Are your lawn and landscape crews really well-organized?
Can your team find their tools in a quick and efficient manner?
How about the supplies needed to keep the crew moving throughout the day like gasoline, roundup and weedeater string?
These are questions that need to be answered – truthfully – when you consider strategies for improving productivity.
Let’s begin by looking at three photos.
First, here’s a photo of a small truck designed for a lawn maintenance crew. The truck is equipped with an enclosed body and built-in loading ramp that doubles as the locking rear door. You can take a look at a video about this little truck by clicking here.
Second, take a look at the photo below of the inside of this lawn maintenance truck. Now quickly answer these three questions:
- How many lawn and landscape tools are in this photo?
- What is the total cost of the tools seen in the photo?
- How much does the list of tools weigh?
Here’s what we know about this photo and becoming a wealthy landscaper.
When lawn service crews are well-organized, productivity soars. The foundation of organized lawn maintenance crews is tool organization. And the tool organization found in this photo starts with a simple tool checklist like the one found in the image below.
Do you have a tool list like the one above for your crews?
Have you carefully considered each and every tool required to provide the services you have agreed to provide for your customers? Have you put it into writing?
Have you shared this list with your crew to help keep them organized and hold them accountable when tools are lost?
Getting your crews well-organized is a high payoff activity. A checklist can be used to help you plan the costs to set up a crew.
But equally important is to calculate the weight of your tools so you can right-size your truck. Buying trucks that are oversized for the job leads to higher capital costs per crew. Buying smaller trucks reduces fuel consumption and lowers insurance premiums. Lowering fuel and insurance costs is a winning idea.
But the biggest winning idea is keeping your crews well organized. Since labor is (by far) is the biggest cost in your lawn or landscape company, anything you do to improve productivity can benefit your bottom line for many years.
Here’s the answers to the questions we presented above.
- How many lawn and landscape tools are in the photo above? 25 tools plus supplies
- What is the total cost of these tools seen in the photo? – $20,585
- How much does the list of tools weigh? – 2991 pounds
Getting crews well-organized is one of my favorite things to do. I used these ideas to build a super-successful lawn service company (photo below).
I’ve been sharing these strategies with some of the most successful lawn companies across North America since founding Super Lawn Trucks in 1998. We would be proud to work with you too.
Happy Landscaping,
Tony Bass, founder
866-923-0027
PS – you can download a sample weight chart here for use in your company.
