I’ve been following the articles in various local newspapers around the U.S. (via Google Reader, it’s a great way to consolidate your RSS feeds and it’s free). Over the past month there has been a large increase in the number of commercial lawn mowers and other equipment being stolen. Some people will steal anything they can sell. Some people may be stealing equipment so they can make a living after being laid off from a job.

As the economy worsens, people are stealing more things they don’t normally take. People don’t usually take equipment that requires work on their part from which to make money. But with the official unemployment rate rising to 9.5% in June, people seem to be willing to steal a job if they can’t find one legitimately.

When it comes down to brass tacks, families need food, utilities, basic clothing and shelter. They need the car to work so they can look for a job and continue to get their unemployment benefits, if entitled to them. They need some kind of work to bring money into the household.

Reports from some who have been caught said they felt horrible about stealing the equipment, but they were desperate to earn some money to feed their families. Many said they were only going to use the equipment long enough to afford a used mower that still runs and cuts grass, then they were going to return the equipment just as mysteriously as it had disappeared.  They rationalized it to only be borrowing for a short time so they technically weren’t stealing it in the full sense of the word. Times are bad when you have to rationalize that hard.

Some were repeatedly stealing the same mower or the same few mowers and then returning them the same day while the owners weren’t home. They just used them for the day and took them back. One person was caught when an owner came home early, just in time to see a stranger drive up on his mower to put it away. The “borrower” had been really nice. He changed the oil and filled the gas tank, which wasn’t full when he borrowed the mower that morning.

The owner didn’t press charges and agreed to let the person borrow his mower on days he wasn’t using it. He also hired the guy to help him on the days he mowed. The owner had occasionally come home noticing his yard had been mowed, edged and cleaned up, and found out it was this guy trying to make amends for borrowing the mower without permission. He thought one of his mowing acquaintances had done it while mowing for a neighbor.

This is a sad state of affairs for the business, the country and the world. What can we do about it to protect our investments and jobs? Securely contain and lock up our equipment and fuel. I’ve noticed a lot of local guys moving from open trailers to enclosed trailers, or from open trailers with low sides to ones with very high sides and plenty of places to chain and lock equipment inside them. Locals don’t leave their trailers on the street anymore while they aren’t with them. They put them behind a privacy gate or in the back of their houses even while they take 30 minutes to eat lunch.

Something we might be able to do, depending on our circumstances, is higher another person or two on our crews if we have them. I’ve had a few people call me asking if they could join my crew.

I don’t have a crew and I don’t mow every day because I have another job, so I worked out a deal where a neighborhood single mom rents my equipment for $20/day and pays for her own gas on my work days. I earn a little for my equipment on the days I don’t mow, and my friend makes some serious money part-time. She needed a part-time job to make ends meet.

We drew up a rental agreement with all the terms and details. I based it on the rental agreement the local Triple A Rent-All place uses. Everything is legal even though we’re friends. We didn’t want to risk our friendship over some lawn equipment. She’s made enough extra money in the last couple of months to buy her own stuff. She is looking for a used commercial mower and edger. Her teenager uses their electric residential blower and a push broom to clean up the street and concrete. She says that will be the last piece she buys.

So lock up your equipment securely, and try to hire someone in need of a job if you can. The best way we will get out of this economic downturn is to work together, helping each other as much as we possibly can.

Technorati Tags: commercial lawn equipment, Commercial Lawn Mowers, prevent theft of commercial lawn equipment, theft of commercial lawn equipment

Commercial lawn care is a business and the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) requires that you report your net ordinary income and pay self-employment taxes on that income at least quarterly. Net ordinary income is what is left after you subtract ordinary expenses such as gas, oil, parts, belts, insurance premiums, employee expenses, etc.

If you have employees you must either higher them as contractors making them 1099 employees or pay their income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes.

That sounds like a lot of paperwork and it sounds intimidating. Anytime anyone says “IRS” I know I feel intimidated.

How do you keep track of all this stuff without losing your sanity?

It’s not as hard as you think. There are several computer-based software packages that can track all this for you and all you have to do is enter the information accurately and correctly. I use Quickbooks by Intuit because you can start very small with it and as your business grows, you can upgrade to more advanced versions and add packages as needed.

