Most new lawn businesses price by looking at the lawn and guessing what the neighbor pays. That works right up until the season's fuel, repairs, and payroll taxes arrive. A defensible price is built from five honest inputs — and the arithmetic takes thirty seconds once you have them.
1. Time — including the drive
Estimate the full visit: mow, trim, edge, blow, and the drive from the previous stop. The mowing time calculator handles the mower math; the drive you have to be honest about. A crew that's paid for eight hours and mows for five isn't inefficient — it's normal, and the pricing has to reflect it.
2. Burdened crew cost
An $18/hr crew member costs $22–24 an hour once payroll taxes, workers' comp, and paid downtime are in. Multiply by real crew-hours (crew size × visit time), not by wishful ones.
3. Equipment per hour — the donated mower problem
A $12,000 commercial zero-turn with a 1,500-hour life costs $8 an hour in depreciation alone; add fuel, blades, and repairs and a two-mower crew burns $12–18 per crew-hour of equipment. Operators who skip this line are selling their machines to their customers one cut at a time, and they find out when the replacement quote arrives.
4. Overhead
Truck, trailer, insurance, phone, software, advertising, the estimates you drive to and don't win, and the winter. Recover 10–20% on every stop — the business exists whether or not this particular lawn does.
5. Margin and a stop minimum
Margin is applied to the price: a 20% margin means cost ÷ 0.80, not cost × 1.2. And set a floor — below $40–50, unloading the trailer costs more than the lawn pays, no matter how quick the cut.
A worked example
A two-person crew, 45 minutes on site, 15 minutes from the last stop. Wages average $18 with 25% burden; equipment runs $14 per crew-hour on the mowers; overhead is 15%; target margin 20%.
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Crew-hours | (45 + 15) min × 2 people | 2.0 hrs |
| Labor (incl. burden) | 2.0 × $18 × 1.25 | $45.00 |
| Equipment & fuel | 1.5 site crew-hrs × $14 | $21.00 |
| Overhead | 15% × $66 | $9.90 |
| Break-even cost | $75.90 | |
| Price per cut | $75.90 ÷ 0.80 | $95 |
| Monthly (4.3 cuts) | $409 |
Notice what "the neighbor pays $60" would have done to this stop: a $16 per-visit loss dressed up as revenue. Either the visit gets faster (tighter route, bigger deck), or the price is the price. That's not stubbornness — it's arithmetic.
The mistakes that quietly kill lawn businesses
- Pricing off the neighbor's number. Their route density and equipment aren't yours.
- Ignoring drive time. One far-away lawn at a "good" price is usually your least profitable stop. The full forgotten-costs list.
- Never raising prices. Fuel and wages went up; a 2023 price sheet in 2026 is a pay cut you volunteered for.
- Quoting per-cut when monthly was available. Contracts smooth revenue and survive rainy weeks.
Do this in 30 seconds instead
The free pricing calculator runs this exact math with a price-by-lawn-size table. The $29 workbook adds a crew-cost calculator, a route-day planner that shows the effective hourly of every stop, and a customer price book.
Free Pricing Calculator Full Workbook — $29