5 Ways to Make ANY Lawn Care Setup More Efficient! (ALL Trailer Types)

Hey everyone. Today I'm gonna show you five different ways that you can make more money and be more profitable on your lawn care and mowing setup. So where should you put your tools? Where should you put your racks? Whether you're using an enclosed trailer or no trailer or an open air trailer, we're gonna be talking about where you can make more money in your lawn care business by being more organized. Before we get into the show, maybe you haven't heard of me before. I'm Mike Andes and I started mowing lawns when I was 11 years old. At the age 13 I started college 4 old years fully intended to become a medical doctor. When I was 18 years old, I dropped out of medical school, went and got my mba, my Master's in business administration and at the same time started Augusta Lawn Care Services. We now have 40 plus locations around North America. We are franchised and today I'm gonna talk to you how you can make more money in your lawn care business. Alright, so there's five different things. First and foremost, the first two are gonna be around open trailers. So if you have a trailer that doesn't have sides and it's not enclosed, or you have no trailer at all, like we use the trailer to set up some ramp, rack or mow and go systems. These ones you don't have any sort of enclosed. All right, the first two are gonna be just for this one. And that first thing is remember the curbs, okay? So you gotta remember that if you have an open air trailer, you're usually gonna be parked against a curb. This is the front of the truck. So you know, this would be the passenger side, you know, maybe the wheel would go here. Then blah, blah. See bad I can't draw. But front of the truck is here. And whether you have an enclosed or, sorry, a trailer setup like we do, or you have a no trailer setup, at the end of the day you're gonna have a curb right here. And you need to remember that because you do not want to be going around to this side of the truck when you need a trimmer, when you need a blower, when you need things a lot. So you want to make sure that everything on this side of the truck or trail, whenever you're using is going to be things that you use the most. So you're going to want to make sure your trimmers and your blower typically are on this side. You're going to be parked next to the curb and you don't want to be going over here wasted every single time. You would walk around here, you want to be going around here for the things that you use on every single job. What you might put over here is a sprayer or maybe a chainsaw, something that you use once a day or once a week. It's very, very infrequent that you use that piece of equipment. That's what you would want to put on the driver's side. Alright. Number two is you need to think about safety when it comes to this setup. Because you don't want to be putting things on the driver's side that are going to potentially be a hazard to oncoming traffic. Okay. Because if you're in the United States, this is the setup you're going to have. You're going to be parked on the right hand side of the road against the curb. And every single time you come over here to get stuff off this side of the trailer or the trailerless setup, you're going to be right up against oncoming traffic. So I don't want to get a blower. If my blower, when I pull it off, it swings out. Okay. Because if it comes swinging out into the road and there's a car driving by or I'm on a tight street, that could potentially be a safety hazard. You want to make sure, for example, that whatever you take out is going up or in towards the truck, not coming out and away from the truck and potentially becoming a hazard. Shovels, pickaxes, whatever you're putting on the side of the truck. This side here, I've seen some people put wheelbarrows over here on the side of their open air trailer. I feel like that's a safety hazard because if I'm parked up against the curb and I've got to take that thing off, now I have my employee or myself stepping away from the truck into oncoming traffic. Keep safety in mind. All right, number three, and that's gonna be about enclosed trailers. So on enclosed trailers, you really want to put things just inside the door. So typically most enclosed trailers are going to have a door here that swings open and then you're gonna have your typical ramp that's gonna be right here. Okay. Can't draw. Okay. But you're gonna have your ramp that goes in the back and you're gonna have the side door. Now this is just my recommendation. Some people will differ on this and that's totally fine. I kinda think in my mind like splitting the trailer like this and having it where this is, like two separate entrances. Okay. So here I have an entrance and here I Have an entrance. The reason for that is because I don't want to have to. If I have a big zero turn inside here and I have my trimmers here, for example, my blower and my gas cans, for example, I don't want to have to take out my mower just to get to the trimmers if they're up front here, for example. But that being said, I have two entrances. The great thing about enclosed trailers is look at this second door as a second entrance. So potentially I would put my trimmers here, but then I would have to step up into the trailer. This is the downside of enclosed trailers is you do have to go inside the trailer. Whereas from on an open air trailer I can just grab from the side, I don't have to go into the trailer itself. And so ideally we can just grab the trimmer. But if I'm going to think about this as a second entrance, potentially I put the trimmer here because what I don't want to do is put the trimmers here, but I can't actually access the trimmer without moving the mower. Okay. So really think about it as two separate entrances. And another thing is with the trimmer racks here, a lot of times, depending on the width of your trailer, you could potentially make this a hitting hazard. And I've seen this a lot of times when people get 5260 inch zero turns or bigger into an enclosed trailer. And then I get employees that are new, not as confident on the controls, they'll hit this end of the trimmer and literally it can just. It pulls it right off the side of the trailer. It's many times not super sturdy. After someone hits it maybe five, six times, you're having to re put that back on with new screws in the whole nine yards. So when we had enclosed trailers, we actually like to keep our trimmer racks up here and we like to think about what do we use a lot of. I didn't like the fact that people had to step inside the enclosed trailers to get to the trimmers. I didn't like that. However, it was better than having to move the zero turn in order to access these or hitting them, hitting the trailer racks or the trimmer racks occasionally and then having to re put them back up on the wall. So another thing is, keep in mind you have two different entrances or two different access points