Mike AndesFounder, Augusta Lawn Care and Homeworks · Founder of Homeworks and Augusta Lawn Care

Mowing Prices: Avoid Surprises with Satellite Estimates!

26 Jan 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:13

Mike Andes (YouTube) gives practical guidance for pricing lawn-mowing jobs when relying on satellite imagery. He recommends telling customers that estimates come from satellite data and that the first visit, if overgrown, should be charged at a per-minute-per-man rate (example: $1.50/min per man = $9/hr), with flexibility to adjust after locking in a price and scheduling. He emphasizes prioritizing booking and saving drive time over perfect upfront accuracy and suggests often letting small overages slide to keep operations moving.

Questions this video answers

$1.50 per minute per man (stated as $9 an hour).

$1.00 per minute per man (as an example tied to a $60/hour rate).

Chapters

We are going to tell the customer, hey, we were budgeting from satellite. We don't know what we're walking into. The first visit if it's overgrown is going to be $1.50 per minute per man, that's $9 an hour. You could adjust that up or down. If you're charging 60 bucks an hour, you can change it to a dollar per minute per man. Now I do that after locking in the price with the customer and them accepting and getting a car on file. Then I tell them that I don't tell them up front because there's all these questions and it's, it's like very simple. People do not back out. If I lock in the price and I say hey, by the way, it is via satellite. I don't know if your lawn is three feet tall, if you have four jalopies in the backyard sitting in the grass. I don't know because this is a two year old satellite image I'm looking at. Haha. So like you can make this very easy and just tell them if it's overgrown we have a problem and we will charge on this rate. Now keep in mind, if you're charging 60 bucks per mo, you show up and well, based upon the time I spent should be 71. I personally would just charge the 60. So you don't have any questions and keep rolling. Because the whole objective of over the phone is just get them on the schedule and down the road. You can adj if you're like, well the first visit I had to kind of double pass at once. So I went a few minutes over, I would just leave it. And the whole objective of over the phone is reduce your time. You saved a whole lot more than $11 by not driving out to their property and spending 40 minutes on that drive.