18 Man-hours = How Many Woman-hours?

18 is the number that my friend Adrienne was told it would take to do fall clean-up of her lovely but tiny townhouse garden.  And at $50 an hour, that's 900 bucks right there, before you add the cost of the mulch.

So she took a pass and sent me a desperate email:  Could she hire me to do it with her?  There was a hesitancy because she knows I don't hire myself out as a manual laborer.  Got that, everyone?  But she's one of my bestest friends, so the rules don't apply.

Cut to the townhouse this past Sunday, a glorious sun-shiney day.  When I arrived Adrienne's car had been topped-off with 10 bags of mulch, the limit of its capacity.  Before spreading it there was - I'll admit it - a whole lot of weeding to do, yesiree.  And maybe 30 minutes of pruning.  But 3 and a half hours later it was all done and doing the math, that's 7 work-hours, in this case 7 women-in-their-50s-hours.
 
So the question is:  Is it us?  Is it them?  Or is this landscape contractor ripping people off big-time?

Comments

[Pam L]

Well, not knowing your area rates or what the big companies are charging these days, and that sounds like big-company rates to me, I don't know. I do know that when we ran a lawn maintenance company back in the 80's we would charge about less than half of that per man hour because we had to pay the laborers plus factor in their set payroll costs fica, ins. etc., our costs for gas, insurance etc. so we made some profit on it. Even with my husband being the major labor doer, he still had a crew to pay. If I ever get to the point that I can't do the tedious or hard physical work involved in gardening, I would probably hire a neighborhood kid to help me while I directed if I don't have any grandkids or my sons aren't around to guilt into doing it for me. I will hopefully be able to plant myself, the part I really enjoy, until I just can't make it out there anymore.

[Heather]

I bet you gals did a better job of it, too, because you actually cared about the outcome.

[Nelumbo]

Sounds a definite case of overestimating the work hours...my husband says he always has to check on this when getting work done on cars....but I never thought that landscapers might pull the same trick!

[Carol]

I don't know about the per hour rate, but 18 hours? And you both got it done in 3.5 x 2? That's just outrageous! I wonder if they figured your friend wouldn't be there most of the time, so wouldn't notice that not much work was going on?

Don't you feel like calling them up and telling them they way overestimated the job? And you are going to reveal their identity to everyone you know if they don't stop it? Who else are the ripping off?

[Colleen]

I think they were probably assuming your friend wouldn't realize how outrageous those numbers were. In my area, there are plenty of gardens that are cared for solely by landscaping companies (the homeowners never seem to touch the gardens themselves) and I often wonder how often these non-gardening homeowners are getting ripped off. This gives me a bit of an idea :-)

[chuck b.]

I think the contractor's estimate is reasonable.

I took some hort classes at a community college for fun, but the department's really there for people who want to make a career of it. We were taught to multiply our estimates by 2.5. We wouldn't always get the job, but we would always make money on the jobs we did get.

Also, customers are delighted when you bring a job in under budget, but go over by $25 and there's a lot of 'splaining to do. Better to be safe than sorry.

[millionbells]

Well, remember most of those estimates include travel to and from, which in this area would be an hour at least. Loading and unloading all the equipment. Then probably three of them, two workers and a supervisor. And she'd have to be out there the entire time supervising so they didn't "clean up" something that was supposed to stay or prematurely bury anything with crappy mulch.

And some places charge a minimum amount of time. I've run into that with local movers. They know it won't take that long, but they want to make money.

[Judith]

This is why so many of us do our own woman/man power, it costs a lot to hire someone. If I hired myself out, I'd want and need to be paid appropriately. And when I am able to hire someone to do a job and think the time it takes or cost is high, I get a second estimate from another reliable 'company'. It gets harder to hire someone when your own standards are high--who will do the job as well as you do or better? And clean up crew talent varies all over the place--you can pay big bucks for a lot of leaf blowers making noise. Pam L. mentions hiring "a neighborhood kid to help"--that or a college kid is what I would do as well, when the time comes and it is inevitable.

[Takoma Gardener]

Kathy Jentz ran into technical difficulties, so sent me this:

If you include your pre-planning, trip to buy mulch, travel times, and then add in hours to pay for your insurance coverage, marketing, billing process, etc. - I think you'd see it come out pretty close to his estimate. And yes, they should go over a bit - because WAY better to come in under than have to go over the estimate.
That said - would I pay $900 - no. But I believe in DIY as much as you can.

[Annie in Austin]

Once in awhile when involved in a big project with the Divas of the Dirt, we've tried to figure out what our labor would be worth, and decided we couldn't afford to hire ourselves!
But we're in it for the fun even more than for the end results.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

[Michelle Derviss]

50 dollars per man hour is standard if not slightly below CLCA ( california landscape contractors association ) standard.
What many people do not comprehend is the high cost of doing business in United States.
Consider what a landscape contractor has to pay out even before she gets to your job site - Licenced contractors have to renew their license every year, we/they have to post a bond, there are trucks to be maintained and tools to be bought , maintained, and stored in a covered shop space.
There are employees who require a basic living wage - At 50 dollars an hour that boils down to an employee making $17.50 to up to 25.75 ( depending on the contractors Overhead ) - That employee costs the contractor a bucket full of taxes.... there are the basics such as workmans comp (17 % and payroll taxes, there is mandatory medical if you have a company with over a set amount of employees and if you are fortunate to have grown your struggling business.

Those of you not in the professional licensed landscape industry might be surprised at how low the actual profit margin is on a moderate to large size landscape installation and maintenance firm. In order to stay competitive the profit margin can be as low as 7 percent - any lower and you are out of buisness.

Ask yourself this question - How many landscape contractors do you see living it up at the country club or maintaining a house in the same neighborhoods that we work in ?

By the way, did you estimate in the cost of your tools, transportation, medical, labor, taxes, dump and material fees ?

Michelle Derviss - a practicing landscape professional who is all to aware of the cost of doing business.

[Dan Strout]

Amen Michelle. I wish I had you running my landscape business here in RI.
Strout Landscaping & Odd-Jobs. Comon over and help me out sometime!