Debate With Manager: Should You Have Trailers for Mowing Routes?

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andy. You're listening to the landscape business course podcast. And today's gonna be a special episode. We're actually gonna do a bit of a debate about trailerless setups. And so you've heard me talk about trailerless setups in the past, the pros, the cons. But today I'm actually bringing in Liz Naber, which is the office manager of Augusta Lawn care of Whatcom county, our very first location. And so she really runs everything on a day to day basis. I'm not there a lot. She really runs the whole place. And so we have instituted about 40%, 45% of our crews being trailerless setups. These are mowing crews that do not have an enclosed trailer. They do not have a zero turn. And so there's pros, there's cons. We're gonna be talking about those today. And she's gonna be kind of devil's advocate for why trailer setups are sort of a waste or annoying or hard to schedule or whatever. Whatever. And some of these things she actually does believe in, we've actually debated. So without any further delay, I'll welcome her on the set and we'll go ahead and get started. And we're just going to talk to each other. And some of these things we have gone over before and I've explained them to her, and then some of them might be completely new. And these are arguments why a trailer setup would be annoying or bad. And I will give my reasoning as to why I think we should continue to do trailer setup. So. So first of all, welcome, Liz, to the show.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thanks for hopping on. So, first of all, explain your debacle in terms of why the trailer setups are somewhat annoying.

Yes. So last year we had four trucks and trailers and one trailerless, which we were kind of trialing how it would work. And I only used that one on little tight routes where one guy could go and do that.

20 small jobs.

Small jobs. So this past December, we acquired a big company and the budgeted hours are not what we would have bid them at.

Under budgeted. Yep.

So they're under budgeted. And at the end of this season, the plan is that the guys understand that it's route density that will make get us through the season because there's so many of them in the same area and that we won't make a lot of because we're keeping the prices the same for the customer, for the acquisition and for the first season, and then we'll see where they were off on the budgeted hours and raise the price at the end of the season for the customers. So today when we were going running, we were just about to. We go to the stairs to run that I was telling you about yesterday, that we're training for the Spartan. And so we walk down the trail before we start. And on the way down the trail, I wanted to bring this up to Mike because now we have done all of March and now we're stepping into half of April and I feel like my scheduling is taking like three times as long. And the challenge is for those of you who do routing, this would be anyway to back up a little bit. We're having this debate and I am advocating for a truck and trailer. He's advocating for trailerless setup. And I said, you know what, if we're having this conversation, there's other companies with large recurring mowing customers, big properties, small properties that have the same thing. We need to have this same discussion in front of them. So I'm going to go back exactly. And express my frustrations to him of what I've experienced the last couple months. So if you do your routing from your dispatch board and you are, let's say you have a, you do one city on a day, let's say you have 500 mowing customers and you're going to do 90 mows today. So last year we just had the one. So this year, let's say I'm doing seven routes and I have trailerless setups, four and then at three, and then I have four that are truck and trailer. So I've got zero turns in the trailers, which would be for the big properties typically. So we want to use the trailerless setups as much as possible. So on all these routes, typically in the past I would have selected a whole group of mo's and then I would have assigned them to one guy. He would have had a truck and trailer and he would have gone for it. But now I want to take a trailer list setup and I want to give the smaller ones of that group to one guy to go and do the trailerless setup. So I'm explaining to Mike that now I have to take this big group and I have to click, click, click, click, click on the dispatch board for all the bigger ones for all the bigger ones and give them to a guy with a truck and a trailer. And then I have to, okay, click, click, click all the lower priced ones and then I have to assign them to a guy with a trailer list. So I'm expressing all this to Mike, that it's taking so much longer because.

In general the lower priced ones are smaller and therefore less square footage. And therefore.

Exactly. But now we have these ones mixed in that are really less budgeted. Hours could be pretty large. And so I've been telling the guys like tell me on these routes which would kind of be better for trailerless setup. So in some of the city there's not. There's a lot of whole one way streets. So they're telling me it's still easier to have a trailerless, even if it takes us 15 minutes longer to mow, because we might be driving around for 15 minutes trying to find a place to park. So I've been getting their opinion and stuff. So I'm telling Mike that. So what happened this week? There's. I'm trying to give all the bigger mo's to the guys with the truck and trailer and the smaller mo's to the, to the other guys. So in this big group of mo's I had given all the smaller ones away to all the guys with the three trailer lists and the big ones to these other guys. So it's afternoon. I've had. Josh and Kent have done treatment. So they had two late nights. And then I have, okay, today I'm giving Kent a shorter route. Well, he's the one with the truck and a trailer because he has a few treatments. And so then we're getting throughout the day and it was Josh and him. And I told Josh, I need to take off the rest of these treatments because I need to give you this big mo and. And he's like, oh man. And I know it's gonna be late for them, but it's because this one mow is big and all the trailerless guys have to come back. So that's when Mike is gonna. He's telling me that it's still more efficient to have trailer lists. Cause I'm saying, okay, if I was running this thing, I would do five truck and trailers and one, maybe two trailerless.

And.

And I would always keep the small, dense routes for the trailerless guy. He would just always go do those and maybe a couple of the other ones. So I'm thinking it's not efficient at all because I am taking mo mo mo mo all over the city and giving it to the guy, the truck and trailer, because they're bigger. And so I'm expressing my frustration to you because I'm feeling like it's not.

