Anyone here own or work for a lawn cutting service?

[Pastore]

How do you charge the customer? Per hour? Square footage of lawn? What other types of services do you offer?

I am looking at making some extra cash during the day and the area I am in is filled with elderly people wishing to give money away for someone to cut their lawn. What are your guys thoughts on this?

 

[Jzero]

I used to charge people per-lawn. Back then I was looking for $25 per cut. One guy's lawn was horrible. It was full of huge roots that you couldn't go over, he insisted on having the grass bagged despite the fact that a good mulching blade pretty much eliminates the need for bagging, and he constantly left his backyard full of crap that we had to work around, but if we charged him more, then we'd be charging more than the bigger lawn services were charging.

We eventually found that we really couldn't compete with the people who were able to afford those big self-propelled mowers that could do a 1/2 acre yard in like 15 min

There was actually a kid in town whose parents fronted him the money for one of those mowers. It was kind of funny b/c most kids try to get mommy and daddy to buy them cars and stuff.
Instead he got them to buy him a lawnmower.
He got the last laugh b/c he very quickly earned enough money to buy another mower, a trailer to carry them in, and a car.

He actually ended up going to college to become a landscape designer, and lo--his "after school job" has become his life's work, and last I heard, he was doing quite well running his own landscaping and lawn service.

 

[rgwalt]

I used to charge by the lawn. The price depends on what the market will bear in your area. I typically got $20 to $25 a lawn, but that was between 5 and 10 years ago. I had a riding mower, a push mower, and a weed eater. I would mow once a week, and typically run the weed eater every other week as needed. As far as other services go, I would do pretty much any yard work someone wanted me to. Depending on the amount of work and the difficulty, I would charge anywhere from $10 to $20 an hour. $10 an hour was for easy stuff and/or long jobs. $20 an hour was for really short jobs or really difficult or tiring jobs. If someone wanted me to trim their trees, it would probably be about a 2 hour job and I'd ask for $10 per hour. If someone wanted me to haul dirt, rock, concrete, etc, I would charge $20 per hour. Make sure you are getting paid for your time, and you are making enough money to pay for the upkeep of your equipment.

Lawn care is a good business to be in. Good hard work.

Ryan