Hopefully Im posting in the right area. My son is excellent at mowing and landscaping yards. He has his first client as of yesterday. The job will mainly be cleaning up an uncared for property (about 3/4 acre). He will be doing some extensive weeding, trimming bushes, mulching, and possibly mowing. My question is we are at a loss of how to bid the job. Never done this before. Yard has alot of weeds and bushes that need trimming. We wil supply the equipment. Client will supply the mulch. Let me know if more specific information is needed. Yard is located in Iowa. Thanks
Go out there, walk and look all around and take it all in, then take your best educated guess as to how long you think it's going to take you.
Straight labor hours, how many hours would it take for ONE person.
That's all that matters, if you want to hire folks to help you fine but if it's 10 labor hours then it takes one person ten hours, two people five hours and so on, so straight labor hours.
So how many hours to clean it all up, straight labor hours, doesn't matter how many people...
I usually quote $30-$35 per hour for the clean up part.
Are you hauling any debris away? If so you need to calculate distance traveled and any possible dump fees, you also need to find out where you can take it because not everyone will accept brush or whatever you're clearing. Keep in mind there are differences between brush, trash, and construction debris as well, maybe make a few phone calls just to be sure the place you're thinking of will accept what you're disposing and then what is their fee (if any). Then, how many loads.
I would charge $1 a mile for distance, one way.
Figure 1/2 hour labor to unload, per load.
Plus dump fees (if any).
Mulch is tricky, you never know how much...
You can go by the hour but that's not really fair as it opens the door for milking the clock. You can go by the cubic yard but that's not really fair as it opens the door for the customer to abuse the system. Unfortunately I don't think we have but so much choice in the matter so I would likely quote around $12 a cubic yard. A busy entrepreneur can spread 1-2 cubic yards an hour and in terms of overhead you're into a wheelbarrow, a pitchfork, and possibly a stiff tined rake so it's not unfair to get paid between $15-$20 an hour for this type of work (cost of mulch is additional, in this case the customer is taking care of this). Obviously the faster you can spread it the more you take home but careful... Always do a good job first.
Here's another rule of thumb:
If you're getting way more than half of all the quotes you give, your prices are too low.
If you're not getting at least half of all the quotes you give, your prices are too high.
I like to aim for getting between 80 to 90 percent of my quotes, your expectations may differ.
Depending how far off center you are may help dictate where you should head, and how fast although small changes generally work best.
So draw yourself out a plan or get some kind of a general idea where you want to fall price and work-wise, not right away but over the next 4-5 quotes you give out, think about this because it will affect you for the life of the business.
You can always make more adjustments later, matter of fact I don't think I've ever stopped adjusting.
Good luck