Advantageous or profitable to be have him jumping around or the way you Present it that trailerless is always better. It's not efficient for me to send a trailerless guy to do a three hour mow. So your response to me I wanted from the new mows I have in that's a challenge. And then if we started all the way over, have we done it right so far or if I started with just trailerless, they wouldn't know the difference. So go for it.

So really it comes down to acquisition costs. And we talked about this and that is like the reason we're having trouble and why anyone that would be switching from having zero turns and enclosed trailers or open trailers or whatever, the person that's going to have problems with changing to trailer setups, as someone in the past has had a setup with a zero turn. Because if you have a property that is half an acre, yes. It's going to take you a lot shorter of time to mow with a zero turn. And so if you priced it based upon budgeted hours, let's say you're charging, you know, let's say $60 per hour for mowing and it takes an hour for you to mow the zero turn lawn. Yes. By having a push mower, you're going to have a lot less efficiencies in terms of that job. You are absolutely. The larger the property, the less efficient a trailerless setup that is just a push mower without a zero turn. But the concept is this and that is that the reason we're having the problems is because we have budget hours and we have pricing based upon having a $10,000 zero turn inside of a $6,000 enclosed trailer attached to a three quarter ton pickup. Whereas yes, it's going to take longer for us to have a half ton pickup with a push mower. That is.

12% the cost of the zero turn. And you don't need a big enclosed trailer. And as we found out even last week, having two enclosed trailers down in repairs because the cables broke or the tires or whatever was wrong with them.

Right, right.

And the maintenance on that is completely wiped out because now you don't need a trailer. And so the hard part is switching. And that's where we're at. Because we've had zero turns in the past and we've done pricing based upon having setups with zero turns. Therefore, when you switch to trailers, yes, it's going to take you longer on those big jobs. That being said, in the past, when you have a zero turn in a trailer, 50 to 70% of the jobs they did were done with a push Mower, it were right.

But they had zero turn if they needed to pull that out for that job. And they had a push mower if they needed to pull it out for the job. They just weren't stuck with a push mower.

Right. But the concept is that the trailerless setup costs $10,000 versus $30,000 for a larger truck with a more experienced crew member with a enclosed trailer with a $10,000 zero turn in it. And so for the cost of one setup with a trailer, I can get three setups with a trailer setup. And the big argument is about efficiency. Now, if you're paying people based upon P4P, you're they're getting a percentage of the revenue at that job, regardless of how long it takes them. And so the goal and the really, the struggle we're having is not financial in terms of efficiency because it does not affect the company.

Right.

It's affecting the crew, who is not happy when a job that could take 30 minutes is now taking 45 because.

They have a push mower, which is my agony right now because I'm trying to carefully structure it so that it's not completely inefficient, and they're not getting all of these ones that have terrible budgeted hours.

Right. So the problem for Bellingham shop versus Mount Vernon is that Mount Vernon is starting with trailer list setup.

So they don't know anything different.

Well, that's for the employee's perspective, yes. But then also from the estimator's perspective, every single job they look at from the onset is, how long does this take with a push mower? Right. Instead of how long does this take If I have this type of mower, like, for example, the theory of, like, well, if you get a zero turn, it goes faster. Yeah, of course it does. But am I going to get a 60 inch mower? Am I going to get a 36 inch mower? Yes, the 60 inch mower is going to be more efficient on that small percentage of my properties. But is it worth spending 10,000 or 20,000 versus 10,000, which I could get like a 48 inch mower versus a 62 inch mower. And then with that 62 inch mower comes a bigger trailer and then a bigger truck, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really like, how big do you want to make it?

So your guy in Mount Vernon, how big are some of his properties?

There's ones that take him an hour and a half or two hours to mow with a push mower. And when we say push mower, like he's using a 20 inch, right now we're going to be switching to a 30 inch. So that's going to increase the efficiencies already by 25 to 35% just by switching that.

So he's meeting his budgeted hours because they were already priced that way. So he's fine with an hour and a half because it was budgeted.

The crew is not mad right now because when they get there and they have a trailer set up, they're not mad so much that they have to use a push mower. They're mad the fact that they're not going to be able to hit budget hours because they don't have a zero turn. So really, since we're transitioning and we've talked about this next spring, we have to adjust the budget hours, therefore adjust the pricing on all of these jobs that traditionally have had a zero turn on them. Now we need to price them accordingly as if they had a push mower. And I think once we have a 30 inch mower instead of a 20 inch, 21 inch more, it's going to be more like 10 to 15% in terms of lost efficiencies based upon deck size instead of 25, 30% as it is now. That being said.

Someone that is just starting out and is going to start with trailer setups, number one, your employees don't know any different. They're not showing up at jobs and like, oh man, I wish I had the zero turn. That's not even a concept in their mind. Right. And then two, you're pricing it to where when they do show up with a push more, yes, they might have that thought, but they have enough budgeted hours to still do the job with the plan push mower.

