What to charge for garden tilling
Price it from the size of the garden. Length times width is the square feet. The width your tiller works, the speed you hold and the number of passes turn those square feet into hours. Add the trip, cost the hours at what one costs you, pick a price above that, and divide by the size.
By TailGateBid. .
From square feet to hours
- Length times width is the square feet of the garden.
- The width your tiller works, in feet (20 inches is 1.67 feet), times your speed in miles an hour, divided by 8.25, is the most acres one pass could cover in an hour. The sum is written for mowers, in Iowa State University's guide to compact power equipment, and the arithmetic does not care what the machine is. The same guide gives the figure that turns acres back into square feet: 43,560 to the acre.
- You cover less than that. Turning at the ends, overlap between passes and stops take a share.
- Every pass is the whole garden again. Two passes over 1,500 square feet are 3,000 square feet of tilling.
- The square feet of tilling, divided by what you really cover in an hour, is your time with the tines in the ground. Unloading, the drive and the cleanup come on top.
Three numbers that are yours
- Your speed. Mark off 88 feet, till it, and count the seconds: 60 divided by the seconds is your miles an hour, so a minute and a half is two thirds of a mile an hour. The method is Iowa State's, written for farm machines, and it works the same behind a tiller. The same sheet says deeper or more aggressive tillage slows travel speed, so time yourself in ground like the job's.
- What you really cover. The box starts at 70 of every 100, the figure the compact equipment guide assumes for a mowing job. Neither publication gives one for a tiller in a garden: for tillage, the field capacity sheet's table of farm machines has plows, disks and field cultivators, and no tiller. Treat 70 as a place to start, not an answer.
- The passes. No source we read says how many times to go over a garden, and it is not ours to say. Type what you would really do on that ground.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the garden
These boxes turn the garden, your tiller and your speed into the size of the job and the hours, and put both in the calculator below.
The speed you really hold in that ground. Time yourself: this page says how.
Leave it empty for one pass.
Turns, overlap and stops take the rest. It starts at 70; put in your own.
Unloading, the drive, raking out, loading up. Yours to type.
Type the length and the width of the garden. The size shows here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each 1,000 square feet.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
One garden, worked through
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a garden is 30 by 50 feet: 1,500 square feet. Say your tiller works 20 inches wide and you hold 1 mile an hour with the tines down. That is 8,800 square feet an hour at the most, and 6,160 if you really cover 70 of every 100. Say you make 2 passes: 0.49 of an hour of tilling, which is 29 minutes. Say unloading, the drive and loading up add 1 hour: 1.49 hours for the job, which at $57.05 an hour is $85. With $6 of fuel the job costs you $91. Charge $130 and you keep $39, which is $30 of every $100. That is $86.67 for each 1,000 square feet.
The same garden at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $102 | $11 | $11 |
| $114 | $23 | $20 |
| $130 | $39 | $30 |
| $152 | $61 | $40 |
| $182 | $91 | $50 |
A small garden is mostly the trip
In the example the tines are in the ground for 29 minutes and the job takes 89. The rest is loading, driving and unloading, and it would be the same for a garden half the size.
So a price for each 1,000 square feet cannot be the whole answer on a small plot. Work out what the trip costs you, and you have the least a tilling job can go out for before a single square foot is priced.
Why 1,000 square feet and not one: a price for one square foot is a small figure, and rounding it to the cent throws the total off. If your customer asks for a price by the square foot, divide by 1,000.
What gets missed
- Wet ground. The University of Kentucky's extension service is plain about it: tilling a garden while it is still wet can destroy soil structure, and once that structure is destroyed it is not easily re-established. Its test is a handful of soil squeezed into a ball. If the ball crumbles under your fingertips, the soil should be good for tilling. So the date on your quote depends on the weather, and the quote should say so.
- Ground that has never been tilled. Do not price it like last year's garden. The speed and the passes are boxes above, and new ground is where they change.
- What is under it. 811 says every digging project needs a request a few days ahead, whatever its depth, and names planting a garden: Common Ground Alliance, 811 Before You Dig. Its page does not name a tiller, so ask your state's 811 center about your job.
- The machine. A tiller has a cost for every hour it runs. Work out what an hour of the machine costs you and add it to your own hour, or carry the machine in the overhead of what an hour costs you. One or the other.
- Compost or soil to work in. That is material by the cubic yard, and the sum for the yards is on the mulch page.
On a quote
In TailGateBid you describe a service in your own words, choose what it is charged by and type your own price: how rates work.
A field cut with a tractor is this page's sum with a wider machine and acres in place of square feet: what to charge for brush hogging.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- Width in feet, times speed in miles an hour, divided by 8.25, is the most acres a machine covers in an hour. The figure is the square feet in an acre divided by the feet in a mile. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, Estimating the Field Capacity of Farm Machines (Ag Decision Maker, File A3-24), .
- An acre is 43,560 square feet. That is how the square feet you measured become acres for that sum.
- The box for what you really cover starts at 70 of every 100. Iowa State's guide to compact equipment assumes 70 percent for a 2 acre job with a walk-behind mower, and 80 percent for a 6 foot mower under a compact tractor. Starting at the lower one is our choice. Neither is a figure for your machine on your ground: put in your own. Iowa State University Extension, Finding the Right Machine for the Job: Compact Power Equipment (PM 1976), . (our choice, change it)
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
- Iowa State University Extension, Finding the Right Machine for the Job: Compact Power Equipment (PM 1976),
- Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, Estimating the Field Capacity of Farm Machines (Ag Decision Maker, File A3-24),
- University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, Spring garden tilling,
- Common Ground Alliance, 811 Before You Dig,
Related
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- What a machine costs an hourIn the example, a machine that works 500 hours a year costs $26.60 for each of them, before anyone is paid to run it.
- Trip and minimum chargeIn the example, a job 25 minutes away costs $93.92 before any work is done. See what your smallest job costs with the trip in it.
- Brush hoggingA 5 acre field worked through, from the width of the cutter to a price for each acre.
- Mulch installationFrom a bed's length, width and depth to the yards to order and a price for each yard installed.
Set your price for tilling once in TailGateBid, and it is offered on every quote you build.
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