Four times the helper's wage, or build it up from your costs?
The quick way is to multiply a good helper's wage by four; the careful way is to build the rate from what your people, truck and overhead really cost, and both land far above the wage.
The multiplier starts from the market wage for a good helper, $20 to $30 an hour in the markets we looked at. Call it $25; four times that is about $100 per man-hour. Owners who use it push back hard on the idea that their town won't pay $100 an hour for mowing.
The build-up method adds each cost in turn. Start with the $25 wage and add about 20% for payroll taxes and workers' comp, so the hour costs $30. A crew member spends maybe 80% of paid time on lawns, so divide by 0.8 and each lawn hour costs $37.50 before the truck, overhead or profit. Those go on top, and the rate climbs from there. The general method is in the true hourly rate guide.
Where the example's $58.12 break-even comes from
The sample shop needs $58.12 from every billable hour just to pay its two people and its $26,300 of yearly overhead, before any profit or mower cost.
That overhead is the familiar lawn care list: truck and trailer payments, commercial auto and liability insurance, registration, storage rent, a phone, scheduling and accounting software, a bookkeeper and tax preparer, door hangers and truck magnets, uniforms and safety gear. None of it shows up on one lawn, and all of it has to be spread over the hours that do.
The owner is the expensive part. An owner who also quotes, schedules, fixes mowers and does the books spends far fewer paid hours on lawns than a crew member does. Cost recovery for a mowing company is often put at about $55 to $60 an hour, so the sample's $58.12 lands in the same place. Try your own crew and overhead in the free true hourly rate calculator.
What does the truck and mower cost per hour on the lawn?
Machines are an hourly cost too: what a truck or zero-turn costs over its life, divided by the hours it will run.
The math is simple. Take the price, subtract what you expect to get back when you sell it, and divide by the hours it will work in that time. Then add fuel and upkeep per hour. A truck that loses $40,000 in value over 2,000 working hours costs $20 an hour before a drop of gas.
The spreadsheet does the same for each mower and handheld, and charges that cost only for the minutes the machine is on a lawn. A yard that needs the 52-inch zero-turn carries the zero-turn; a gated yard done with the push mower carries the push mower.
Man-hour rates mowing owners quote
Most owners in our research want $80 to $110 a man-hour for residential mowing, and warn that $25 to $35 an hour puts a solo operator out of business.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What owners said | Per man-hour |
| 2 | Four times a $20 to $25 helper | $80 to $100 |
| 3 | Revenue per mowing hour at an established company | $100 to $110 |
| 4 | What established companies charge | about $80 and up |
| 5 | Cost recovery before profit | about $55 to $60 |
| 6 | A commercial contract example | about $50 |
| 7 | Where solo owners go broke | $25 to $35 |
These are single owners in their own markets. The example's weekly lawn earns $77.95 per labour hour once materials, mileage and wear parts are taken out, a little under the $80 to $100 band. Quick lawns can earn well above it: a $45 lawn done in 20 minutes brings in $135 an hour.
What profit margin does a mowing business keep?
One established owner budgets just under 17% net and sees 16 to 18% as normal for the trade; the example keeps a 21.3% margin on each weekly visit.
On the sample lawn, the cushion, materials markup and profit add $11.64 to a $43.07 cost, making the $54.71 price. That's a 27% markup and a 21.3% margin, because the markup is measured on cost and the margin on price. If you aim for about 17% net, the markup has to be about 20%. The difference is spelled out in markup vs margin, and why profit sits on top of an owner's wage is in overhead and profit.
Marking up mulch, fertilizer and subcontracted work
Materials and subs should earn a markup too, since you order, haul, handle and stand behind them.
Owners in our research mark materials up anywhere from 50% to about 100%, and put a smaller markup, often 10%, on work a subcontractor does. Mulch shows the range: bought at $20 a yard and sold at $30 is a 50% markup, while some owners price installed mulch at three times what the mulch costs, because the installing is the real job.
On a mowing-only lawn like the example, materials are under a dollar a visit, so this matters most once you add mulch, fertilizer or cleanups.
From an hourly rate to a price per lawn
Multiply the minutes a lawn really takes by your rate, add the drive, and the price per visit follows; at $100 an hour, a 30-minute lawn is $50 and a 45-minute lawn is $75.
The full per-visit method, with the example's frequency prices, the per-acre and per-square-foot shortcuts and the costs mowing owners forget, is in how much to charge for lawn mowing. The Lawn Care Pricing Calculator keeps your rate in Shop Setup and applies it to every lawn you quote.