Curbside leaf pick up

[STLfirewood]

If this is in the wrong forum please move. Do any of you guys do this. This is my first year with my loader vac. I'm wondering how you go about pricing. Do you go by the yard or just eyeball it and guesstamate.

Thanks Scott

 

[pdqdl]

Telephone calls: by the hour plus disposal.

Established customers: a fixed price, based on historical volume.


It depends on whether that includes a crew raking, or just sucking up leaves off the curb that the customer put there. They usually don't want to pay a reasonable fee for a mountain of leaves that you can load in 15 minutes.

I used to use my trash compactor for leave disposal. Tarp load of leaves, brown bags, whatever: poof. gone in 60 seconds. But it wasn't profitable because the customer typically doesn't understand the cost of an operation like that.

We do leaf cleanup now by blowing the leaves to away from the shrubs and edges, then circle mowing to the inside until there is a small pile of leaf-dust in the middle. No more than one tarp load per customer, usually.

 

[Rftreeman]

I charge a flat fee to suck up leaves that the client has placed on the curb but the amount of the fee depends on the time and effort I'll have in the job, very large yards with many leaves get charged a flat hourly rate for two people blowing then sucking them up in to the truck or I'll leave them on the curb if they don't want to pay for the full removal service, I learned to price this stuff last year pretty much (first year lawn care) by trial and error and believe me, there was more on the error side on many occasions but this year has been good.

 

[mckeetree]

I tried that a little ten or so years ago. Found it not profitable.

 

[Rftreeman]

I tried that a little ten or so years ago. Found it not profitable.

indeed, no at all profitable, it's about like firewood, a lot of work with little return but it does pay the bills through the slow time for me.

 

[wahlturfcare]

curbside pickup

i do alot of curbside pickup with 2 1 tons and find it very profitable. I charge $35.00 as a minimum. After the first have hour it is $12.00 for each half hour extra. I also charge for damage from stuff they tried to hide if i have to. the only time i rake is what is ther in the pile to the loader, i charge extra to move the pile from a backyard or so to the truck.

 

[STLfirewood]

So far I'm starting off ok. I have a couple small landscapers that I am doing pick up for. I'm charging an average of $55 a yard. Longest time I have been at a yard so far is 25 minutes from pull up to leave. My trailer will hold 10-15 yards. My biggest problem is volume of yard I need more. That will come with time. I have to meet with a HOA about pick up for there private subdivision. The lady stopped me and wanted info. I think that is going to be my target for next year. There is a very nice private lake by me I'm going to try and contract with. There are about 650 houses. That would be a nice start.

Scott

 

[juststumps]

i do alot of curbside pickup with 2 1 tons and find it very profitable. I charge $35.00 as a minimum. After the first have hour it is $12.00 for each half hour extra. I also charge for damage from stuff they tried to hide if i have to. the only time i rake is what is ther in the pile to the loader, i charge extra to move the pile from a backyard or so to the truck.

so after the first $35 , you are cool with getting $24 per hour ???? thats very profitable ???? doesn't sound profitable to me, unless i'm missing something here... JMHO

 

[gr8scott72]

so after the first $35 , you are cool with getting $24 per hour ???? thats very profitable ???? doesn't sound profitable to me, unless i'm missing something here... JMHO

I was thinking the same thing. I'd want it to be at least up around $100 per hour.

 

[Brush Hog]

$80 per load/visit for curbside. If someone has a half load they get the flat fee of $80 and for bigger jobs it's $80 per load. I'm usually within 3-5 miles from my dump site which is FREE. It's profitable if your set up correctly just like anything else.

 

[mckeetree]

i do alot of curbside pickup with 2 1 tons and find it very profitable. I charge $35.00 as a minimum. After the first have hour it is $12.00 for each half hour extra. I also charge for damage from stuff they tried to hide if i have to. the only time i rake is what is ther in the pile to the loader, i charge extra to move the pile from a backyard or so to the truck.

Well there you go. I guess it's all in what a man calls profitable. The above scenario won't work for me and is disturbing to me on several levels.

 

[Curbside]

I can't see how 35.00 for a pick up could be profitable. Maybe make a little money if you had 100 yards all in a row but leaves take up a fair amount of room and it doesn't take overly long to fill up a dump box. I would think a pick up fee would have to be 100-150 dollars per pick up depending on how far you had to go and how close your piles are in relation to each other.

 

[phillytreeking1]

I charge $90 an hour and my leaf truck and giant vac have been out for the last month straight

 

[STLfirewood]

I can't see how 35.00 for a pick up could be profitable. Maybe make a little money if you had 100 yards all in a row but leaves take up a fair amount of room and it doesn't take overly long to fill up a dump box. I would think a pick up fee would have to be 100-150 dollars per pick up depending on how far you had to go and how close your piles are in relation to each other.

I guess it depends on what you consider profitable. How much a day do you have to bring for one guy to be profitable? My min right now is $40. I could fit 20 $40 yards in my trailer. I have a nice set up on my dump trailer. It holds a lot more then a dump box. I just have to get more customers. I think it can be profitable with the right number of clients. That's why for next year I am going to try and contract entire private subdivisions.

Scott

 

[Rftreeman]

I can't see how 35.00 for a pick up could be profitable. Maybe make a little money if you had 100 yards all in a row but leaves take up a fair amount of room and it doesn't take overly long to fill up a dump box. I would think a pick up fee would have to be 100-150 dollars per pick up depending on how far you had to go and how close your piles are in relation to each other.

I don't load the leaves in the truck by hand, I have a vac that sucks them up and when it does it chops them up also so you can get a whole lot of leaves in a one ton truck, I would never try to do pickup with out using the vac system and chopping them up, that would be insane.......I can go a good long time before I need to dump.

 

[phillytreeking1]

Yea you can suck up a pile a 100 feet long and theres only a wheel barrel of leaves on the truck , plus i use a f650 chip truck with a sealed back so you can go forever with out dumping . i feel sorry for anyone tarping leaves onto the truck , once you use a truckloader youll never want to even do leaves with out it .

 

[gr8scott72]

I can go a good long time before I need to dump.

They make pills to help with that!!

 

[Rftreeman]

They make pills to help with that!!

lol........they don't always work at the best time of the day.

 

[treeman82]

I did a few curbside pick-ups this year on top of my normal clean-ups. I just have to say that it was a mistake. Every pile had some type of crap lodged in there that wound up taking me more time. Either they packed the heck out of the pile which meant it took longer just to pick it apart, or there was garbage, or toys, rocks, sticks, perennials, just JUNK. One that I did the other day the guy told me that there were some old pumpkins in one area, and a bunch of old 2x4's with nails in another area.

Now I only have 1 dump truck... the thing had been tied up for almost a month with leaf pick-ups... so that screwed up my tree work schedule for quite some time. Not something I was happy about.

 

[mini14]

ive been using my 16hp billygoat for 10yrs now, i fly thru my fall cleanups with it, yes these machines are animals, but for those of u who are just doing the pickup it creates a lot of wear on the impeller, doing it cheap will hurt u in the wallet come repair time, just price out how much a new one goes for.