What should I charge to mow a lawn?

We won't print a price, because anybody who does is guessing about your county, your windshield time and your machine. What we'll give you is the arithmetic, which nobody seems to bother with: drive time plus mow time plus trim time, times what an hour of your life is worth, plus fuel and blade wear, plus the money the mower has to earn to replace itself someday.

Then check your number against the market you're actually in. Call three outfits in your own town, describe an average yard, and ask what they'd charge. That's a fifteen-minute education, and it beats every article ever written about lawn care pricing — including this one.

The three mistakes: pricing by the yard when the drive is what's killing you (route density is the whole game — five yards on one street beat eight yards across a county); pricing to be the cheapest, which reliably buys you the worst customers; and never raising the price, which is how you end up mowing at 2019 rates in 2026.

Set the price you can still do good work at in July, when it's ninety-five degrees and the grass is growing an inch a day.