Spring Cleanup
Spring cleanup can either be very profitable - especially when first starting a landscape business, early in the spring when it’s most needed, or a lot of gruelling, break-even work we tolerate so that we can get to our mowing and other work. This article should give you a start toward making it the former instead of the latter.

Equipment Choices:
Use a handheld and backpack blower for detail work with vac equipped riding mower (Z) for big areas equipped with a thatcher on front. DO NOT attempt spring cleanups without this attachment. It does quick work of getting up old winter debris and “waking” the lawn up. If the leaves are deep and plentiful, we go over the lawn without the thatcher engaged once, then put the thatcher down and go over again, then once more with it up to get the little stuff.

Hand held blowers
A must have. Get a name brand like Echo or Shindaiwa. You’ll use this during cleanups for hard to reach places as well as small driveways when mowing.

Backpack blowers
Don’t even bother opening a lawn care business without one of these! This was the SECOND single best time saver I ever bought. (the first being the z vacuum) – you MUST get the biggest CFM and wind power here. Do NOT try to save money on “mid level” blowers. Get an Echo 755 or comparable from Shindaiwa or Stihl. You will be able to get pine needles and maple “helicopters” right out of long grass and move HUGE pile of leaves effortlessly. 90% as powerful as a big 8-11 HP walk behind blower.

Vacuum systems
There are two ways you can go cleanup wise. Backpack blowers for detail work with vac equipped riding mower for big areas OR backpack and walk behind blowers coupled with a truck mounted vacuum. The latter will mean your riders will last a bit longer because you’re not punishing them BUT the former, we find, is usually quicker and less susceptible to wind. You’re pretty much out of commission using option 2 on a windy day, and we have at least one out of 3 windy days in the fall here. Also, with option one, you suck up leaves as you go vs. moving tons of leaves to wherever the closest location you can park your “sucker truck” is. In general, option one is more efficient. If you have enough clients to use BOTH, then do so, because option two is VERY useful and efficient in many cases and you can also make extra cash “loaning out” your sucker truck to other contractors or even offering curbside leaf removal to the neighborhood. In our experience, however, we find that the debris is light enough in the spring to use ONLY zero turn vacuums. Truck mounted vacs are more appropriate for fall cleanup, when leaves and debris are plentiful.

Strategy
Work “with” the wind as much as possible. Get the drives and walks clean as part of your detail work. At the end you can touch them up, but if you wait till the end you’ll create another mess to vacuum up. Get leaves off shrubs too. If you can, power blow areas into the woods if allowed. Our spring cleanup prices are priced at $80 per man per hour and we average 7-10 times the mowing price. Here’s our system in a nutshell. If you purchased my whole program, you’ll find an excel spreadsheet that will give you a ball park price to charge for a fall cleanup based on the mowing price and some other data.

Park and unload - one man uses z, one back pack blower although if you see that detail work is very high (lots of gutters, sticks, paper, lots of beds with piles of leaves, etc.) then you can BOTH do detail work for a few minutes THEN separate.
Z starts quickly vacuuming up deeper leaves while man with back pack blower gets leaves out of beds, walks, drives and rain gutters.
(Z operator may take time to pickup sticks and larger debris if detail work is high)
Z starts going over general lawn much the same way you’d mow, with thatcher down
BP edges of lawn, backtrack and get leaves out of areas that Z has “back blown”
Z puts thatcher up and does quick “cleanup”
Cleanup any sand in driveway and mouth of driveway. Optional, cleanup and remove all sand from curb on property for extra touch. If you think city will take care of it that week, leave it; if not, get it now because it creates a great impression.
Touch up drives, street and walks and go to the next job

ABOUT AUTHOR
Ken LaVoie has 20 years of lawn and landscape experience. He attended both the University of Maine as well as Rhode Island College and resides in Winslow, Maine where he is a freelance writer as well as owner of both LaVoie’s Landscape Mgmt. Inc. and Central Maine Web. Please see starting a lawn maintenance business and www.CentralMaineWeb.com for more information.

P.S. Save your business assets - invest part of the money into silver bullion bars and save it from paper money inflation.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under Business and Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.