What to charge for leaf removal
Price a leaf cleanup from four things: the ground you clear, the hours your crew is there, how many times you come back, and what it costs you to get rid of the leaves. Add them up, pick a price above that, and divide by the size of the lot. That is your price for each 1,000 square feet.
By TailGateBid. .
A price for the house, or a price from the lot
If you quote a cleanup by the house or per visit, nothing here says to stop. This is the sum under that figure, so you know what it leaves you on this lot and not on the one next door.
Two lots can look the same from the truck. One has a row of big trees along the back and the other has one in the front yard, and a flat price is the same for both. A price built from the ground, the hours and the loads is not.
The sum
- Measure what you clear. Length times width of the lot, less the house, the driveway and anything you leave alone, is the square feet. Divide by 1,000 for the size that goes on the quote.
- Count one visit: everyone on the crew, for as long as they are on the property. Multiply by the number of visits.
- Count the loads you haul away, and what each one costs you to dump.
- The hours at what an hour costs you, plus the hauling, plus fuel and bags, is what the cleanup costs you.
- Pick a price above it. The price divided by the size is your price for each 1,000 square feet.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the lot
These boxes turn the lot, your crew and the loads into the size of the job, the hours and the hauling, and put all three in the calculator below.
The house, the driveway, woods you leave alone. Leave it empty if you measured only the ground you clear.
Leave it empty if you work alone.
From your own jobs. Nothing here knows how long leaves take.
Leave it empty for one visit.
Leave it empty if the leaves stay on the property.
The fee where you dump it. The drive there is hours: count it in a visit, or as a trip of its own.
Type the length and the width of the lot. 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 lot, both visits
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a lot is 100 by 150 feet, and the house and the driveway take up 3,000 square feet of it: 12,000 square feet to clear. Say 2 people are there for 2.5 hours on each of 2 visits: 10 hours of work, which at $57.05 an hour is $570.50. Say you haul away 3 loads and each costs you $35 to dump, $105 in all, and fuel and bags come to $12. The cleanup costs you $687.50. Charge $983 and you keep $295.50, which is $30 of every $100. That is $81.92 for each 1,000 square feet, for the whole season.
The same lot at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $764 | $76.50 | $10 |
| $860 | $172.50 | $20 |
| $983 | $295.50 | $30 |
| $1,146 | $458.50 | $40 |
| $1,375 | $687.50 | $50 |
The hours of a visit are yours
We looked for a figure worth quoting on how long a lot of leaves takes to clear, and found none. The trees, the wind, the blowers and the crew are yours, and no table knows them.
Your own cleanups are the record. Write down the square feet, the people, the hours and the loads each time. After a few lots you can see what 1,000 square feet takes you, and the next quote starts there.
Where the leaves go
- Off the property. Then every load is a drive, a wait and a fee. If the place you dump charges by weight, the scale sets the fee and not the trailer. The EPA's table of conversion factors puts a cubic yard of leaves at 250 to 500 pounds: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Volume-to-Weight Conversion Factors (April 2016). That range is wide. A full trailer at the top of it weighs twice what it does at the bottom, so price a load from your own dump tickets and not from a guess.
- To the curb, where a town collects them. Then there is no load to pay for, and the hours of moving the leaves to the street are the cost. Ask the town what it takes, and when.
- Nowhere. A mower can chop leaves into the lawn where they lie. A University of Missouri article describes mowing them as an idea that appeared to save time and reduce the volume of yard waste, and gives its limits: more than 3 to 4 inches of leaves is probably too much, and mowing wet leaves does not work. Where it fits, it is a different job at a different cost: no loads, and hours on the mower you can work out the way the lawn mowing page does.
What gets missed
- The second visit. Of Missouri, the same article says leaves typically fall over several months: ash and maple in October and November, oaks in November and December. Where the trees drop like that, one cleanup is not the season. If the price covers one and the lot needs two, the second one is free. Say on the quote how many visits the price covers.
- Rain. We found no source worth naming for how much longer wet leaves take to move, or how much heavier a load of them is. If you have cleared a lot after rain, your own hours and dump tickets from that day are the figures to use.
- The beds and the gutters. If clearing them is in the price, their hours go in the visit. If it is not, say so on the quote.
- The drive to the dump. It is hours, and it is easy to count it in neither place. Put it in the hours of a visit, or work it out as a trip of its own: what a trip costs you. Once, not twice.
On a quote, and on the schedule
In TailGateBid the cleanup can be a line charged by the 1,000 square feet and the hauling a line charged by the load, so both grow with the job. TailGateBid for lawn care and landscaping has a sample quote with leaves hauled away by the load.
A job can repeat every so many days, and the visits are made for you, so the second cleanup is on the schedule the day the first one is: how scheduling works. And if your hour is still a guess, work out what an hour costs you before anything else here.
If you hang lights at the same houses once the leaves are down, that job has its own sum: what to charge for Christmas light installation.
The same trees fill the gutters, which are priced by the foot: what to charge for gutter cleaning. And once the leaves are gone the driveway is the next job: what to charge for snow removal.
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.
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
Related
- Lawn mowingFrom a lot's length and width to the hours on the mower and a price for each 1,000 square feet.
- Lawn care and landscapingQuotes by the 1,000 square feet and the cubic yard, and jobs that repeat by themselves.
- 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.
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- SchedulingDay, week and month, jobs that repeat, and an email when you are on your way.
Put the cleanup and the hauling on one TailGateBid quote, each as its own line, and send it from your phone.
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