If you are just starting out, you can begin with Quickbooks Simple Start. It contains the essentials of bookkeeping; managing sales revenue, customers, employees and expenses in an easy format to learn and use while maintaining real accounting records so you can file your quarterly and annual tax returns properly. At a cost of under $100, it is a great bargain. Pros: it is easy to learn and use. Cons: it only runs on Windows-based PCs. I’m sure Intuit will make a Mac version if they get enough requests for it.

Once your business grows, you need to upgrade to Quickbooks Pro. This software package runs on both Windows PCs and Macs. It will import all your information from Simple Start and is much more powerful. It does everything that Simple Start does plus:

• Handles paying employees, bill tracking, invoicing and writing checks
• Keeps track of sales revenue and expenses
• Allows you to import data into Microsoft Word or Excel
• Let’s you stay on top of things by showing you who owes your money and what bills are coming due
• Has over 100 built in reporting templates
• Let’s you create professional grade custom forms
• Track vehicle and equipment depreciation

Quickbooks Pro costs under $200 and is well worth the price. Other packages can be added to it (for some extra money) to accept credit card payments directly, process an unlimited number of employees payroll and manage invoices.

Personally, I use Quickbooks Pro. My accountant recommends it, and when I started my business they hadn’t created the Simple Start edition yet.

Once you’ve been around the block more than a few years and you’re making enough to higher two or more office workers, you can upgrade to Quickbooks Premier Contractor Edition or Industry Specific Edition. Accounting software this powerful isn’t really necessary unless more than one person needs to be able to work on the company’s file at the same time. You would also want to control who can use the file and how much of it they can access, and this package allows you that kind of control.

I don’t have any employees and I enter my own data, so I don’t need this much power. I don’t plan to grow my company to the point where I would need this much power either, but you may want to do it.

Regardless of the size of your company, you must keep track of expenses, revenue and taxes so you need at least Quickbooks Simple Start. Some people use Quicken Home and Business or Quicken Premier, but those are not accounting software packages. They are money tracking packages and reports generated using them could result in an IRS audit because they don’t prevent you from deleting accounts and entries. Quickbooks won’t allow you to delete things that standard accounting rules don’t allow and your accountant will be much happier with you.

How do you get rid of the mistaken entries you make and closed checking and other accounts? You make entries to reverse the mistaken entries and you zero out closed checking and savings accounts. The software keeps track of them because they were used for past transactions. This may seem trivial until the IRS comes knocking on your door wanting to see all your records. They have an expectation that even if you don’t know bookkeeping you should either higher a bookkeeper or use a software package to keep your books for you.

Let’s review:

• You need an IRS acceptable way to keep track of your business finances
• Start with Quickbooks Simple Start
• Upgrade to Quickbooks Pro (or you can start here)
• If you have a larger business with multiple file users, upgrade to Quickbooks Premier Contractor’s Edition or Quickbooks Premier Industry Specific Edition
• If you refuse to keep up with your expenses and revenue yourself, higher a bookkeeper
• If you use Intuit TurboTax to do your taxes, all Quickbooks editions allow data to be extracted from your company file directly into TurboTax
• Other tax software may also allow you to import data directly from Quickbooks; just read the box to determine compatibility
• If you don’t do your own taxes higher a CPA

That’s commercial lawn care business bookkeeping in a nutshell. If you have any questions or thoughts please leave them in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: bookkeeping software, Commercial Lawn Mowers, expense tracking, Quickbooks, sales tracking

It’s been 6 weeks since Hurricane Gustav hit Baton Rouge and Louisiana. It’s been 4 weeks since Hurricane Ike hit southeast Texas. We did not get electricity back for 10 days. I hope those who survived Ike fair better about getting their power back.

I’m still working on cleaning up my own yard. I have a lot of small sticks and leaves in the back half of my back yard. We were fortunate that no trees fell in our yard and that nothing went through our roof. Our yard, on the other hand, was completely covered in limbs, very large to really small.

Why Hurry to Clean Up Debris?

