Customers want a deal, and sometimes you're just grateful to add another lawn to the route. Don't fall for that trap. They don't see the time you spend in the truck to get there.
Lawn care pros who are obsessed with maxing out their profits keep coming back to the same pricing formula: job time + drive time (opportunity cost) + fuel. Not just how long it will take to do the job.
A common rule of thumb in those conversations: if a stop pulls you more than about ten minutes off a tight route, that drive might have been another property. You did not just “take a little detour.” You spent capacity you could have sold closer in.
Don't give away that time cheaply. A cheap lawn three neighborhoods away is not cheap once you burn fuel and half a slot getting there and back.
You don't want to lose a customer over price, but customers don't see the time you spend in the truck or the fuel it takes to get there. When should you upcharge and when should you not?
Before you say yes to a recurring lawn, write down:
- On-property time (mow, trim, blow)
- Drive from the previous stop and to the next
- Fuel and wear for that hop
- How it breaks the day’s street pattern
If the price only covers the mow, you are giving the drive away. Lawn pricing should include the travel you actually do every day, not the fantasy that every yard sits next door.
That being said, as a business-person, there are scenarios where it might make sense not to factor in the extra drive time.
The biggest reason you might not upcharge for the drive is when you are trying to add a new neighborhood to your week. Word of mouth from the out-of-the-way customer, leaving cards on their neighbors' doors, and having your truck be seen in the neighborhood can all lead to new lawns on the books. Up-pricing them for the job in this case may hurt your expansion chances.
Once you have more customers in the neighborhood, group them all on the same day to save in travel time/costs.
Once a month, look at the longest hops on your recurring book. Ask which ones would still make sense if you priced drive time honestly. If the answer is “only if I ignore the truck,” fix the price or fix the route. Is the next lawn worth the miles?
Run My Lawn Biz is built for optimizing small lawn care businesses, starting with the scheduling. Our smart-scheduler gives you the best options based on crew capacity and location of each day's jobs. Then once it hits the schedule, that day's route is optimized. If you don't like it or need to change it, simply drag and drop to override (desktop browser only).
