YouTube video (Mike Andes) demonstrating why charging per cubic yard for mulch/gravel is a poor estimator. Uses an on-site example of a steep, hard-to-access hillside where access and labor dramatically increase time and cost; recommends estimating based on access/conditions rather than a flat per-yard price and noting assumptions (e.g., neighbor driveway access).
Hey everyone, Mike Andes here, Landscape business course. I'm out in the field today doing some estimates and some training and I wanted to show everyone an example of why you don't want to do a project based work based upon standardization. So, for example, a lot of times people ask all the time, how much did I charge for installing mulch, how much should I charge for installing gravel per yard? And that's just the wrong measurement to use. And I'm going to give you an example why in just a second here. But the reason why it is wrong, it's so inaccurate, is because there's so many variables that go into where the material's at. And I'm not just talking like some people say, okay, $100 per yard is average for, say, mulch installation. And then if it's a hard place to get to, maybe 120, and if it's really, really easy, maybe 80. That's a pretty good measure. That's going to get you most of your estimates. Pretty spot on. But this is an example behind me of why that doesn't work. So what we got here, behind me is over here along this entire barren hillside, all along here, it's about 45, 50ft long and 5 or so feet wide. Sorry, there's a plane going over me and they want cobbles. So, like smooth round rock, 3 to 8 inches in diameter. And what we're going to do is we're going to put landscape material, landscape fabric for a weed barrier, and then we're going to put the cobbles. The thing is access. Look at this. So that's my car down there. But you can't really tell until you're at the bottom just how sloped this thing is.
That is about 15ft above me. And to get wheelbarrows of material of cobbles up, this would be an absolute nightmare. All right, there's another hillside that goes down over there to the other neighbors. So in this scenario, if I had to use this as an access point, which there's an actual way around it, but if I had to use that as an access point, it would probably take 10 times longer to get this installed than if this was right down there next to the curb. Like if this was down there next to the curb, we'd come in, bring in five yards of cobbles, dump it, spread it in a couple hours, it'd be super easy. However, when you're up here, you literally ten times that to get the material up here easily. Now you gotta get creative sometimes on these types of installs. There's this neighbor's gravel driveway that goes up here. That point is about parallel where. Where we could dump material off the top of this hillside and fill all of this in. So what we're doing on this estimate is assuming that we have access from the neighbor's gravel driveway. And I'm not gonna spend the time to go talk to the neighbor. I'm not gonna go ask them right now. I'm just gonna put in the estimate that it assumes that we have access through that driveway, and if we don't, then we're gonna charge more. Because if we have to go down that hillside or up that hillside with wheelbarrows of cobbles, which are hard enough to shovel and wheelbarrow. If we have to do that, it's going to take probably two or three times longer than if we go from the driveway. But again, if I had to install five yards of cobbles down next to a curb, it would literally take a couple hours. If I had to come from over there, it's probably Gonna still take 10, 12 hours at least. If I had to come from here, you're looking at 20, 30 hours to bring material up here and do this job with fabric and cut a nice edge in the top of the lawn. So, again, just a quick reminder that when people throw out numbers like, oh, I charge X amount per yard of material installed, it's just a poor way to measure your profitability, because the variables around access are almost always the biggest thing when it comes to installation of materials. Because, you know, you can dump materials. You know, just dump it. Like, literally. Let's say, for example, this hedge, if I was installing mulch underneath that, I can install 2 yards of mulch there in probably 30 minutes. If I have it in the back of a truck or in a trailer and just move right along there and throw it in. You got to look at access points, and you can't be charging based upon just the square cubic yardage that you're installing. So hopefully that helps. I'll try to shoot more of these kind of out in Live in the Wild videos for you guys, and hopefully you learn something from it. Take care.
