what to charge for mowing

[tractorblue]

Would like to get feedback from the community on what folks charge/pay for mowing pasture. By the acre, buy the hour, and what factors do you look at as far as your overhead cost.. fuel, oil,maintenance, load time, travel, size mower.... ect..? Just curious cause I've seen so much variation here in N. Texas.

 

[Willl]

I'm going to bet this has been talked about before.

Did you try a search on this subject ?

 

[RDrancher]

Well I'll tell you this much...guys around here charging $35 an acre must be doing it for the "experience."

 

[joshuabardwell]

My two cents.

Charge by the hour unless you are VERY confident in your ability to quote and to estimate the size of property. Nothing like giving a per-acre price and then finding a bunch of obstacles that mean you have to go slower than you thought.

Never take a customer's word on the size of a property. If possible, confirm the size using Google Earth before going out to mow.

Depending on the size of the job and the distance to travel, you may want to waive a travel fee. If the job is close and large-ish, it may make sense just to roll it into your overall profit for the job. Don't forget that your time hitching up the trailer, loading the tractor, traveling to the site, and so forth, are all work-time that you are going to have to get paid for one way or another.

Calculating overhead. Start with the fuel cost of your tractor per hour. Now take the cost of a 400-hour service and divide it by 400--that's the beginning of your maintenance overhead. How much will a major repair on the tractor cost? $1000? Okay. How many hours are you going to run before you hit a work-related major repair? Divide that out and add that in. Continue this line of thought forward.

Do you have liability insurance? You do have liability insurance, right? Well, if you don't, that's up to you, but if you do, take your annual premium and divide by the number of hours you work in a year. That's your overhead for insurance.

Etc...

tl'dr: Go look on Craigslist for bush-hogging advertisements and see what they're charging. When you say "north texas," I guess you mean DFW instead of, like, Lubbock or Amarillo, so I checked Dallas CL. Looks like about $45-50 an hour, although lots of people don't advertise their rates. If you're really motivated, just call one of them up and pretend to be a potential customer to get a quote.

dallas all services classifieds "bush hog" - craigslist

 

[PoorPlowboy]

I wouldn't do it for $35/hr even with 3 illegals on $200 Craigslist junker riding mowers helping me.

 

[RDrancher]

I wouldn't do it for $35/hr even with 3 illegals on $200 Craigslist junker riding mowers helping me.

Well maybe with one guy. :laughing:

Follow Joshua's link and it gets even better...there's a guy out there advertising $20 an acre!

To the OP - Joshua has it right-on when it comes to figuring out your rates. Don't get suckered in by the dipwads advertising on craigslist, they're too lazy to actually figure out what it costs to do business. If they break something major or send a chunk of t-post through the side of somebody's house they'll be out of business anyway. No way can these bargain-basement guys afford to keep insurance at those rates. I have too much to loose and wouldn't leave home without it.

 

[Ed of all trades]

You have to cover yourself because people will say the field is clean and then say "O I forgot that was in there" I did some work for a neighbor and ended up running over a horse drawn plow with my bush hog. Bent both blades and one of the blades cut the decking on my bush hog about 3 ft. If I had not had the neighbor sign a paper saying he would pay damage from things in the field it would have cost me to do the job. Also the paper has a way of reminding people of things in the field. I agree with the others IF you do it do it by the hr.

 

[RDrancher]

I ran over a full bottle of acetylene. Luckily I felt the front tires roll over it and stopped before the brush hog hit it. Once I hit a full propane bottle and it blew out from below the mower and shot across the field. I also got tangled up in a roll of barbed wire that had never been cut off of the fence and almost flipped the tractor. I've got scars from the chigger bites to prove it. Tires and rims, axles, broken off t-posts, partially buried no-climb fencing and engine blocks...it's all out there. Funny that the owners don't know it's there.

There's a lot more stories, but you probably get the gist of it.

 

[94BULLITT]

I would think at least $50 a hour.

 

[megaboz]

I charge by the hour, what I am willing to accept for my services, I charge a rate for my tractor (call it a rental fee, if you will) as well. I also include delivery and return fee to haul the equipment. Which also means my truck gets a salary too. (I think my equipment makes more money than I do. LOL) But I take that money and set it aside to pay for the repairs and maintenance for the equipment. You can do some fairly easy calculations for Maintenance, but as for the next costly repair, well too hard to do, but usually include enough that in the expected life of the equipment it can eventually buy a replacement or a good down payment for one.

If your equipment isn't getting a dedicated pay check too, you will be digging out of your own pocket too much and will in the end not making money.