So this is what a listener, any listener is going to be arguing. Like while we're talking, they're going to be, but what? But what if? So one argument I had to Mike was, if I'm having this mo, whether it's budgeted hours correctly or not, that's three hours. Then another one, that's two. Then another one, that's one. I have taken one guy and he's done three mows. So Mike is saying, that's okay, it's still profitable for the company. And my thing is like, okay, but if you could have serviced seven customers and those seven customers then took a pressure washing and a cleanup and all that, then what do you have to hire more people? Like, how am I going to get these 90 jobs done well.

So, yeah, I get the point. You basically, you're saying with a zero turn, you become more efficient, therefore you can get more jobs done.

Yeah. So for right now, like, if I took that whole chunk and I gave them to, like. I didn't, like, sift them out and I just gave them to a trailerless guy, like, there's no way we would get the 90 done.

Mm. But this is the. This is. The point is you can go with another truck and another truck with a trailer set up for $10,000 instead of having to spend 40,000 to go get another truck, trailer, zero turn, etc.

Okay.

And the maintenance and ongoing cost. So let's. Let's, like, let's look at from two different perspectives. Number one, the employee. All right, if you're paying, there's really four. Right. It's the employee's perspective, the business's perspective. And then. Are you on P4P? Are you not on P4P? Right. There's four quadrants here. So let's first talk about. So from the employee's perspective on P4P, this is what we're running into. This is our biggest concern, is that the guy's morale is lowered because they can't hit budgeted hours.

Right.

So the fix there is you need to fix budget hours. In order to fix budget hours, you need to raise the prices, and you're gonna lose some people. And for us, it's like, whatever.

And like, for right now, we can't. So for this season, we can't.

Yeah, we're in the middle of the coronavirus. People's budgets. They're tight. We wanna keep the customer for a year that we've just bought and purchased. We know they're under budget hours about probably a third of them. And so we recognize that. But from the employees perspective, on P4P, when they show up to a job and it is 20 or 30, 40% under budgeted, like. Like it needs to be more budget hours, therefore, more pricing, like, higher prices, that's gonna affect them. And the bottom line is it does not affect the business because we're getting a percentage of revenue. They're getting a percentage of revenue. So it does not hurt the business. Like, it's not like we're losing money in those jobs. We can't lose money on those jobs because we're getting a percentage of revenue.

Right.

They're getting a set percent. There's no variable cost in mowing anymore.

And no matter what, they can't go below 18. So it's not like they're going to have a day with nothing.

Right, exactly right. That's P for.

That's the base.

That's a whole conversation with P4P I'm talking about. Let's just assume that we're using P for P. Now let's look at someone with the trailer set up versus.

You know, this whole debate without P4P. From the employee's perspective, we're not talking about the business yet. Employees perspective, what are they thinking about this? If they're not on?

They don't really care. Right?

They don't really care. But more importantly, they usually like the zero turn cuts easier.

So they're just going to complain there's less labor.

Right. And the problem is for most people out there, they're switching from that to P4P with trailerless. And that's a huge jump because not only are you making them work harder by pushing a mower, but now you're also tracking their budget hours. And if you're switching to trailers, they're going to be behind on some.

Right.

On some like 20, 30% immediately you're going to take longer on because you would need a zero turn otherwise. There's a lot of efficiencies to do with a trailer set up that counteract some of that. But there are big properties, big and open and they're especially if they're bagging clippings, it definitely is faster with the zero turn. Now let's look at it from the businesses standpoint. On P4P doesn't really matter, right? It does not really matter.

Price stays the same on the job.

No, no. If they're getting paid P for P. Right. The employees, we're getting a set percent of that revenue. Doesn't matter how long it takes them. And so we don't really like how much money we make on that job. Does not change. Now obviously if the price is higher and the budget hours are higher, we're going to.

But I can't get as many jobs in in the day.

Yeah, we're working there, we're working there, we're working there. But like from then, from the business standpoint, the biggest part of all of this is the acquisition cost and this is where it plays into the trailer setups. For the price of one trailered setup with a zero turn and a bigger truck and a nice enclosed trailer, blah, blah, blah, I need to have about two and a half times as much money than if I would go to a trailer setup. Alright? So for the price of two trailered setups with Zero turns and a bigger truck, blah, blah, blah. I can go get five trailerless setups. Now, when I put more money into that trailered setup, I now need to put two people in those trucks instead of having five setups and them all being able to go solo and being more efficient by being solo.

Got it.

So by being solo with a trailerless setup, I can do that. I can afford the capital expenditure and put them solo.

And then I can get my 90.

Mo'S and then you'll get your 90 mo's done. Right. So for the same price, I get five setups versus two. I can put my five guys on solo routes. Them all do 10, let's say 15 per day to get 75 done. Or I get two trailered setups, two guys in each truck, and now they need to do 30 plus in that day.

Right.

And so we know that having solo is immediately increasing their efficiency. They're happier because they make more on P4P. And that is what counteracts the argument that you're talking about in terms of having a trailered setup with equipment. Now, if you have a ton of money, yes. You could buy all five of those guys trailered setups and they will get a lot more mo's done.

Right.

But I would argue that the 30, $40,000 you spend on each of those other three could be spent on marketing and you have much, much more scalability.

Okay. And then the repairs, comparing the two for repairs, what would I pay to repair a push mower as opposed to the. The zero turn?

