The Beginner’s Guide To Pricing Leaf Cleanups

October 4, 2021

Summary

In This Article:

  • The challenges of accurately estimating quotes for leaf cleanups

  • Why providing a set quote to customers is not always the best approach

  • How quoting on an hourly basis can help you to not undersell yourself

In the fall of 2015, I was a part-time lawn guy entering my first leaf season and eager to pick up as many fall cleanups as I could. I advertised on Craigslist, contacted my existing customer base and waited for the phone to ring or my email inbox to ding.

In surprisingly quick succession, I received two quote requests from leads in the same neighborhood. I estimated that the first property would take seven person-hours to complete and quoted them $300. The second property was considerably smaller but had more leaves, and I quoted them $240 for the 6 man-hours I believed it would take to clean up the property. Both customers immediately agreed and I scheduled it for the following weekend.

Five years later and those two days still haunt me.

 

Production rates are important, and for these jobs I wanted to make $40 per man-hour. But instead of the $300 job taking the guesstimated 7 hours, it actually took 12 hours. Even worse, the $240 job was completed in 18 man-hours instead of the assumed 6.

This meant the $300 job had a production rate of $25 per hour, and the $240 job had a stunningly dismal production rate of $13 per hour!

I realized a brutal truth at the end of that weekend: I am terrible at estimating how long a fall cleanup is going to take. After a couple years in this business, I think it is safe to say that most lawn guys are not much better. I knew a drastic change needed to be made in my approach to estimating, and after that horrid weekend I actually stopped estimating cleanups altogether.

 

Now, all fall or spring cleanups are quoted on an hourly basis with three possible options provided:

(1) Customers can get on a schedule for regular cleanups while the leaves are still falling, or schedule a one time service.

(2) They can also decide to have the leaves hauled away for $75 per trip to the dump, left for the county to pick up for an additional $1 per yard waste bag filled, or the leaves can be blown into the woods if that option is available. All labor is billed at $40 per man-hour.

(3) For customers who are not sure they want to commit to the unknown expense of having their leaves picked up, we offer a “try out” service that includes 2 man-hours of work and up to 10 yard waste bags filled for a total of $80.

 

To simplify and summarize: leaf cleanups are billed at $40 per man-hour and disposal is charged at $75 per dump run or $1 per yard waste bag.

This method of pricing leaf cleanups protects the customer from being taken advantage of, or getting an absurd deal, and the professional is guaranteed to profit on the job. In the first paragraph of this article I made $540 over the course of two cleanups, but if I had used the hourly pricing method described above the total would have more than doubled to $1200.

Since that fall in 2015 I have priced fall and spring cleanups this way and not only have I had great success, I’ve never had to deal with that sinking feeling that comes when a job’s profit margin shrinks.

There is an argument to be made here. Providing the customer with a set amount in the beginning is a reasonable expectation. But when giving a price, there are far too many possible factors that cannot always be taken into consideration, such as the weather leading up to the day the job is to be done, how long the leaves have been sitting, whether there are leaves from previous years, whether there are pine needles, etc.

Setting an hourly rate for leaf removals does two things for you. First, it ensures that you will never underbid a job, and second, it should confirm that you are working with a customer that has the means to pay.

The only real question is where to set your hourly rate. We charge $40 per man-hour for leaves, but I know of companies that charge as much as $80. See what the bounds of your market will accept and then place yourself somewhere in the high end of that.

Lastly, do not be afraid to bill hourly. It is completely reasonable to do work by the hour when there are so many factors impacting the time that a job will take. Many industries introduce hourly rates for jobs with unknowns, so it is reasonable that the lawn care industry would too.

There is so much guesswork involved in running a lawn business. Do yourself a favor: Take the uncertainty out of leaf cleanups by making sure you are getting paid what you are worth through hourly billing.

Randy Dulin