Need help pricing landscaping jobs!?
Question:I've been doing landscaping work in southern Ohio for people under the table for about three years now. My customer base has gotten so big I need to come up with standard prices. These are some of the things I need priced:
Tree trimming-
Lawn mowing/trimming-
Creating new flower beds-
Planting new flowers/trees-
Brush removal-
If anyone can help I'd appreciate it
Answers:
It helps if you can estimate the hours it will take you to do a job, and the amount of materials. Here's an easy way to get a ballpark figure to work from. If you think it will take your workers three hours for two men to do a job, that would be six man-hours. If you pay them $10.00 an hour, your cost is $60.00 for labor. Since you have other overhead; gas, tools, office time, a good way to estimate is to triple your labor cost. So you would charge $180 for this job. If the price seems too high or too low you can always adjust it. If you don't have helpers, then figure out how much you want to pay yourself per hour, then go from there. An easy way to guesstimate where there are materials involved, is to triple your cost of materials and labor. There are some manuals you can get that will tell you the average times and man hours it takes to get jobs done. The ALCA (American Landscape Contractors Association) is a good source of information.
What is the average wage for construction laborer in your area? If its too high to be feasible, reduce it a bit but increase the hourly rate depending on how many power tools you have to use. More gas, more cost. $15 an hour sound like too much for your area?
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