around and spend 1 hour more sucking them up and choking on dust to go home and have to remove 450+ lbs off the truck to dump it (long day) I would raather make it where i could mow them up and dump them directly into the trailer OR tarp .it saves alot of additional steps and time over the day plus the extral purchase cost , fuel and maintenance of the vac. Are you a sisy ??? a 10'x10' of tripple muclched leaves pulled up and tied cros way to form a bag is about 80 lbs tops NO one here is dragging a 20x18' tarp of leaves sorry ........................ buy 20 $5.00 tarps and just lay them out and mow and bag.

I dont care where you are in the U.S. you can find a TARP PULLER for way less then $100 a day . we get them at $50.00-$60.00 all americans just so it dont get brought up
 
here is a simple tip every time you cross a lawn full of leaves its time your not picking them up . everytime you dump leaves out on the ground is time lost
you need to work on your efficancies . We use walkers so we get blades cutting them then we get the blower shreeding them some ......... every time they back the mower on the trailer it saves Xamount of time off the vac.
we have crews doing tarps faster then the guys who simply dump on the trailer and then fill the top half of the trailers with the vacs becasue the 2 mean 1 is on a walker and they have 5 tarps on the mower . they mow a spot and get a dump they step off and lay tht tarp down dump on the spot and mow on the get a 2nd dump and then the 2nd guy ties it up and drags it to the trailer side then the process is repeated no walker crossing the lawn when the mower guy gets done the 2nd guy has the trees and beds cleaned out and they are done . they load the walker on the back and then they togather toss the tarps right on the trailer . in 5 minutes they have loaded ALL the leaves on a job ( no blower on the F-ing plannet will load leaves that fast.) you will burry the mower if it stacks that way then just tie it down and roll .

In the past i have had crews using dump boxes 8'wide x8'tall x16 ' long being loaded by 2 12"-or 14" hosed vacs ......... and they can throw them on faster . we no longer do that kind truck setup because its not as effecient as you think on a large scale

We currently only have 1 large leaf loading rig and it is larger then absolutely anything i have ever seen anywhere But what its loading up behind is about 5 times larger then anything on the market and i have only seen people using round roll hay balers that was where we are with leaves.
 
Discussion starter · #37 ·
bagging leaves doesn't work up here in MA. I mean most of the guys i see bring the mowers with them to the job site as do I but you can only bag with the mower the thinnest and sparcest of leaf amounts, once theres more than a few leaves on the ground going under the mower it doesn't pick em up or clogs the 8" chute quickly. is that what your talking about?
 
You regretting asking for advice yet I'm next door and can tell you the whole bag while mowing thing up here is a complete joke. As far as being quicker ehehehehe please the volume of leaves up here makes that impossible. There is a reason we run 18 hp self propelled fradan blowers or why we use jrco leaf plows on the lazers. You can move more leaves in a single plow shot then you can vac in 10-15 walker loads and that's a fact (got enough people up here that use them to know their capability's). The reason we vac is to condense the leaves so it fits in a truck and were not talking small piles sometimes before we vac we have 200-400 yards of leaves to pick up. Now you can do your leaf clean ups how ever you like but there's a big difference from a 2-3 man hour southern clean up to some homes up here that take the entire day with a 5 or 6 man crew.

Around the 3rd week of Oct here we start charging for bagging leaves with our lawn cuts by the end of the 4th week our typical 20-30 lawns a day per crew drops to less then 5 and we have to admit defeat. It becomes cost prohibitive to vac the leaves with the mowers at that point we have a about 7-14 days to get ready for full time clean ups and out come the blowers. And the reason for that is the mowers aren't worth using when you can not even get a single pass done before your 44 gal barrel is full.
 
so your all saying tarp the leaves, but im not sure your hearing me say that i only have a f350 srw dump insert with a box on it. I also do have a 7x12' trailer that I could put sides on.
Ok im gonna make it real easy... Since you're in it for the long hall go get a BG 16-23HP loader.as usual bigger the better. TRY TO FIND ONE USED!!!! Leaf loaders are hard to beat the hell out of...because they are such a seasonal item. And build a box on your truck that is removable.... sides on your trailer is gonna be hard with a loader because its gonna make it hard to fit your mower in there.

Only reason why we put the loader on the trailer was because it was bigger (Fits 10+ resi's) We try to squeeze as many as we can get in there. Also because we do clean ups until we start plowing. Last year we did a clean up at 5PM and were plowing the next morning at 6AM 5-7" of snow. In our case its too hard to take the box off our dump truck in that short transition from cleanups to snow... And There is NO way we could plow with the box on so once we mover out of the glass factory shop with the over head lift we had to change things up!
I'll post a pic of squeezing 10+ cleanup in the box later
 
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