Mike Andes breaks down why a lawn cleanup cost $400. The grass was three feet tall, took over four hours to cut and edge, and required hauling a full truckload of debris to the dump. He charges $90 per hour for overgrown properties versus $40 for routine weekly cuts.
$400
$40 per week
Over four hours
$90 per hour
About three feet tall
I understand they give a discount, but I'm still not paying you $400. Is there a manager or an owner or somebody that I can actually have a conversation?
All right, so let's break down what actually happened here. There's two line items on the estimate. The first one has a zero balance because they don't have to pay anything right away. The Other one is $400 for a property cleanup. Now, as part of the initial mowing, we do charge a per minute rate. The reason we do that is because we're doing a price over the phone. We don't know if when we show up at the property, it's way overgrown. And sure enough, this lawn, even though it's a $40 per week cut, cut. It took us over four hours to mow this lawn because the lawn was extremely tall. The edges were completely overgrown, and we had to haul over a truckload of debris away to the dump. Also, when you're mowing really tall grass, $90 per hour gets eaten up really fast once you count labor, the cost of dumping all that material at the dump, fuel, and all the wear and tear on our equipment because the grass was three feet tall.
