During the spring, summer, and early fall months, this is a great time of the year for those who are in the lawn mowing service business. A person can find many people who will want their lawns mowed and trimmed. These people are willing to pay for this type of service because of their busy lifestyles or because of health issues which prevent them from keeping their lawns mowed and trimmed.
During my brothers and me junior and high school years, we were able to work after school and during the summer by mowing lawns. Our lawn mowing business started with six yards in the neighborhood we lived in. By the time my older brother had graduated high school, we had 23 yards we mowed every week or two. When my younger brother took over some of the yards when our older brother went on to his military stint, we had gained another five yards to mow. During the nine years of our lawn mowing business, we used one lawn mower among the three of us and created a schedule of days and times each of us could use the lawn mower to mow the lawns we had to take care of.
Although we did have the use of our parent’s lawn mower to use during this time, we did help in the up keep, gas, and purchasing of any new lawn mowers they needed for our own yard. Part of the deal for us to use the lawn mower for our home business was we had to mow our own lawn at no charge. Which by the way was no small feat since it was half an acre itself.
While this was more than 30 years ago, starting your own lawn mowing business can still be a profitable home business for anyone. It really doesn’t take much money to start a lawn mowing business. Now your thinking “Yea right, this can cost more than you think.” Seriously, it doesn’t cost as much as you think to start a lawn mowing business. The initial investment to start a lawn mowing service is a push lawn mower, a gas can, and lawn mower oil.
Lawn Mower Maintenance
Even a cheap lawn mower can last you many years with the right maintenance. The right maintenance includes the following:
• Air filters. Changing the air filters once during the mowing season and at the end of the mowing season will add years to your lawn mowers life.
• Oil Changes. Sure your lawn mower needs to have oil placed in it just like your car and changed from time to time. This will help the life of the engine.
• Spark plugs. Cleaning and replacing the spark plug on your lawn mower is another way to tune up the engine of your lawn mower.
• Lawn mower blades. You will need to sharpen the lawn mower blade after every five or six mows for better cuts for the lawns. It would also be wise to have at least one on hand that is kept sharp at all times incase a rock or something hard is run over with the lawn mower that wasn’t seen during the pick up process of the yard.
• Start pull strings. Over time these become worn and will break. So they will need to be replaced.
• 55-gallon trash can with bags. (Optional) You can purchase these items to haul off any yard clippings, but you will want to add this option in the price of your lawn mowing prices. By the way, you can use the grass clippings as compost for gardens, which is another additional lawn maintenance topic that can be looked into as part of your lawn service.
A lawn mowing service can be used by junior and high school students, college students, and as a full or part-time home business. This will allow students in junior or high school to earn money for items they want to purchase while leaving them time to do the things they want to do during the spring and summer months. For college students, a lawn mowing service is a great way to help pay for tuition and other incidentals during their college terms. For adults who need to find work due to layoffs or other reasons, can start their own lawn mowing service to help bring in a daily, weekly or monthly income. A lawn mowing service is a great part-time business to earn an extra income to pay off bills or to save money for other things later in life.
You can use your existing lawn mower to start your home based lawn mowing service or you can comparison shop for lawn mowers at any retail outlet that sells lawn mowers. You do not have to purchase a top of the line lawn mower to get your lawn mowing service going. Like I mentioned earlier, a cheaper low-end model will work fine with the right maintenance. Many of these low-end mowers are made by the high-end mower companies to fit into anyone’s budget
You will want to set up a price guide for certain sizes of yards, include a price for disguarding lawn clippings and to trim a yard around the home, garage, sheds, trees, fences, and sidewalks. You can check out the prices of your competition to guage how much they are charging for their services. However, you will want to stay in the normal range of prices or just a little lower to stay in business and gain more clients.
You can advertise your lawn mowing service in newspapers, hang and pass out flyers, and create your own business cards. Any client you have who likes your work will also spread your lawn mowing business by word of mouth as well.