Right. So there's a few things. So a lot of things people don't think about maintenance on a trailer. You got brakes, you got two air tires. And usually those are replaced at least once a year because, well, you got four sor. Tandem. You got like a dually. Right? So you have four tires. My bad. Four tires on an enclosed trailer or an open trailer or whatever. They have brakes. Those brakes usually gotta be changed out every two to three years. The tires almost always gotta be changed out every year, especially in an enclosed trailer, because they. The way that they turn and everything, they just wear out on the inside, the outside, blah, blah, blah. So.

And then you do do like a winterizing of the big ones.

Well, you gotta grease the axles. You gotta really concentrate on like, you know, keeping it up. You got to wash the trailer. Like these are all things people don't think about. And when you take a trailered setup with an enclosed trailer, let's say four tires, and then they got. Then you got Four tires on a zero turn. You got two tires in the front, two tires in the front. That's four more tires. Now you have eight tires with air in them that could pop, that you got to replace. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You look at a trailered setup or a trailer less setup besides the truck, there's no tires that need to be filled up with air. There's no brakes that you got to change. Besides the truck. We're taking the truck off the table now. Let's bring the truck into the table, on the table. Because with a trailer set up, we can get away with Mount Vernon. We got a 1500 Chevy, 1500 four by four instead of what we usually get, which is a 2500 three quarter ton pickup. Again, more maintenance, bigger brakes, bigger truck, higher acquisition cost. A bigger truck causes more damage if they hit something. It usually requires a higher skilled person, etc. Etc. Etc.

Right.

Like the end, the brakes and the tires on the truck get worn a whole lot more when you have a big zero turn and a trailer on the back. Instead of like we have a cargo carrier with a push mower.

Right. Okay. So let's say we hadn't had the acquisition, which gives us the challenges of these budgeted hours, which they're not really hitting now. They will in the summer and then we'll have to raise the prices. So let's say Augusta had all these 500 mo's and they. They are all budgeted now, correctly.

Yes.

But they've still had. And this would be with most of the customers. They've always had a truck and a trailer.

Wait a second. We. I. I hate to interrupt. Like, hold the thought. Do you know where you're at?

I do know where I'm at.

Okay. So I'm gonna go back. So we didn't finish the quadrant. We talked about the.

We didn't talk about the bags either. The cost of the bags on those.

Well, there's lots. We go really in depth in terms of the trailer because, like, you got your flooring, you got that stupid ramp with the cables. Like that goes on and on and on. And you got to watch the stupid trailer every time because it all. And they we're talking about.

Can you tell he's really not in.

Favor of 1/16 inch or whatever it is of tin metal that like holds your stuff and gets dented at every single rock. Like, let's not go into that. That's one thing before we. Hold your thought. We didn't finish the fourth quadrant. So we talked about employees on P.4P employees not on P4P. We talked about business on P4P. Now business without P4P. This is where we run into some problems.

Yeah.

Someone switching to trailerless without being P4P.

Oh, they're gonna be in a bad mood the whole day and they're gonna be sending me messages all day.

Well, yeah.

This is impossible, Liz. I can't do this.

Yeah. Cause they're not on P4P anymore. They don't care about the budget time.

But then their attitude is gonna be like, who cares?

Exactly.

If I get five done, who cares?

Yeah. And that being said, if somebody started a business out there and they only use trailer setups and they did not do P4P, I think you could get away with it. Like the guys just come to expect that. But there is no anything in the. Yeah. There's no incentive for them to do a large lot where they look at it and they just dread it. They don't. Like they would just sit in the truck for 15 minutes and dying because they feel like they deserve it after walking for that long. Right. So I just wanted to finish my quadrant out. So from a businesses standpoint, off of P4P, using trailerless setups, especially if you're switching, that's very difficult because you need the guys to be thinking about budget hours. Because trailers is all about efficiencies. And if the biggest efficiency you can make without spending a bunch of money or changing a lot of things in terms of equipment is going to be P4P. So that off the table. Go ahead with your.

Yeah. Did you need to finish anything else about the cost comparison of the two?

There's just so many. There's so many things.

You replace the mower on a push mower or the motor or anything on it. What would be the most expensive thing.

That you would have to part on a push mower? We just switched out a 21 inch mower. It was a Kawasaki engine and it cost $600.

Yeah. And our debate was, should we buy another one for 1200 or should I replace them now?

On a zero turn mower, if something goes wrong with the engine, you are looking at a couple thousand at least. Like 25, three grand to switch out.

The engine and having it out for a few days.

Yeah. Yeah. And you can't. It's hard to buy. It's a lot harder to buy a backup zero turn than a couple backup push mowers. In terms of cost maintenance on a zero turn. Right. You got to do your hydro oil. Your oil changes. You Got to grease all the joints, blah blah, blah, blah. Like now you also have three blades to sharpen instead of one. So all of these things add up from a maintenance standpoint. Now people do not care. The employees do not care about that. But unless you make a direct, you have open book management. They see the numbers and they see okay, profitability, efficiencies. These savings and maintenance leads to the company being able to afford a higher percentage of revenue going to me and P4P. So these are things like it's all intertwined.

They knew that and they understand that part. And you were right in the middle of making a decision whether to buy a truck and trailer or a trailer list. If they knew that and that the extra money were trying to push their way, they would probably go for a trailerless.