here. What can you put just inside that you're going to use a lot? So what I mean by that is if I have a zero turn or mower or whatever and I'M able to put it. It's a little bit or I have a bigger trailer. This would be the best place to have the trimmer rack because it's just inside the door and I can quickly access it and potentially even just reach inside the trailer and pull it off. But same thing with the blower. I would like the blower to be here or right inside this door. So this is where we have ours. We will put our blowers right inside this door. The reason is because I want to be able to open the door and without having to jump inside the trailer, grab the blower, put it on my back and roll. And also what's cool is it's gonna be two or three feet off the ground. It's closer to my back, easier for me to pop it onto my shoulders. And we actually put that one right on the ground. We put a little two by four wood just around it to keep it anchored. But we don't actually put up on a rack because if we put it on a rack, we'd have to get inside the trailer and open it up. Whereas here we're able to just open the door, quickly access it, put it on our back and we're off and we're working. So you wanna think about two things. When it comes to enclosed trailers. You have two different access points. How can you put things that you use the most closest to the entrance points? And if you have to, because the zero turn is way back here, you might want to think about putting your trimmers up front. It really just depends. I just don't want to be getting the mower out in order to access things. And I'm going to talk about that one a little more in just a second. Alright, number four. The thing you need to think about is what is usually paired together. Two major things. Typically your trimmers need line, the little spool of line. What you don't want to do is have your trimmers here and then have your spool line over here. Because now when I do my get my trimmer, I now have to get my trimmer off. I have to walk around here, hop inside of the trailer, get this spool of line, cut it off, put it up, take it out, all that garbage. You don't want that. Try to put your spool of line close to wherever your line trimmers are. So maybe you put your spool of line there. Same thing with two cycle engine oil, two cycle fuel. If I am going to be having my trimmers, let's see here. If I'm going to have my trimmers right here on the side of my trailer and I'm going to have my blower here. I want my two cycle engine oil as close to this as possible. Why would I put my two cycle engine oil over here? Over here? If I'm on the curb and I'm putting my trimmer away, I can quickly access.

The two cycle fuel and fuel up while it's literally sitting in the rack. Okay. I don't wanna have to walk into traffic, pull off the gas can, come back around and you can move these things around. This is the beautiful thing about racks, is you can move them around, see what's most efficient. We still continually are tweaking our system and making it as profitable and efficient as possible and trying to think, okay, what's getting paired is the line next to the trimmers is the two cycle fuel close to the blower where we're going to be using it the most. Alright, last thing I've already touched on it and that is you don't want to take mowers out to access stuff. Okay? So on an enclosed trailer you have two entrances. You do not want to be taking the mower out in order to get something here. What you want to do is put it here and then access it from here. The reason I say this, because I've seen people build shelving and block off this door on enclosed trailers. And I think that's crazy because that means if I block this door off and now I only have one entrance, now this is gone. If I do that, that means that if I'm gonna access anything in the front of this trailer, I literally have to move the zero turn. And even if the zero turn's already out of the moat out of the trailer, I've gotta get into the trailer, walk all the way to the front, walk all the way back up. That's all wasted. Do not, in my opinion, build a shelf in front of that door. I think that you want to make everything as fast access as possible. You have a big piece of equipment here, the mower, but generally everything else is relatively small and you just want to be, you want it to be in arm's reach. That's the benefit of having an open trailer is you can access everything from the outside. It saves you time from having to walk inside the trailer and all the rest of it. But for example, in my opinion, I always say that because everyone's situation is very different and that's why some people harshly disagree. And that's fine. But I would say do not put Your push mower, for example, here in the enclosed trailer, don't put it in front of your zero turn. Because if you get to a small lawn or a lawn where you need the push mower only, you now have to take the zero turn out just to access the push mower. It's easier to take the push mower out each time. So for example, I got all these lines. I'm gonna try to erase this real quick instead of doing that, instead of doing where the push mower is in front, why not have it where you can take the push mower out if you need the zero turn? Right. It's gonna come down to a lot of times, what do you use most often? But for example, I would much rather raise this. I would much rather have where I have my big zero turn and then I have either my push mower here behind it, or I can do it off to the side. We do it off to the side and then we use two by fours to keep it locked in place. We don't like to have to anchor it down. We don't have to chain it. We don't have to like a strap it. It's all time wasted. Easier for things to get broken on the buckles and all the rest of it. We use 2x4 to make it sure it's locked in place and doesn't roll, roll around and it goes either here or here. The reason is why, because I can easily take a push mower out and then take my zero turnout if I need the zero turn. But if I just need the push mower now, I don't have to take the zero turnout in order to access it up front. If you are on an open air trailer, the same thing you want to make sure that you're able to access everything up here on the front of the trailer without having to take if you have a zero turn on the back. Okay. Whether you have a zero turn or a stand on mower in the back of a trailerless setup, I do not want to have to come up the ramp in order to access things up front here. I want it to be where I can reach over or reach out from the outside of the truck. That's the whole benefit of having an open air trailer. I want to be able to reach from the outside and grab in. That way I can walk directly to it and pick it up, not walk all the way around here and access it from inside of the truck or the open air trailer. So I hope that was helpful. I'm Mike Andes, check out landscapebusinesscourse.com for more tips, and we'll see you in the next video.