How many lawns can you mow in a day?

The size of lawns you are mowing matters. 

To answer this question, I would need to make an assumption. I assume that someone asking this question would be likelier to mow average-sized domestic lawns, not large commercial properties. I am basing my answers on my personal experiences running lawn mowing businesses ranging from 1-500 lawns. 

How many lawns can you mow in a day? After years of timing myself, I have worked out that I arrive at a new lawn on average every 40 minutes. That works out at around 12 lawns in an eight-hour day, including travelling time. When I have someone working with me, I arrive at a lawn every 30 minutes, which works at 16 lawns daily. 

Now I know what you are thinking. “This guy may know something about mowing lawns, but he knows nothing about maths” The formula should be one person = 12 lawns and two people = 24 lawns. Right. 

Wrong. A two-person crew will not run at the same speed as a solo operator. They will get through the work quickly but only shave a third off the time.

I will give you an example. 

Working solo.

I do around 40 lawns in a 20-hour week. But many of my lawns are smaller (by design), so if you allow 40 minutes from the moment you arrive on a property to the moment you start on the next, you will get through around 30 lawns in that same amount of time. I would say that would be the average. 

We live and work in a built-up area, so you will find a big difference in the number of lawns you can get through if you live in a place where the quarter-acre section is the norm. 

How much grass can you cut in an hour?

This will depend on the mower you are using. The average speed with a push mower is around 4.82 km in an hour; with a 21-inch mower, you would mow approximately 0.60 of an acre. 

You will find a good calculator here if you want to play around with different mowers and speeds. (great for working out ride-on quotes too)

What is a reasonable workload for a lawn mowing business? 

From my experience, I have found that solo lawn care operators will start to struggle with the workload once they push past 100 average-size lawns on a fortnightly cut. You would expect that if they are mowing 12 properties a day, they should be able to get up to 120 accounts, but this is not the case. 

Not every day will run perfectly all of the time. Equipment breaks down, and the weather will not always be on your side. Try mowing a dozen lawns on a rainy day, and you will see what I mean. 

If you do not mind working the occasional Saturday or public holiday when you need to catch up, you could run as high as 120 accounts. This can be stressful if you start running behind, and it could go off the rails quickly. I would not recommend it for that reason. Always give yourself a bit of wiggle room. 

How many lawn accounts can a two-person crew manage? 

A two-person crew should be able to manage around 160 fortnightly lawns comfortably. You will still have to deal with bad days, but with two people, at least you have someone that knows the lawns if the other guy is sick. This also requires someone else to run the business because the two-person crew will not have time for quoting: admin or repairs. 

When should you hire someone? 

When I first started mowing lawns, I was happy building just my business. I rushed out and did as many quotes as I could as I had plenty of time and few lawns. As the business grew, it became harder and harder to fit in quotes. I usually employed someone to help me at the point when I was struggling to find time to quote (around 100 lawns). Bringing on a worker would allow me to push past the 120 account point and upwards.

There were a couple of alternatives to bringing on a worker that I would sometimes do.

1. Price increase all my lower-paying lawns (the bottom 20%) This would increase my income and reduce my workload. 
2. Sell some of my lower-paying lawns. With the really badly priced jobs, I would simply price them increase and keep them on my books if they agreed. 
3. Sometimes I would do both. I would say to the customer, “sorry, if I am to continue mowing your lawn, I would need to raise my price by xx amount” If you are not happy with the new price, I do have an acquaintance that is prepared to keep doing the job at the old price. This needs to have two things in place to work. 
   1. The lawn cannot be underpriced by industry standards. Just underpriced compared to your other work.
   2. You need to have already a buyer lined up. 

My solo worker setup. 

As I stated earlier, a one-person operator is more efficient. However, this is from a timewise perspective. Asset wise it does leave assets a little underutilised. 

When I had five solo operators working, I found that my turnover dropped whenever I needed to pair them up for any reason. I had no issues with motivation as I would let them go home when they finished their work. Many of them worked through their breaks or took short lunches as they preferred to finish early. 

If you go down this road, you need to be on top of quality control. We had an agreement with our workers that if they were getting through the work, finishing early, and someone complained, they fixed the job in their own time. 

The main issue I had came about if someone was sick. I got around this by having everyone on solid, productive six-hour days. This way, if someone was ill, we simply divided their workload amongst everyone else, so they had an eight-hour day.

Not everyone we hired was up to solo work, so I suggest you ask the right questions in the interview and start with a trial agreement. 

A two-person crew. 

You will always lose a bit of time with a two-person crew. If the driver stops for anything (food, gas), neither of them is producing income. 

They should keep each other accountable as long as they get along and are good workers. Just ensure they both know how to do all aspects of the job. This will avoid confusion later on down the line and means they can work solo if needed. 

A big bonus is that the work continues even when one of them is sick. However, it will be at a slower rate. It is also easier to schedule holidays as you can replace the team member who is away, and the other guy knows what he needs to do. 

Closing thoughts.

If I were to grow my lawn care business again, I think I would start with a few solo operators and test the two-crew method once I had the sole operators running successfully. 

Sometimes it is all about the way you manage your business and your lifestyle choices. I have found that by building and selling lower-paying lawns yearly, I can make almost the same profit as I did with five vehicles on the road.  

I still average eight lawns in my 4 hour days, although at 60, I am not sure I would have the stamina required for a full eight-hour day mowing lawns anymore. 

These days I prefer to spend time writing about mowing lawns instead of actually cutting them. This is easier on my bones and an excellent way to share what I have learned over the last 35 years.