If they see the correlation, if they.

See the numbers, how they're stacked.

Yeah, because it is, there is just. I looked at it for years before we switched in terms of the differences and the pros and cons. Bigger properties, you're going. If you're gonna price accordingly, like we start doing next year where we start pricing larger jobs. If every single job is being used with a push mower, you're going to lose out on big properties, you're just gonna lose them. Right. That being said, that means you're not going to need to buy $10,000 mowers and have hydro flushes on your oil and sharpen three blades instead of one. Like the list goes on and on and on. From a business standpoint, there's just no, there's no comparison. And people can debate all they want ran the numbers and unless, unless you're in a market where everybody, and I mean everybody on your customers and all of your market has one acre, two acre parcels where you must have a zero turn. That's. That, that is definitely like somewhere I would think about now. That being said, I could, I still think you could do a zero, a trailerless setup and have a ramp on the back instead of what we do with the cargo carrier. And you could drive your little zero turn in the back of your truck, a 48 incher because you got four feet in between your wheel wells and you'd still be able to do a trailer setup. So when we talk about trailer setups, we're not just talking about push mowers. You could use a zero turn, but you can scrap the trailer and you can go from. Instead of getting a 60 inch mower, you can get a 48 and put in the back of a truck. This works either way. The way we do it is even ultra scaled lower because instead of spending 8 to 10,000 for us it has to be 10,000. We need a catching bagging device. Instead of spending that, I can spend 1200 for a 21 inch mower or 2000 for a 30 inch mower. And I'd much rather buy five 30 inch mowers than I would one 48 inch.

Well, from your estimator estimators point of view though, if he is now going to the property and he's thinking, you know, you think in terms of ease of access with gates and whatever, if he's thinking now in terms of if he push mode the whole thing, you're.

Going to lose some big properties.

And you're going by budgeted hours and you're saying we're going to lose big properties because we're going to be pricing it quite a bit higher so that we get our 40, 60, 80, whatever it is. In all their demographics we're not going to get as many accepted. So you'd be okay with that?

Yeah. Big ones like the big ones you're going to make less on the bottom line is if you're charging an hourly rate $80 per hour, I would much rather have a setup that's worth $10,000 where the guy mowing that is making $80 an hour then a $40,000 setup and guess what, the guy is still making $80 an hour.

So if we don't get those big mows though, we are not going to get that customer. So usually we get the recurring mow first and then we get the ancillary services on top of that. So now I'm not going to get the 25 yard install, I'm not going to get their, their property cleanup and I'm not going to get their trimming and anything else from that customer who's obviously got a large property, probably a nice home. And so what do you think of that?

Two things. So. So first of all you can't be everything to everybody if you're gonna focus on smaller properties or if you're gonna get a zero turn. So for example, if this was a really big issue for us, we could always get one truck that had a zero turn on the back without a trailer and all that stuff. You know, I'm saying it's like let's just take that off the table for us. We can't do that because we gotta bag the clippings. It's not possible. Now first off, you can't be everything to everybody. So we would be focusing on. Yes. Smaller properties. We would not say no to large properties like down in Mount Vernon. 10% of his properties are $100 or more per mo.

Crazy. So we're talking about in the past. I have never put a trailer list on that property.

Yeah. But they don't know any different because.

That'S all they have.

So first thing is, you can't be everything to everybody. I'm not gonna say no to a property. Like I've told Tim down in Mount Vernon, like, don't say we can't give you an estimate. Give them an estimate. Let the customer say no because your price is higher due to the fact that you only use zero trailer setup. That's number one. Don't be everything to everybody. Number two, by the time you give them the estimate, you have their contact information. And if you're doing it right with newsletters and monthly newsletters with one click estimates, you should be able to upsell them on those ancillary.

So you might get an aeration.

They can go get Joe Blows Lawn Care to mow their lawn. But Joe Blows Lawn Care is not gonna have a monthly newsletter where they can click one button and order those 25 yards of mulch installed the next week. So I think we can beat them out.

I surrender on that point. Okay, so going back to what I was saying before. So most of our listeners are like us in the fact that, let's say they've grown big and they bought into the whole thing, that they have to have zero turns. So now they have three or four.

I like that. Bought into the idea. I like it.

Okay, go ahead. Now they're wanting to do what we are trying to do, which is go to the trailer list for all the reasons we just said. How in the world do we transition?

Yeah. So doing what we did is right. And I know it's not been perfect, but like, what we have done is right. And that is, number one, look at your properties and see which. How, what percentage of them can you actually do trailer setups with?

So I would keep doing what I'm doing.

Yeah.

For the rest of the season or whatever.

Yeah. And as long as we have zero turns, because like now we're gonna go sell them for $10.

And from go from here on out, then our estimator would always estimate it as if he was using a pushmark.

And if someone has a zero turn, it's like, you know, merry Christmas, you're gonna get this job done in 20% less time because it's big. Now, second point.

Okay, go ahead.

Second point is that you might think, oh no, we use our zero turn all the time. But you might use it, let's say six out of 15 jobs in a day. And I know this for a fact, I used to know.

I'm giving them the regular routes, you're.

