How landscapers price work

The mowing route makes payroll every Friday. The patio job pays for the truck. They come off the same trailer, and most landscapers price both the same way: a day is a day, worth about this much. Only one of them can be priced that way, and that is where installs lose money. Both need a labor rate you can defend, and the hourly rate formula builds one.

On a route, density is the price

Two crews, same 8-hour day, same 25 minutes of mowing, trimming and blowing per property, same hour out of the shop and back. One works a single subdivision, the other is spread across the county. Drives count between stops, so a day of n stops runs 60 + 25n + drive × (n−1) minutes against the 480 in an 8-hour day.

558 minutes is a nine-hour day, so the spread crew never gets to 12. Each extra stop costs the tight crew 29 minutes and the spread crew 43. Both are divided by the same eight paid hours, because that is what payroll costs either way.

Identical prices, identical work: $27.50 a crew-hour apart. Five days a week across a 30-week season is 1,200 paid crew-hours, or about $33,000.

Every figure there is a placeholder for one of yours, the $55 especially. Per-cut prices are set street by street: lot size, terrain, gate width, whether you haul clippings, local rates. Time your own stops for a week before you trust the 25 minutes — and the tight route only reaches 14 if you have sold 14 houses in that subdivision.

No trip charge fixes it; travel time is its own guide. Density is a scheduling problem: sell the neighbors, group by day, and price the stop 20 minutes off the route as an outlier.

What a crew day actually costs

A two-person crew at $20 an hour each — an illustration, not a going rate. Everything below is per crew-hour: the truck out for an hour, not one person's. Mixing the two halves your rate.

Two of those lines get missed. Burden is the first: carriers and brokers describe landscaping workers' comp from roughly one dollar to eight dollars or more per $100 of payroll, depending on state and claims history. With employer FICA and unemployment on top, 25% is a low-end illustration — take yours off your carrier's declarations page.

Equipment is the second. You recover a machine over the hours its meter turns, not the hours the truck is out. Charge that mower for eight hours instead of the four its deck ran, and you have doubled a real cost. Commercial zero-turns are commonly reported to run 1,500 to 3,500 hours, so use your own meters and replacement history.

Put $64 against the routes above: the tight one clears about $32 a crew-hour toward overhead and profit, the spread one under $5, which has not paid the office, the insurance or you.

Installs are costed forward, not by the day

A 300-square-foot paver patio, three days for the same crew. The maintenance reflex prices the days: about $1,545 of loaded labor, plus something for stone. That misses most of the job:

• Excavation and haul-off. Cubic yards of spoil, and a transfer station billing by the ton.
• Base and bedding. Aggregate to the depth your soil and frost line demand, not the budget's.
• Materials. Pavers, edge restraint, polymeric sand and fabric, off this week's supplier quote.
• Rentals. Mini skid steer and plate compactor by the day, plus fuel.
• Rework risk. A mowing mistake costs one visit. A base that settles costs you the patio twice.

Materials at your markup, rentals and disposal at cost plus handling, crew days at the loaded rate, then overhead and profit on top. You buy the stone before anyone pays you, so installs want a deposit and, past a week, progress billing.

The add-ons that need their own license

Weed control, grub control and a fertilization program look like easy add-on lines. They are not. Federal law requires certification to apply restricted-use pesticides, and the EPA notes many state pesticide agencies require it for any commercial application, restricted or not. Some states license fertilizer application separately, and a number license irrigation on its own, sometimes under a plumbing license. Assume you need a certified applicator until your state department of agriculture says otherwise. For the contractor-license thresholds, see when you need a contractor license.

The paperwork changes when the job is permanent

Four rules bite on installs, not mowing.

• Deposit caps. California limits a home improvement down payment to 10% of the contract or $1,000, whichever is less. Maryland caps it at a third; Pennsylvania at a third above $5,000, with special-order materials itemized. Most states cap nothing. Check yours before you print a percentage on a form, and whether those rules reach landscaping at all.
• Three days to cancel. The federal rule, 16 CFR 429, covers sales agreed away from your place of business, at $25 or more in the customer's home, $130 elsewhere. That is most install work: you sold it standing in the yard. Give a written cancellation notice at signing; the customer can walk inside three business days and get every dollar back, and several states allow longer. Do not spend the deposit or order special-order pavers before that window closes.
• Lien rights. Permanent improvements are the likelier candidate, routine mowing less so — but Missouri's statute names landscaping goods and services, and South Carolina's names landscape services. The right is worthless if you miss the preliminary notice or filing deadline, both state-specific and short. Ask a local construction attorney.
• Sales tax. New York taxes routine lawn maintenance but treats a qualifying capital improvement as exempt for the customer — the landscaper pays tax on the materials instead, with the owner's signed certificate on file. The trap is general: an exemption on the customer's invoice often just moves the tax onto your material purchase. Check the rules for your state.

The season has to carry the calendar

How long the ground stays closed is local: the northern tier runs in the mid-to-high twenties of mowing weeks, the transition zone into the thirties, the Gulf South and coastal California near year-round at a lower winter frequency. Count the mowing invoices you sent the last two years rather than trusting a map.

At 30 productive weeks, every working week carries about 1.7 weeks of overhead, and that belongs in the rate rather than in a January panic. Three ways to flatten it: bill annual agreements in 12 equal monthly installments, add a winter service such as snow or holiday lighting, or push installs into the shoulder months. Monthly, not a season up front — money taken for work you have not done runs into prepaid-service rules or a bonding obligation in some states.

Two price lists, one catalog

Keep the two sides as two catalogs in DoneQuote: maintenance priced per visit and per season, installs with materials, rentals and crew days as separate lines. Upload your existing price list and DoneQuote reads it in, so your loaded crew-day figure reaches the customer unchanged.

Before you quote the next job

• Time one full route for a week and re-price the stops that run long.
• Rebuild the crew-hour cost from your comp declarations page and your hour meters.
• Cost installs forward from materials, haul-off and rentals, not as a multiple of the day rate.