Major storms put a lot of debris on the ground. Much of that ground is people’s yards and it needs to be cleaned up so the grass can be cut again. Though a yard is covered in limbs and leaves, the grass under all the debris still grows. If the debris is not cleaned up in a reasonable period of time it will start to kill the grass.

Mosquitoes use the debris as a hiding place from dew and mosquito control measures. The spray doesn’t reach them if they’re under the leaves on the branches on the ground. We now have 17 varieties of mosquitoes in the Baton Rouge area, all of which are pests, and a few which carry West Nile virus.

Snakes escape rising water in ditches by coming up into yards. They will hide under the debris, too, so to keep them from setting up housekeeping you want to get the debris cleaned up quickly. Make lots of noise while working and you will likely scare them off while you’re cleaning up. But you may pick up a limb and find a snake, so be aware that snakes are around.

Because of these issues, the debris needs to be cleaned up as quickly as possible. There is an opportunity for commercial lawn care professionals, and those of us who work part-time, to earn extra money cleaning up debris or helping others clean up debris from their yards.

Regular Clients

Check your regular clients first if you can because you won’t be able to mow until the debris is cleaned up. It’s in the best interest of your lawn care business to get their yards cleaned up so you can resume mowing. You can show up and clean up debris and then mow for your regular fee.

Another way to make sure your income isn’t affected by storms is to service as many lawns as you can just before the storm hits. That way you have a week to 10 days to clean up debris and get back to your regular mowing schedule. Hopefully, you and your customers will be ready for your regular mowing schedule 10 days after the storm.

Required Equipment

Much of what falls can be loaded onto a wagon or wheelbarrow and hauled out to the front of the house for pick-up. All you need are a rake, a pair of work gloves, a cart of some sort, a small tree saw, cold water to drink, and a lot of mosquito repellent to earn some extra cash. Your teenager can also make some extra money cleaning up debris.

You start cleaning with the largest limbs. Haul them out first. You may have to cut them into a few pieces so you can haul or drag them out. After you get the big stuff out, you can start picking up the smaller limbs and sticks. Then you rake the leaves and bag or pile them for pick-up.

If you have a gas-powered leaf blower, you can use it to help pile the leaves and small sticks very quickly. If you have a commercial lawn mower with bagging or mulching capability, the twig and leaf clean-up is a matter of running the mower over the entire lawn. This is another reason to save for a commercial lawn mower and buy one as soon as you can afford it. It makes tasks like leaf and twig clean-up a breeze and cuts the time down to about 30 minutes from several hours to several days. It’s also easy on your back. Raking is not.

It’s not difficult, but it can be hard on your back because you will be bending over a lot. Use good techniques to protect your back while working. Lift with your legs, bend your knees when bending over, don’t twist with a load, and stand up straight while dragging debris or hauling a wheelbarrow or wagon. Rake both left-handed and right-handed to use your back muscles evenly and give one side a rest while using the other side. Be sure to drink plenty of fluids to stay hydrated, especially if you don’t have a place to cool off after working outside all day. If you have no air-conditioning (power) at home, you may want to pace yourself and limit your outside hours to the morning and early afternoon.

Be Generous

It is reasonable to earn $20 – $30 to help someone else (not one of your regular clients) clean up a yard that would take them days or weeks to clean up by themselves. That’s not much for the amount of work you’re doing, especially if you’re doing it by hand. But you’re also working in the aftermath of a major storm and if you’re able to work, you should be generous with your neighbors and give them a good chunk of your time. If a particular job takes more than a day, you may earn $20/day to help out.

If you have elderly neighbors who can’t clean up their own yards, I greatly hope you will help your neighbors for little or no money. If it were your elderly parents or grandparents living someplace family can’t get to, you would want their neighbors to help them.

Tree Removal or Debris Clean-up?

There are often fallen trees after tropical storms and hurricanes, and that is a different type of clean-up. In Louisiana, to market yourself as a tree removal service, you must be licensed by the state, and you have to be bonded and insured to get a license. Tree removal requires big chain saws, big equipment and lots of know-how. I’m not suggesting you take on tree removal unless you are licensed to do so.

