How much should you expect to pay your gardener?
Basically the answer is, 'the same as you'd pay any other tradie'. A gardeners overheads are very high and the work is very labour intensive. According to surveys by the gardeners guild, professional gardenersspend around 30% of turnover on overheads. In fact costs are just as high as any other professional trade and include:
accounting
training
insurance
transport
vehicle maintenance
tools
tool maintenance
waste license
waste disposal
It can cost as much to service a mower as a car. Pus we aren't using B and Q mowers. We use professional quality mowers that cost thousands of pounds. And we have more than one, usually at least three, all needing servicing and maintenance. They have a hard life our mowers.
Compare us fairly - ask about insurance, tools, experience, licenses and qualifications.
We need to aim to make a minimum of £150 a day - that's £20 - £40 per hour.
This may be including:
- Minimum call out charge - because a gardener may charge by the hour rather than by the day, much of the day will include unpaid travel from job to job. For this reason, a gardener will likely have a minimum charge of 2 hours labour or similar.
- If you just want the grass cut or something similar, then we'll offer a fixed price depending on factors like distance and time travelled, size and state of area etc and will have no relation to hourly rates. It's not practical to do small jobs like grass cutting by the hour. - Cutting removal is additional as it is an additional cost.
The higher cost of maintaining petrol tools and because they are faster means you'd be a fool to charge by the hour. Why pay thousands on expensive kit to earn less. Look at it from the point of view that you get a better job done faster and fully insured.
It's value for money.
According to surveys by the gardeners guild, professional gardeners spend around 30% of turnover on overheads. Add to that an hour or two of unpaid admin and book keeping every evening, and the distance travelled between short duration jobs.
So in conclusion, if you want to pay somebody £10 per hour, then pay the lad next door on his summer holidays. He will have just as much training equipment and insurance as a bloke who offers that rate to you.
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