Giving them the regular routes. They might actually use a zero turn six out of 15 times. And so the asset utilization of those mowers, those high expensive ticket items, zero turn is otherwise just sitting in the trailer doing absolutely nothing besides being a dead weight for 70% of a route.

So you're saying it's more efficient even if I'm picking a big one here, here, here, here and here and here. Because they are going to be using it at every single one.

From an asset utilization standpoint. Yeah, right, because I don't have to buy five zero turns, I want to buy three, right?

Yeah. So like from a macro, it's better, especially if you're in P4P, especially for the business.

But back to your question. How would you switch over? Number one, you have to be on P4P. It doesn't work otherwise. Two I would say, or P4P. We keep yaddling that off. It's pay for performance. They get paid based on budget hours. You get percentage of revenue anyways.

They get a percentage of every job.

So yeah, they. First things first. Look at all your jobs. What percentage of them would you actually be able to use a trailer set up? Now, rule of thumb in terms of efficiency on one job, 5,000 square feet of turf or less is going to be more efficient on that job with a push mower.

So for them to quickly go down. So like if it's a $40 $50 job, they can just look at that. They don't have to be like, oh, how many square foot is this property? They could be like, if it's $50 or less, I can click, click, click, click, click, give them all to one guy. Click, click, click, click. I can give that to one guy on a trailer list setup. I can grab 15 and give them.

Even if they said okay, like my I range on average, let's say from $20 per cut, which you should never charge, but $20 per cut, to $50 per cut. You say, okay, well anything $35 and below I could do with with my trailer list. Anything above 35 to.

So what you could still do is take that whole group of moe's and assign it to one person, optimize it and then unclick all the big ones and assign all, click, click, click, click, click. And all those unclicks, they go to another guy, right?

Yeah. And you could tag them or like somehow put in the CRM, like, this is a trailer list. That mo. It's capable of having a trailer list.

Well, the reason I said that is because if I have seven mo's, I still have just one guy over here doing the big ones and one guy here doing all the small ones. Because I just grabbed all the small ones out of the other route and gave them to one guy.

Yeah. And then like what we're doing next spring is the next step and that is actually adjusting your budget hours to be as if they were all getting done on trailers.

So for the listener, they would go out at the end of the season, they would go back and kind of see what the guys had clocked into and where it was way off. Yeah. So that's why it's important to clock in and out.

Yeah. And if you're actually wanting to switch 100% to trailer setups over time, you would actually need to go to the jobs where maybe they even beat budgeted hours, but they always had zero turns. And you actually need to look and.

Ask like, okay, you might need to raise that one.

You might need to still raise the prices on those and knowing that you're going to lose some of them. And again, you got to determine what you're going to focus on. And that being said to like, think about it from just a route density standpoint. If I'm focusing on smaller properties, it means in a quarter mile radius I might have 250, 300 houses versus if I'm doing larger properties, I might have a third of that. So route density gets bigger. If you're in a neighborhood where you're usually going to be able to use a push mower or trailer to set up and it's much easier to park, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's also a place where you park your truck and you do four properties.

Right.

It's not the type of property where you drive 10 miles and do another one. It's a big, big. You don't want those properties. So by focusing on that demographic that, yes, you might cut out 30% of your mows, but you probably don't want those people anyways. They take the biggest equipment, they're the most spread out, and they're the least likely for people to see your truck and trailer when they're mowing. Whereas in a neighborhood, when you're in those dense routes, People are driving by, people seeing you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay. So now my whole position and challenge all the time is that I'm trying to keep everybody's morale up and the team culture good. It's spring, so the weather's gonna be pretty bad and all these variables to try. So for those of you who have listened for a long time, you know what the yellow slips are. And I don't know if it was a full moon or you know what, but we had I think seven in one couple days, which is very, very bad. And it rarely ever happens. But if you're wanting the same person to own their own mistake and go back. I was up for most of a night this week trying to figure out seven yellow slips to go back and resolve along with treatment routes and regular mowing routes and try to be as efficient as possible to have all those guys owning their own thing and then the guy that's with them having to go off their P4P. So the challenge is going to be for the culture.

Now that's a P4P question.

No, but anybody wanting to switch like the trailer list. Yeah. Even if they're not on P4P, guys are gonna be pretty ticked off when it's a job they could have done in 25 minutes and now it's gonna take 50.

Yeah. And so like, so let's take the yellow something off the table because that's about P for P in terms of trailer steps and morale.

Yeah, like you gotta, you gotta, they gotta see the correlation between the business being more efficient, therefore making more money, and then them therefore being able to make more money. Right. And so that's why having open book management showing them, okay, we made X amount of money last year, we're going to be able to go from 25% of revenue going to the employee to 27%. Like they'll be see that because we're more profitable. Right. And if, and if we're trying to save money on acquisition of equipment and we're trying to increase the asset utilization of our bigger equipment like zero turns and that's therefore driving more dollars to the bottom line. If they see that correlation of more dollars to the bottom line leads to me making more money in the form of more P4P or more dollars per hour or whatever, or bonuses, that's when you actually get buy in from them. And yes, they might be mad whether regardless of their on P4P or not, when they get to a job and they don't have a zero Turn. They would rather have the zero turn. Yes. They're going to not be as happy, whether it be they're lazy and they don't want to be as physically exhausting, they just want to sit down for two hours where they go back and forth on a big field or if it's just that they're going to make less money because they are on P4P and they, they're not gonna hit budget hours. It is going to lead to, they're not gonna be happy about it. But as long as they see the overall business is embedded and that you have intention to correct those budget hours like we do, and we've been open with them to say, hey, we're going to fix those and make sure they are brought back in alignment with what our pricing is, therefore your budget hours will be increased. But we need to retain these customers because we've just acquired them.