Technorati Tags: additional service offer, Commercial Lawn Mowers, hurricane debris, Lawn Clean-up, storm debris

Scag mowers are the biggest sellers and the ones I see most often locally. A friend who has his own lawn care business bought a Turf Tiger a few years ago and could not be happier with it. Why is that?

Scag Power Equipment is currently the largest independent commercial mower manufacturer in the U.S. The company started in 1983 in Mayville, Wisconsin. They had one gear-driven riding model back then. Now they make over 50 models.

What makes them so popular is they are sturdy, durable and much more user-friendly then other brands. They have lots of safety features, too.

Productivity is the biggest reason Scag mowers are so popular. You can mow taller grass faster because of the air-flow, baffling and ultra-high blade tip speeds. Higher horsepower and engine torque also speed up the amount of work you can do in a day. Adjustable seats, large foot pedals and ergonomic handles protect the operator from machine-induced fatigue which gets work done faster and prevents accidents. The more you can get done the more you earn. It’s as simple as that.

The only big complaint about the productivity of a Scag mower is fuel tank capacity. The Turf Tiger holds 10 gallons. This means more frequent refills compared to some other brands, but 10 gallons will mow a lot of residential lawns. If you are mowing mostly residential lawns, fuel tank capacity is not a big issue.

Sturdy, durable construction from high quality parts are another reason this brand is popular. When your mower goes down, your business is down. Scag understands that and manufactures mowers that have the lowest down-time record on the market. Preventive maintenance is vital to preventing down-time. I have read and heard that Scag makes doing maintenance as painless as possible. The ztr cutting decks are shaft-driven so there are no belts to break. If you have a non-ztr model be sure to keep belts on hand. The spindles can be greased. Oil changes are easy to perform.

Only two Scag mower models are not zero-turn radius or ztr models. They are designed with a low center of gravity for stability on steep hills. If you mow where their is a significant risk of a mower roll-over, the SW walk-behind and STHM three wheel front mount rider are the mowers of choice. Even though all Scag riding mowers come with a roll-over protection system (ROPS), if you work in areas where roll-over is a serious risk, you should use a mower designed for that terrain.

List of Scag mower models

Riding mowers in order of largest to smallest:

• Turf Tiger
• Wildcat
• Tiger Cub
• Freedom Z

Walk-Behind Scag ztr mower models:

• SWZU – Ultra Hydro Walk Behind
• SWZ – Hydro Walk Behind

Non-ztr models:

• STHM – Three-Wheel Rider
• SW – Fixed Deck Belt-Drive

Scag doesn’t offer a stand-on “surfer” type model. They do have an attachment for the walk-behinds that will allow you to stand on the rear of the mower while operating it.

Safety

Scag is an industry leader in mower safety, both in engineering in safety features and operator safety instruction. They recommend reading the entire owners manual before operating the mower, but I can tell you from personal experience the only people who do that are required to by corporate franchise rules. Independent owners and operators will peruse the manual to find what they cannot figure out on their own, but they are not going to sit down and read a manual cover-to-cover.

Scag has an instructional DVD entitled “Tips for Safe Operation of Your Scag Zero-Turn Mower”. Safety training in video format along with a written safety manual are often more easily mastered quickly than reading a text-based safety manual alone. Experienced operators will often tell you they only refer to the owners/safety manual when they have questions, but if a safety DVD is available most all of them will watch it.

Scag also has an operational safety guidelines bullet list on their website which can be used as a checklist. You can copy and paste it to a word processor document and print it out to give to each crew member. Making safety easy to implement makes it work and Scag makes it easy.

I do not currently own a commercial lawn mower and I am seriously looking for one. I am still using my residential push mower and it is hard work with a capital HW. I will be writing about different brands of mowers and why one brand might be chosen over another brand. Most brands sport some benefit or feature over others that may make it the best choice for you.

Scag mowers are the most popular but may not be the best choice for your needs. After writing about several brands I plan to do a mower comparison article to help you (and me) choose the right mower.

Stay tuned for more posts about different brands of mowers.

Looking at starting your own lawn care business? Pick up your copy of this book and have a read: How to Make Big Money Mowing Small Lawns.

Also, check out our new page of Scag mowers, parts and accessories: Scag mowers page.

