Most common expected surprise (in my experience)- “I am willing to pay $200 for 30-40 hrs of work.”
I still tell the story of the customer who wanted me to install 100 ft of fencing for $50, including materials
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Oh yeah. For those of you with little to no fencing experience, $50 won’t even cover the nails for 100ft of fencing
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This is a common theme in the world of art and skilled labor in America. So many folks have become used to cheap goods from Walmart that its hard to conceive of something costing 5-10 times what it would at a bargain department store.
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Yes, but I’ve also noticed that so many folks think that, no matter what they decide they want to do for a living, they are entitled to an ~$100K/year income.
To wit…I edge, mow, and blow (giggity!) my small ~1000 sq-ft lawn in about 20 mins. I regularly get solicitations taped or rubber-banded to my door offer to do this work once a week for ~$30 (the usual/typical offer). For back-of-the-envelope purposes, given a 40 hour work week and working 50 weeks a year, that extends out to about $180K/year. For mowing lawns. I get similarly outrageous quotes for other types of landscaping (i.e. menial) work, like $100 to shape/trim my hedges (an hour or two of work, give or take), or limb a couple of trees.
The point being things are out of whack everywhere! I’m moving back to Mayberry!!
I wonder where they get it?
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That might just be a minimum pricing for labor. I do a similar thing ($15.00/hour with a two hour minimum) so that I don’t have people pay me to do a five minute job, especially with gas as expensive as it is right now
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They are providing a service not goods so there is a bit of difference but you are also forgetting the other cost associated with a lawn service. Equipment cost/upkeep (Mower, edger, blower, vehicle, gas, oil, and so on), as well as advertising (all those flyers), taxes, employees. Off season is longer than 2 weeks so if you were solely doing yards your looking at closer to 28 weeks, averaging 30 min a yard (drive time, different size/complexity of yards, etc) There is a reason those guys are out there 12 hour days 6 days a week.
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plus, there is also the assumption that they get paid the full $30, and that most of it doesn’t go to the company
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Not forgetting…just didn’t want to outline a full P&L analysis. Again…~$180K/year for mowing. None of your points account for the significant economic rent being made. Other folks have commutes, transportation costs, child care costs, whatever as well. Teachers only work part of the year. Military service members spend large parts of their lives away from families. And oh yeah, die sometimes. Cops and firemen, too. None of them make this much money or anything close.
And you may be forgetting that most lawn work of the type I am describing is done on a cash, as in federal/state income tax-free basis.
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I am not referring to Big Landscaping. But even if I was, again…~$180K/year for mowing a lawn. Is it really outlandish to think/agree that, at least in this case, that’s ridiculous, and evidence of a market out of whack?
It is a service, a service people are willing to pay for. When it is 120 degrees outside and I don’t want to have to deal with my yard then yes $40 every two weeks is well worth it.
Also can you share where you are getting $180k/y from?
20 minutes per lawn = 3 lawns per hour
$30 per session
40 hours a week
50 weeks a year
that’s 40x50x30x3 is 180k.
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If somen would/could split my jackassery off from the poor OP’s turning thread, I’d gladly pay you ~$180K
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you are assuming that every lawn will take 20 minutes, and that they can teleport directly from one job to another. I would estimate it to be about 1 lawn per hour, being generous. And even in Texas, with its very long warm season, they’re only going to be working about half of the year
so 30x40x26+ $31200
although yeah, an admin should split all of this wacky tangents to another thread
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I’m assuming nothing.
I merely pulled the numbers out of Marshall’s wordy post and placed them, at the request of the poster to whom I responded, into a less wordy post to demonstrate how they support the $180k/year figure. I assert only that this is where this number was “got”, and nothing more.
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Calm down there buddy, its pretty obvious you are assuming the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. Don’t play innocent here.
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Oh yea, well, was it an African or European swallow, smart guy?
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*Fair warning that I, below, make an out of context reference, subject based rather than performance based, and the jumping off point may seem a bit “off color” if you don’t follow; if you do follow, you should have your head examined!
Wiv its little pecker, of course!
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Please send them my way. I’d love to pay that much for a lawn mow. A few factors at play in my situation.
A- I live in flower mound, granted the really old part (36 yr old house) but that zip code instantly adds $20 to the cost of a mow, and don’t get me started what they want to charge me to take down a dying tree.
B- I have a third acre corner lot so my yard is like 7,000 sq ft. so that’s an hour+ job with my 20 inch mower.
C- While I am not a sucker, for some reason I apparently have the look of one when I first talk to a landscaper or door to door salesperson and they always seem to try and gouge me. They also don’t seem to like when I laugh in their face when they say $60 and I’ll come by every 10 days.
So yeah, if they’ll do the yard for $30 I would actually start paying for a service.
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