Got it. So if you took P4P off the table and the yellow slips, if you have an open book management and you tell them why, then at least you're gonna get some buy in from there. Just because you're transparent.

Yeah, yeah. And like they'll watch a video like this and be like, oh, okay, like that makes a lot of sense. I'm the guy that sharpens the blades and yes, a zero turn. I have to jack up, I have to use a impact drill, I have to get three of them off, I have to change out belts. You got your drive belt and then you got the blade belt system. So like those break twice a year and then I'm stranded in the middle. Whereas like a push mower doesn't have belts and you put gas and you put oil and it works and I only have to sharpen one blade versus the three. So like they start putting those things together, realizing that that makes the business more money. And then therefore when they see more money on the bottom line, they then need to see some correlation to their pay. How does it make their life better? Because if you're just trying to make, you know, if you're not sharing those numbers and you're just trying to save yourself money and making it harder on them, yeah, it leads to a down in morale. But when they start to see the numbers and they start to see like, oh, the business makes more money more, we make less damages when using push mowers versus zero turns, et cetera, that's when they start to see the correlation between the business doing well and as well.

Now, if I had two guys on a trailerless setup, could they bring two push mowers.

They could. Depends on your setup. Right. So like for us, they could throw a push mower in the back of the truck if they're 21 inch mowers.

And do they usually bring bins?

We do. Because we do.

It'll just throw it in the back.

Of the bed of the truck because we do debris. Like, if you don't have. If you don't do debris, it's almost like crazy.

Is that more common back east where.

They would drier climates, different types of grass, et cetera. But like, we are weirdly, like, most people do not have to bag clippings. And they're out of their mind if they're not thinking about trailer setups. Like, if we didn't have to bag clippings, we would have ramps and we would probably still actually do zero turns with the 36 inch. Zero turns that could still get in the backyard. And we pulled them in the back of the truck and that's what we would do because the 36 inches are.

So you just use smaller riding mowers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we probably stand ons.

Yeah. So, people, this is how we talk it out all the time. Like, he explains all the reasons why and then. And then I take it from there and try to translate it to the team. But that was my challenges for March and April with our acquisition and things. And so I kind of, for the most part, I can just figure out things on my own now, Lee and I at Augusta. And then when I run into things like this, rather than sitting down and going through the whole dispatch board, I can just say, hey, this is what it's been going for me. Taken me a lot longer. So what is the solution? And we're doing the right thing.

Yeah. And like, I understand too. It makes it harder on you as a dispatcher. It's not. It makes your job harder too, which is also a drawback from causing change. But as we know, change is necessary. It's not easy, but it's necessary. And so we've determined to do those things. But I know it's not easier for you. That's definitely a drawback. That's one of things. The, the biggest drawbacks for implementing something like this, where you're enforcing, hey, we're not doing this type of setup anymore.

But knowing that that part's going to be a little better at the end of the season because all the new jobs from the acquisition will get the budgeted hours right, and then it won't be so frustrating for the guys next spring, we'll either lose 5, 10% of them or they'll have bought into the Augusta experience that they get and our great communication and then they won't mind going up 5 or $10.

Now, the reason we made this podcast is is really for the person that is either in business or is just about started their business and is thinking about getting another setup. So.

Another setup?

Well, let's let for that I'm playing out the fact that they have an existing business.

Right. And so what would they have started with?

Well, I'm getting there. I'm trying to bring this to a close. So the whole reason we had the podcast either a. For the person who's thinking about getting another setup.

Yes. Or trying to switch.

Or more importantly, the person that's just starting their business. Like which one do I do? Trailer list or not exactly. This is what I want you to think about. Regardless if you're, you got four steps and you're getting your fifth or you're just about to get your first one. More importantly, if you're getting your first one, and that is this. If you spend, let's say $15,000 on getting a trailer this set up. Okay, so let's say you get a nice truck. Not ones like we got with P3 and P6 that are like $3,000. Right. Where we're getting like six grand all in for including like racks everything on a trailer set up like P. P3 all in cost, $5,500. Painted. No, wait, wait. Painted 6,000? Yeah. All right, let's say six grand. Okay, let's assume though you do more of Mount Vernon Approach. Four wheel drive, nicer truck because we're driving farther.

So we wanted to get good truck.

So $10,000 for the truck. Okay, now let's assume you're going to buy a 30 inch mower. So two grand for the mower. Let's assume now like your weed eater and your blower and then you got racks, another thousand dollars. So what are we at? We're like let's say $15,000. So you spend $15,000 on a trailerless setup. Now let's assume you're getting started or you're getting another setup. 15 grand is option number one.

Okay.

Not as efficient. Doesn't get as much mow as on whatever. Okay, now we look at option number two, which is buying a bigger truck because you're going to need usually a.

