renting and charging

This is something I do not agree with. I feel that if you are going to charge lets say $10 / M for aeration and the place is 15M then the price should be $150. Not $150 + $60? for rental of a machine. Now if you are working by the day doing irrigation systems then you should charge the rental fee for the ditch witch.

I hope that makes sense.

I'm just picking a hypothetical number there. However if you want to get into aeration prices... I got a price about a year ago of $125 to do a single pass over a 50M property. 2 passes they wanted I think $175.

The point I was trying to make was that let's say I wanted you to aerate a 5M lawn. I ask you for a price and you say its $15 M however there is also a $60 rental charge. So that puts you in at $105 to aerate 5M. Now I ask a company which owns to aerate that same 5M lawn and they tell me again, $15 / M however they don't add on a rental charge. So you are bidding $105 against $45. Another way to look at it is; I ask you to cut my lawn which is really big. You need to rent a larger lawn mower to cut it. You give me a price which is for the lawn PLUS the rental fee. Another company goes in and tells me its the same price, less the rental fee. Who am I going to pick??? Not my fault you don't own the piece of machinery.

Oh, I think that they do charge for the rental. However they are either A) factoring that into their rate or B) working by the day / hour / month / etc. If somebody came to my property and told me that it is $X for doing Y but then there is an additional charge for renting Z which isn't figured into my rate... I would not be too happy. Tell me what you want for the job. Not "Well I get the going rate for doing X, but I also need to charge you Y for renting Z machine because I don't own it." A job is only worth so much.