Written for landscapers and lawn care routes, grounds maintenance contractors, tree services and arborists, irrigation, hardscape and fencing installers, and landscape firms that sell snow and ice work, in any US state.
The short version
- Find the full cost of a billable hour.Add payroll taxes, workers' comp and liability insurance to the wage, then divide by the share of paid hours you actually bill.
- Divide by one minus your margin.Add trucks, equipment and overhead per crew hour. Then divide: say, by 0.85 for a 15% margin. A 15% markup is only a 13% margin.
- Price each stop by site and drive minutes.Fill the streets you already mow before taking stops across town, and price any out-of-route stop for its extra drive, there and back.
It is tempting to set lawn and landscape rates from what competitors charge, or from a wage with a bit added. Both miss two costs: the burden on every hour of payroll, and the paid time nobody bills for, such as the drive, the loading and the shop. Price from the full cost of an hour you can bill, then look hard at the minutes between stops.
Step one: the burdened labor hour
Start with the hourly wage and add the burden: FICA, federal and state unemployment, workers' comp at your class code rate, and liability insurance charged on payroll. Then allow for paid time that is not billable. The figures below are indicative assumptions, not market rates.
| Crew member's wage | $20 |
| Burden at an assumed 18%: FICA 7.65%, unemployment 3.00%, workers' comp class 0042 at $6.00 per $100 of payroll, liability 1.35% | $3.60 |
| Loaded hourly cost | $23.60 |
| Cost per billable hour, with 15% of paid time non-billable | $27.76 |
$23.60 / 0.85
Step two: the crew hour
| Labor for 3 crew members | $83.29 |
| Trucks, trailer and mowers | $22 |
| Overhead: $180,000 a year over 6,000 billable crew hours | $30 |
| Full cost per crew hour | $135.29 |
| Price per crew hour for a 15% net margin | $159.17 |
$135.29 / 0.85, worked on the unrounded cost; $53.06 a man-hour
Divide, do not add. In the worked example a 15% markup charges $155.59 a crew hour, only a 13.0% margin; a 15% margin needs $159.17, a 17.6% markup.
Step three: price the stop, then tighten the route
For mowing, the cost of a stop on your route is the minutes on site plus the minutes driving to it. A stop off your route also costs the drive back to the route, because the crew is paid for both. Cut the drive and the same crew fits more stops into a day at the same price.
| Crew time: 15 minutes on site plus 10 minutes driving, at an assumed $70 an hour | $29.17 |
| Overhead per stop | $8 |
| Full cost per stop | $37.17 |
| Price at a 20% margin | $46.46 |
$37.17 / 0.8, rounded to $47 a stop
In the worked example, cutting the drive from 10 minutes to 5 lifts a 9-hour day from 21 stops ($987) to 27 ($1,269), with the same crew and the same truck.
Measure, then price
- Measure crews by task and equipment, in acres, linear or square feet, or cubic yards per hour or day, and review those rates each fall.
- Price installs from a measured takeoff: material waste, production-based labor, equipment, disposal, and a stated contingency for rock, roots and utilities.
- No published price survey for landscaping is reliable enough to benchmark against, so test your rates against your own won and lost bids by city and service.
- Track revenue per crew hour, gross margin by service line and bid win rate, so you can see which work pays.
Asked in Greymill
The stop across town:
Crew time: 15 on site + 25 there + 25 back to your route = 65 minutes at $70 an hour = $75.83
Overhead: $8
Cost: $83.83
Price for a 20% margin: $83.83 / 0.80 = $104.79, so quote $105
On your route: $37.17 cost / 0.80 = $46.46, so your $47 works there.
The cheapest margin is a tighter route. Cut the drive from 10 minutes to 5 and a 9-hour day goes from 21 stops ($987) to 27 ($1,269).
Same crew, same truck.
Want me to price the rest of your route this way?
Ask it about your own business
Paste this into Greymill with your own figures, and Cash & Profit works it through for your business.
I run a landscaping or gardening business in [state], in the US. My crew members earn [wage], my workers' comp class code and rate are [code and rate], my trucks and equipment cost about [amount] an hour, and my overhead is [amount] a year over about [billable crew hours]. Work out my full cost per billable crew hour and the price for a [margin] margin, then price my mowing stops from [minutes on site] and [minutes driving] and show me what tightening the route is worth.
More for landscaping and gardening in the US
- Making it through the winter when the mowing stops and payroll does notLate-winter payroll, equipment and materials come before the first spring payments, so smooth your income, take lawful deposits and line up credit in the fall.Read the lesson
- Do I charge sales tax on mowing, and who needs a 1099 from me this year?Whether landscaping is taxable depends on the state and on whether the job is maintenance or an improvement, and the 1099 threshold changed for 2026.Read the lesson
- Can my crew spray the weeds, build the patio and dig the irrigation line without a license?Pesticides, installs, irrigation and digging each have their own state or local license or notice rule, and in California an unlicensed contractor cannot sue to collect.Read the lesson
- Snow contracts, plant warranties and lien waivers: the clauses that leave you holding the billSnow and ice work brings slip-and-fall suits that name both the owner and the contractor, where the contract, the trigger and the log decide who pays, and installs carry four clauses of their own to fix.Read the lesson
- Paying crews a day rate and bringing in H-2B workers without owing back wagesLandscaping is not agriculture, so crews are owed overtime even on a day rate, and H-2B adds wage, hours and travel duties of its own.Read the lesson
- Winning HOA and commercial maintenance bids, and keeping the account at renewalCommercial and HOA work is won on the paperwork that comes with the price: certificates, endorsements, a site plan, and terms that survive renewal.Read the lesson
- A trench, a power line or a crew member down in the heat: what to do on the dayTrenches, overhead lines, heat and mowers on slopes each have strict rules, and so does reporting when someone is hurt.Read the lesson
Open the interactive lesson · Every landscaping and gardening lesson · What Greymill knows about the trade
Sources
The primary sources behind this lesson, checked Oct 2026.
- Social Security and Medicare withholding rates (Pricing, crew costs and route density: the math)
- FOMC calendar and statement (Pricing, crew costs and route density: the math)
- OEWS occupation profile 37-3011; OFLC wage search (Pricing, crew costs and route density: the math)
- October 28, 2026 statement; FOMC calendar 2026 (federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm) (Pricing, crew costs and route density: the math)
- 16 CFR part 465 (Winning work, growth and exit)
- 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2) (Winning work, growth and exit)
- 41 U.S.C. 6702; 40 U.S.C. 3142 (Winning work, growth and exit)
- IRC 453(i) (Winning work, growth and exit)
- IRC 1202 as amended (Winning work, growth and exit)