How much to charge for lawn mowing: a per-visit pricing method for companies

The problem with pricing mowing by lot size or by gut feel

Two properties with the same lot size can take very different time to mow. One is open turf with a straight driveway edge. The other has a playset, eight trees with rings, three island beds, a slope and a fence line that needs trimming on both sides. A flat price per lot size charges them the same, so the first one subsidizes the second, and a route full of the second type loses money every week without anyone noticing until the end of the season.

Pricing by gut feel has the same weakness with an extra one: every estimator guesses differently, so two properties on the same street get priced two different ways depending on who looked at them. A per-visit method fixes both problems, because it prices time, and time is what a mowing crew actually sells.

• Price the turf you measure, not the lot size on the tax record.
• Price the obstacles, because trimming around them is where time goes.
• Price the drive, because a crew on the road is still on the clock.
• Price overhead and margin on purpose, not as whatever is left over.

Step 1: measure turf area and trim lines

Start with the mowable turf area in square feet and the linear feet of trimming and hard-surface edging. Tracing the property on aerial imagery with a lawn measurement tool gives both numbers in a few minutes, without a site visit for most residential lawns. Tree canopy can hide turf edges and imagery dates vary, so check anything that looks off when the crew does the first visit.

For the worked example, the property measures:

• 9,000 sq ft of mowable turf,
• 400 linear ft of string trimming (fence line, bed edges, tree rings),
• 150 linear ft of hard-surface edging (driveway and front walk).

Step 2: convert area into man-hours with production rates and an obstacle factor

A production rate says how much work one person completes in one hour, for example square feet of turf mowed per man-hour with a given mower. Your own rates come from the hours your crews log, and the guide on landscape production rates explains how to build them. The rates below are illustrative starting points for the arithmetic, not a standard to copy.

The obstacle factor adjusts open-turf time for everything that slows the mower down: trees, beds, playsets, slopes, narrow gates. Open turf gets 1.0, a lightly cluttered lawn 1.1 to 1.2, a heavily cluttered one 1.3 or more. Keep the scale short and consistent across estimators, or it becomes another form of guessing.

Mowing is 9,000 divided by 18,000, which is 0.5 man-hours, multiplied by the 1.2 obstacle factor for 0.6 man-hours. With a two-person crew, 1.2 man-hours on site means about 36 minutes of truck time at the property.

Step 3: allocate drive time per stop

Drive time is the cost most mowing prices forget. A two-person crew that spends an hour a day driving between twelve stops burns two man-hours a day that no single property pays for unless you allocate it. Divide daily drive time by stops per day and charge it per visit.

In the worked example the route averages 10 minutes of driving per stop. With two people in the truck that is 20 minutes, or 0.33 man-hours per visit. Added to the 1.20 on-site man-hours, the visit carries 1.53 man-hours, which we round to 1.5 for pricing.

• Tight routes lower the drive allocation, which is a real reason to price route-dense properties a little lower.
• An isolated property outside your usual area should carry more drive time, or a minimum charge.
• Recalculate the allocation when routes change, not once a year.

Step 4: cost the crew and the equipment

Use the burdened labor rate, not the wage. Burden covers payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and any benefits or paid time off. For this example, a crew member earns $24 per hour and burden adds $8, for a burdened cost of $32 per man-hour.

Labor for the visit: 1.5 man-hours at $32 is $48.00.

Equipment cost covers the mower, trimmers, blower, truck and trailer: fuel, maintenance, repairs and depreciation divided by the hours they run. In the example, the equipment costs $18 per crew hour on site. The crew is on site for 0.6 crew hours (1.2 man-hours divided by two people), so equipment is $10.80, which we round to $11.

Direct cost of the visit: $48 labor plus $11 equipment equals $59.

Step 5: recover overhead per man-hour

Overhead is everything the company pays for that no single property causes: office staff, rent, software, insurance, vehicles not assigned to a crew, the owner's salary if it is not in field labor. The simplest recovery method for maintenance work divides the annual overhead budget by the field man-hours you expect to sell.

For example, a company with $180,000 of annual overhead that expects 12,000 billable field man-hours recovers $15 per man-hour. The mowing visit carries 1.5 man-hours, so it recovers $22.50 of overhead.

Full cost of the visit: $59.00 direct plus $22.50 overhead equals $81.50. At this price the company breaks even. It has not yet made a dollar.

Step 6: apply a target margin, not a markup

Profit is set as a margin on the selling price. To reach a 15 percent net margin, divide the full cost by 0.85, not multiply it by 1.15.

Price: $81.50 divided by 0.85 equals $95.88, which rounds to $96 per visit. Check: $96 minus $81.50 leaves $14.50, and $14.50 divided by $96 is 15.1 percent.

If you had multiplied by 1.15 instead, the price would be $93.73 and the real margin only 13 percent. The gap looks small on one visit and adds up across a route and a season. The guide on how to price landscape jobs covers margin versus markup in more detail.

From a per-visit price to a season mowing contract

Most property owners want a season price or a flat monthly amount. Multiply the per-visit price by the visit count for the season, then spread it evenly over the billing months.

• State the visit count in the contract, so an extra visit in a wet spring has a price.
• Set a minimum charge per stop for small lawns, because drive time and setup do not shrink with the turf.
• Price bi-weekly visits separately: longer grass takes longer to cut and produces more clippings.
• Recheck the per-visit price when wages, fuel or overhead change, rather than applying a blanket increase.

Common mowing pricing mistakes that erase margin

• Using the wage instead of the burdened labor rate.
• Leaving drive time out of the visit.
• Pricing by lot size instead of measured turf.
• Skipping overhead recovery and calling the difference profit.
• Treating a markup percentage as if it were the margin.
• Never comparing estimated man-hours with the hours the crew actually logs.

The last point matters most over time. When the crew logs hours against each property, estimate versus actual shows which properties run long and which production rates are optimistic. That feedback is what landscape job costing software is for.