How to start-up a small summer lawncare business?

doesn't sound worth it at all. it's an equipment-heavy business with a market limited by weather. you'll need to buy a ton of stuff, lug it around town all summer, then store it all winter. it all sounds like a great big headache that won't make you much money anyway. besides, consider rule number one: never start a business in an unfamiliar industry. when i was in college, i briefly worked for a terrible burger joint with humiliating staff policies. i hated it. it was clear that i, and all the other teenysomething employees, were utter losers for being there. but one of the employees was different. he was in his late 30s, smart, friendly, keenly observant. he was good with customers, had a great attitude, and was a sharp dresser to boot. in every possible way, he was *much* too good to be flipping burgers for $6.10 an hour. curious, i asked him how long he'd had the job. "oh, just a few weeks. i'm about to buy a franchise of this business, and i thought it would be good to see how it all worked." this guy was wearing a hair net and barely clearing $40 a day, but seen another way, he was a genius. he was being paid to learn how the kitchen, staffing, ordering, suppliers, marketing, and customer service worked in the business he planned to own. he was able to breeze through the menial aspects of the job because he had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd be the boss in just a few months' time, and then he could change the rules, correct the inefficiencies, and make his own business run smoother. he was guaranteed less headache and more profit down the line. genius. so... why not take your startup money and just invest it at a decent interest rate. then pick a business that somehow relates to your interests or field of study, and work for them all summer. watch them closely and see what you'll do different when it's your turn to be in charge. don't think of it as "working for the man", think of it as "taking advantage of paid training to become the man himself". good luck.

When I did this I used the opposite approach. Instead of expensive commercial equipment I got the cheapest lawnmower I could find. None of that self-propelled stuff. Muscle is cheaper. I would go through a couple of these a summer but it was much cheaper than laying out a lot of cash for the expensive stuff -- cash I didn't have. Your biggest problem will be establishing a client list, which for the professionals can take years. What I did was hook my gas can onto the handle of the mower and push it up and down the blocks, knocking on doors where the grass was long. This worked best in older neighborhoods where the houses are closer together. Most of my customers were seniors, single mothers and renters. I think I got a buck and a half to two dollars a yard depending on negotiations. Of course this was a long time ago when gasoline was 35 cents a gallon and I was only 12. You probably have something more ambitious in mind.

You are crazy. 1. You won't be able to pay for the cost of your equipment and pay yourself and your friend a salary over the 13 weeks of the summer. 2. No one is going to sign a contract with a company that is only going to exist for the summer. They want to sign 6-month or 1-year contracts and forget about it.

how about painting houses. a friend of mine started doing this in college and is still doing it during the summer to make a few extra bucks. i think there's more money in it, and once you're done with a job, your done. you can even rent the equipment.

Hey give me some credit here, I'm not all that crazy. As I stated above: 1. We have access to start-up capital. It is not an issue. Before I posted this question, I crunched some numbers and my estimations show that profit is more than possible. Of course this is subjective, but I wouldn't be asking this question on MeFi if it was some stupid pipe dream. 2. We won't just "exist" for the summer. I live in a city where your lawn is only growing from May to Mid-Sept anyways. Providing this business is successful, we will be back every summer running this business until we're done our degrees. I live in a demographic of an ever-increasing amount of empty-nesters who are tired of cutting their own lawns. Instead of having them all get Billy down the street to do it for a couple twenties, we'd like to step in with a competitive rate and get the client base to be able to do make a summer job out of this. And while we're at it, we may as well take on spring-cleanups and dry fertilization as well. I hope this clarifies things further.

My advice, don't do anything serious until you've recieved your first check. Once you have that check in your hand, everything changes. Fantasy becomes reality, mental paradigms shift overnight, etc.

This is rather expensive. First you need three commercial mowers. Why three? Because one will break, and lawns don't wait. Other gear, at a minimum: a gas weedwacker, gas cans, hearing protection and a trailer. Can you do your own mower maintenance? The mower mechanic will take forever. Why commercial mowers? Because the Sears $179 bargain brand isn't designed to run 12 hours a day, six days a week. And if you are doing anything bigger than 30'x30' yards, you really need one 36" wide mower, and these bad boys cost. You will also need locking storage, either a rental garage or at least an enclosed trailer. Someone will try to steal your gear. Depending on your town, you may need a contractors license. You will also need insurance, both for equipment theft and property damage. If you plan to do spring clean-ups, you will need room on your trailer for the debris. You local dump will charge a tipping fee to drop the stuff off.

The key to keeping your capital and maintenance expenses low, is to buy and operate good, used equipment. If you know something about small engines and basic machinery, and can spend the next few "off season" months shopping around, acquiring your equipment, you can get off to a good start come spring, and be in the black in weeks. You probably need to be able to do your own routine maintenance, like blade sharpening, oil changes, filter cleaning, spark plug replacements, etc. For other than basic repairs, you need a relationship with a reliable small engine shop, too. Starting with new commercial equipment is prohibitively expensive, but you seriously cut into your earnings if you try to use household walking mowers, or light duty garden tractors, because they don't cut the wide swath of commercial machines, and because their blade speeds are so limited, that their forward speeds through tall grass must likewise be pretty slow. You may also need specialized equipment like http://www.usedvictoria.com/classified-ad/2193840&category=lawnmowers-garden-tools, for certian kinds of grasses, particularly bent leaf grasses found around commercial buildings and golf courses. Finally, dry fertilization is fine, but you may also need to be able to do pest and weed control, or sub-contract with services that are licensed for chemical application in your area, if that is a requirement. Most people signing service contracts for complete lawn care are going to want to know that your service is done in concert with other operations, so that your cutting and waste removal operations aid the penetration of chemicals, and work with the optimal watering plans and whatever reseeding and other maintenance that their lawns need in the way of corrective actions. You being the one that schedules chemical applications, even if you sub-contract that, puts you in control of the total maintenance schedule for a customer's lawn, making it possible for you to be more efficient, and keep their lawn looking better, than if they are trying to manage several different services and contractors themselves.

Before I posted this question, I crunched some numbers and my estimations show that profit is more than possible. Of course this is subjective, but I wouldn't be asking this question on MeFi if it was some stupid pipe dream. It's not a stupid pipe dream, but you'd be amazed at how things you didn't put in your calculation end up taking center stage. So many businesses look good on paper -- even really good, well thought out paper -- and end up not working so well. Also, you'll want to have insurance in case you accidentally mow over something valuable on the person's lawn or cause some other form of damage (i.e. the mower falls out of the truck and hits someone's mailbox). Many people will expect you to have insurance and other credential before hiring you. It looks to me like the lawnmowing business has a lot of overhead with minimal pricing--people need lawncare, but they don't value it. Also, what is the long term effect of starting this business? If you're not in it for the long haul, is it worth it to learn the ins and outs of lawncare just to move on to something completely different? Keep in mind that running a business -- no matter what the business is -- will cut a lot into the doing what the business does time. You can learn the skills you want by working for another company, as twistofrhyme suggests. You can also choose another startup business with fewer up-front costs, so that it makes more sense for a short term business. Also, you need to think about your future and setting up connections. Will anyone be genuinely impressed that you started up this business? Many people casually do lawncare over the summer, and it will be hard to present this on your resume as something unique. Are you likely to get good networking going by doing lawncare? Possibly, because you'll be going to a lot of different households, but will people see you as a business owner, or as someone who cuts lawns? If you want to run your own summer business, why not become a food vendor, selling ice cream or hot dogs or something similar? You have fast turnaround, relatively low costs (I believe you rent the carts), you get to meet many more people, and it's probably less strenuous than yardwork.