Lawn prices, please help!!

[Woodsmaintenance]

I have small grounds maintenance business, I want to expand into the commercial business but I am struggling to find what people charge per m2 as I normally quote gardens.

If anybody can help me this would be greatly appreciated

[Richard 1234]

Can be as low as 0.004p per M2

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

That's bonkers Richard!

 

I do one (pretty much at cost because I choose to) which is 4651m2 (1.149 Acre) and it's £114 per visit.  That's £0.40/m2 (+VAT.)

 

How anyone could operate at £0.004/m2 is beyond belief!

Edited December 17, 2017 by kevinjohnsonmbe

[Richard 1234]

It is but also depends what you use. When you cut circa 30000 per hour it soon adds up. That’s fairly Standard pricing round here on weekly cuts at least for the big contractors. I charge more but get far less work because of it.
I don’t know what you use but that would be about 15 mins for me due to too much turning. At your rate that would be £456 an hour. No grass cutting business should have costs anywhere near that rate. I’m thinking you can charge that as big contractors won’t bother with it as they are too focused on small ppm2 that the tiny ones like that don’t add up.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

I'm confused now!  Are you saying you cut 30000m2 per hour?  That'd be £120/hour would it?  Who's got a lawn (or even grass) that size??  Are we talking golf courses?  And what machinery does it take to cover that sort of area?  Is it tractor gang mowers?

 

Grass cutting is not really my 'thing' but I got a mowing deck for the front of the multione and I cut the sports pitch at the school our nipper goes to.  It's 10 minutes away, the previous contractor was a shambles and there is ancillary tree / hedge and other works which make up for the low return on grass cutting.  I can have it done in an hour.

 

I guess we're at opposite ends of the scale so possibly not either giving a representative / useful answer to OP.

 

Maybe if OP could provide a bit more detail about scale and frequency + equipment availability we might be able to thrash something out??  

 

 

[dumper]

Grass cutting with a front loader is not cost effective to much horsepower doing nothing decks are too small and the speed of cut is slow, 25hp loader cutting 1.5m or 40 up tractor cutting 3.6 faster

[Tomtop]

When you say commercial business what do the mean. That could be anything and hard to give you more detail. When start do commercial stuff I just price it like a lawn.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

58 minutes ago, dumper said:

Grass cutting with a front loader is not cost effective to much horsepower doing nothing decks are too small and the speed of cut is slow, 25hp loader cutting 1.5m or 40 up tractor cutting 3.6 faster

Agreed!  It's not the best solution for large scale grass cutting but it's not a one trick pony!!  The cost of the mower attachment to fit an existing machine is a fraction of the cost of a dedicated mowing machine that (a) only mows and (b) takes up more (storage & transport) space.  

 

Getting more usage hours out of the pre-existing machine is the key - hours working is hours earning (if only a little.)  Example, I can take the mower and tree shear on 1 trip, cut the grass (for a fairly modest cash return) and reduce the hedgerow trees (as a bonus.)  1 machine, 2 attachments, 2 tasks.  

 

Horses for courses...  If only there really was a silver bullet!  

[Richard 1234]

These one trick ponies male a lot of money if you can fill the week with one. Your mower attachment is worth is for you as you already have a machine. I couldn’t do the grass cutting I want/ need to do with your multi one machine at all never mind I’m good time.

Yes people do have 6,8,10 plus acres of grass, plus huge playing fields/ amenity spaces of 40 acres(the biggest I know of)

But cost is the problem £65k now for the 5 gang monsters that cut that amount of grass per hour.

 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

1 hour ago, Richard 1234 said:

But cost is the problem £65k now for the 5 gang monsters that cut that amount of grass per hour.

Wow!  And that's excluding the tractor!  Just had a quick online search and found this:

 

https://horsejumpsforsale.co.uk/pto-driven-flail-mowers/6082-triflex-gang-flail-mower-50m-wide.html?gmc_currency=2&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyNjRBRCpARIsAPDBnn2ikjXL9PQC5Ivi60rl9nwRjdv0tlWABZv4a0H46p9XI1S4UB_ra94aAmUFEALw_wcB