Technorati Tags: Commercial Lawn Mowers, Scag Mowers

If you have been shopping for a commercial lawn mower, new or used, you have probably found there are at least 20-30 brands to investigate. It is important to shop carefully and thoroughly because prices of commercial mowers can be more than your car is worth.

If you have not read the How to Make Big Money Mowing Small Lawns book, I recommend doing so before you go lawn mower shopping. Don’t get ripped off.

I did a considerable number of online searches for the following phrases: “most popular”+”commercial lawn mower brands”, “commercial lawn mower brands”, “commercial lawn mowers”, “commercial mowers”+most popular, and “commercial mowers”.

When online searching did not give me all the information I wanted I went to my trusty phone book and looked up lawn care and lawn mowers. This search narrowed the number of mower brands in the running to 13. I am going to hazard a guess that if you can purchase a brand locally it is a more widely used brand than if you cannot buy it locally.

The phone book did not satisfy my curiosity completely either, so I put a note pad in the car and started writing down the brands of commercial mowers I saw while driving around the city. When I saw a brand more than once, I put a tick mark next to the brand name so I could easily keep count.

Between the online searches, the Yellow Pages, and keeping count whenever I saw a commercial lawn mower out on a job, the most popular brands of mowers seem to be:

1. Scag – manufactured by Scag Power Equipment, includes the very popular Turf Tiger, Tiger Cub, Saber Tooth Tiger and Wildcat models
2. John Deere – manufactured by Deere and Company, includes the Z-Trak models
3. EverRide – manufactured by Ariens Corporation (Auburn Operations), includes the Warrior, Hornet, YJ, Wasp HP, Scorpion FX, and Scorpion models
4. Toro – manufactured by The Toro Company, includes the Z-Master models
5. Exmark – manufactured by Exmark Manufacturing Company, Inc., includes the LazerZ models
6. Ferris – manufactured by Ferris Industries, includes the IS models and they highlight their suspension as superior to other brands
7. Cub Cadet – manufactured by Cub Cadet, includes the Z-Force, Enforcer and RZT models
8. Hustler – manufactured by Excel Hustler, includes the Super Mini Z, Fastrak, and Super Z models
9. Ariens – manufactured by Ariens Corporation and includes the ZOOM models, smaller than most commercial mowers and priced between $360 and $800 new

I took Grasshopper, Gravely, Echo and Reel out of the list. They are commercial mowers but they are targeted to types of mowing most small lawn care business owners do not do. Grasshopper and Gravely are made for really big mowing jobs like those for a city or county or keeping up Golf courses. Echo is more for brushcutting and would compete with the DR brand. Reel is for turf manicuring and these machines are used after the mowing to height is finished.

• Grasshopper – manufactured by Moridge Manufacturing, models just have numbers, there are a large number of models and cut widths, and prices range from $6,000 to $19,000 new
• Gravely – manufactured by Auburn Consolidated Industries Inc., owned by Ariens Corporation, include the ZT and XTZ models and are priced between $3200 and $18,000 new
• Echo – manufactured by Allpower Industries Pty Ltd. of Australia, targeted at the brushcutting market
• Reel – manufactured by Locke Turf Corporation, includes the CL models and are finishing mowers targeted at Golf courses, and baseball, football and soccer fields for manicuring turf

Other commercial brands I know of but are not available locally and I did not see around are:

• Simplicity
• Husqvarna
• Walker
• Encore
• Yazoo
• Jacobsen
• Wheel Horse
• World
• Snapper commercial
• Murray commercial
• Lawn Boy commercial
• Troy-Bilt commercial
• Craftsman commercial (you can order one from Sears but they do not have any in the store here)

I also excluded the various mower attachments for John Deere and Kubota tractors. Those are available but are targeted more to farming equipment than lawn care businesses.

Are you in the market for a commercial mower? How is your search going? What brands are you considering? Are you planning to buy new or used? Please leave your responses in the comments. Thanks!

Oh, and don’t forget to get your copy of How to Make Big Money Mowing Small Lawns.

Technorati Tags: Commercial Lawn Mowers, commercial mower brands, most popular brands, most popular commercial lawn mower brands