Three truck to pull the trailer.

The trailer. Okay, so let's say now we're going to spend $12,000. Okay, $12,000 in the truck, which is pretty cheap for three quarter ton. Let's say $12,000 though. Let's now buy a $6,000 trailer. Let's say it's an enclosed seven by 14 trailer, brand new. Let's say six grand.

Would it have shelves and all the stuff we put in?

That's all the racking. Right. So $100,000 for racking. So what are we at? We're at 19,000. 12,000. 6,019. Can you keep that? $19,000. Okay, now let's go get a zero turn mower. Let's do a 48 inch mower with a baggin say 10 grand.

Okay.

All right, so now at 20, 29,000. Okay, now, now we still gotta get the tools and other stuff too. So let's say another thousand for that. So 30 grand. Okay, double, Is that what I'm saying? Y. I'm missing something? No, that's it. Oh, well, we're not going to assume like extra maintenance costs or the fact that you're gonna need a more skilled person to drive the truck. Just the equipment alone. 15 grand versus 30 grand is what we're looking at. Now if you're just getting started or if you're in business right now, $15,000. Let's assume you go with the trailer setup. You can get 15 grand, okay. For your setup, your equipment, and then you should go spend $15,000 on marketing. Now for someone that's just starting out that would spend 15,000 on marketing and $15,000 in equipment, they will blow the socks off anybody that goes out and spends that same $30,000 on just their truck and equipment.

So they'd probably be profitable, like actually profitable over their employee cost.

In a couple, they would be getting a second trailer and second setup very, very quickly. Because $15,000 in marketing should lead to a business that does 150 to $300,000 in revenue within one year. And so there is like, if you're gonna actually scale your business and you're thinking about growing your business, 15,000 in marketing with $15,000 in equipment will do a whole lot more good than somebody who's out and spends $30,000 on the equipment and then no money on marketing. So the bottom line is your savings on acquisition should be rolled into marketing, which therefore leads to growth.

Right?

Right. Buying more equipment does not grow your business. Getting a bigger zero turn flasher. Zero turn. Bigger, bigger. You know, let's do a seven by 20 trailer. That does not make you any more Money. Those are costs. Those are liabilities. They sit there and they cost money.

And if the new guy doesn't know how to drive a trailer, he is going to be running into stuff and causing damage to the trailer.

People look at these things as assets on their. On their balance sheet. They are not assets. They're liabilities. Once you buy them, they cost money to repair. They cost more money to tow around. They make damages, like you pointed out. And so when I buy a p of equipment, my number one question is, how much does it cost me and what dollars am I there for? Taking off of the marketing table, which could. That's what leads to growth. Someone spending $15,000 in marketing is gonna have a like a fantastic future, even if you're doing 500,000 in revenue. If you go out and spend $15,000 on marketing, you're gonna have a 30, 40% increase in your business if you do the marketing correctly. And so I would much rather see someone have that increased. Like buying a truck with a zero turn in a trailer is not going to lead to a 40% increase in your business, period. End of story. But $15,000 in marketing, and if that.

Was me, I would not think that was too overwhelming. I've got all my stuff in this tight package and I'm going from job to job.

Well, we didn't even talk about the fact that it's a smaller footprint. So you can get your truck and your trailer set up into a smaller storage facility. You can just park it. You don't need to have 50ft by the time you have your trailer, the gap and your truck, you don't need that much space anymore. There's no more taking on and off your trailer every single day. There's no more backing up and needing a backup camera. Or worse yet, trying five times to get it just right on the ball.

Or like my guys had gone 15 minutes and could not find a parking spot. And then they skipped the job, which wasn't cool. But they were happier with the trailer list after that in that neighborhood.

I hope that helps someone out there. Again, we're not necessarily advocating yay or nay for trailer list. I'd love to hear your comments below because I know some people are very mad that I promote this sort of thought concept.

But the bottom thought, you should hear my frustrations.

Yeah. And so that he could re let them. Yeah. And so I think I hopefully that was helpful for some of you and some of the things we talked about. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to the acquisition cost, the maintenance is a piece. The efficiencies, hooking up trailers, that's a piece of it. But it really comes down to the acquisition cost and where that money could otherwise be spent and what those dollars are actually gonna do for the growth of your business. Going out meal, hire more people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I hate seeing people tie up so much money in depreciating assets. Your trailer, your equipment might last four, five, six, seven years. Maybe your truck lasts 15 or 20. Those are still depreciating assets. Customers coming into your business, those are appreciating assets because as you begin to sell them more services and your, what's it called, Accounts receivable goes up, the value of your business goes up. And that's what you want. You want recurring revenue continually growing, those things. And it's much more important than getting a bunch of flashy new, bigger equipment. So it's just a debate. It's a debate. It's open for discussion. And again, if you have big, big properties in your market, you're going to need a zero turn. Whether or not you need a trailer is debatable. But you know, you're probably going to need a zero turn. So hopefully that helped some of you. If you want to see Liz on the podcast again about anything else, let us know in the comments below. If you want us to debate something else that we've implemented, things like, we can do that, we can do that for you. So thank you so much for listening, watching whatever you're doing, make sure to like the video and subscribe. We'll see you next time.