Running a Productive Lawn Care Business with Efficient Route Planning
Thanks Steve for submitting this article for The Lawn Blog. You can check out Steve’s site over at StartaLawnMowingBusiness.com
Successful marketing is not the only thing that leads to success in the lawn care business. You can have all the customer accounts in the world yet if you can’t service them efficiently you probably won’t be in business for long.
Some lawn care business owners are extremely productive throughout their working day and ensure that their crews are as well. Others find that they don’t get much done and can’t service the volume of accounts that they need to in order to earn good money. Its all about making the most of your resources to get jobs done quickly while still providing quality work.
One of the biggest time wasters for lawn business operators is driving time. Every minute that you are out on the road is one less minute that you are in the yards of your clients making money.
Successful lawn mowing business owners pay attention to route planning. By keeping drive time to a minimum you can service more accounts in a day and you can save money on fuel expenses.
The purpose of this article is to provide some tips on how you can develop routes and schedules that allow you to minimize travel time and therefore run a more profitable business. Small businesses will not see much benefit in route planning but as a business grows in size there are some huge productivity gains to be made by employing the right strategies and keeping routes tight.
Develop Tight Routes
The first step is to try to develop routes that are compact. If you do marketing that is targeted to households in a specific area you will find that your clients should be fairly close by. Be selective in deciding which jobs you want to take on. If a client is too far away from your area of operations then you may decide to decline that job.
Ideally you will be able to develop routes that feature multiple clients on the same street. This is ideal as you can cut your drive time down to nothing if you schedule these jobs one after the other. If you are servicing neighbors you may even be able to eliminate ‘unloading’ and ‘loading’ time as well.
Once you have a few accounts in one street, push hard to get more. Hit the street with a heavy direct marketing campaign and offer people in the street discounts for referring their neighbors. Imagine being able to turn up at one street and spend half a day there doing lawns without having to get back into your truck at all.
Consider buying, selling or swapping accounts with other lawn care businesses. You may be able to acquire accounts that are centrally located within your area and get rid of some that are on the periphery.
Route Planning
Get a good understanding of your route by using a map. Place a pin in the map for each account that you have. This could be done on your computer with specialized software if you prefer.
Remember that there are five days in a week so you basically want to divide your area into five smaller areas that can be covered easily on a daily basis. If you have two crews going out then naturally you would divide your area into ten compact zones.
There are several software packages that can assist with route planning such as ‘Microsoft Streets and Trips’. Such a package will allow you to plan out routes that minimize drive time and fuel consumption. A GPS can help you to get from one place to another but once you know the area in question you are better off making your own judgments. You will quickly learn the fastest way to get from point A to point B.
Get an understanding of traffic flows in your area so that you can aim to be mowing lawns during rush hour periods. Aim to do your driving during quiet periods throughout the day so that you can get between jobs quickly without wasting time sitting in traffic.
If you are to become truly productive as a lawn care business owner and maximize your profits you need to understand the impact that route planning can have on your business. There are some huge productivity gains to be had if you go about this process correctly.
Steve Sutherland
StartaLawnMowingBusiness.com
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