GOING GREEN CAN SAVE CUSTOMERS MONEY AND REDUCE NOISE. WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO OUR CUSTOMERS, THE ENVIORNMENT AND OURSELVES.
OTHER LANDSCAPERS SILENCE CAN BE COSTING YOU MONEY.
Tony Robbins said "If you do what you’ve always done,
you’ll get what you’ve always gotten."
Our communication and execution means we have an opportunity to make a difference in customers landscapes and costs. Increases in labor, material and other business costs typically get passed on to customers. Some landscapers might reduce services to keep prices low or increase how much they charge.
Hedge trimming bushes is common at many properties. Have you ever asked your landscapers to break out the annual cost of hedge trimming for each community? Multiply that number by the number of years hedge trimming has been going on. As costs rise; so does the cost of hedge trimming. The other landscaping companies silence has cost communities money and will continue to cost them more if nothing is done.
Certain properties want to keep their landscaping the way it looks and has looked and we have no problem continuing to maintain their landscaping that way. We look forward to hearing from you and looking at these properties landscaping.
We also look forward to hearing from the properties that are interested in cost control, quieter landscaping services and more environmentally friendly landscaping services.
Steve Jobs, Co founder of Apple Computers said “You can't look at the competition and say you're going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you're going to do it differently.”
Many landscape maintenance contracts use phrases like “pruned as necessary” and “performed as needed” when talking about hedge trimming. It could mean weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. It might be interesting to see how your current landscape vendors would respond if you told them they need to hedge trim every week.
As wages and other costs increase so does the cost each “round” of hedge trimming. Because of this properties landscaping costs will increase. There are ways to eliminate hedge trimming and the costs, noise and pollution associated with it.
A different approach to leaks
Water waste is a "hot topic" in the Vegas valley. Many landscaping contracts call for checking the irrigation system for leaks once a month. If it is checked today and a leak starts tomorrow there will be a lot of wasted water possibly costing the property hundreds or thousands of dollars.
There are “smart” devices that track water usage. The device can email and text assigned people of non normal water usage. We can dispatch staff to assess what is going on and possibly fix leaks quickly. This can be in addition to monthly checks and people reporting leaks.
Are your landscapers talking about items like this with you?
Plant Placement
Many times, plants are not planted in the best location for their mature size. This means they get hedge trimmed over and over to keep them small. Consider how difficult and time consuming trimming and clean up becomes when cars are parked like the one in the photo to the left. It is not always possible to time trimming to avoid cars and work within the time the government allows for noise to be made like overnight hours, plus, for safety our staff needs to work in daylight.
The more quickly hedge trimming, blowing and other tasks get done the less expensive it is and the less / fewer emissions come out of the machines. Some people consider the noise made by machines to be pollution.
Sometimes people complain that debris gets blown on to their cars and clean up is not always done at a level we expect. Again, the machines used are gas and oil powered so the longer it takes to do work the more it costs and the more pollution is created.
This can be corrected by working with On Time Landscaping.
Consider labor costs
- The law in Nevada requires increase the minimum wage from $8.25 to $12 per hour by the middle of 2024. Amazon and Targets minimum wages are at $15 per hour. Hobby Lobby is at $17 per hour and Bank of America is at $20 per hour. To attract and retain the staff we want working for us we offer compensation packages that are appealing and it reflects in our staffs work. If other landscaping companies are not keeping up with wages what are they doing to cut costs? Maybe reducing the number of hours spent at customers properties? Maybe higher staff turn over? On Time Landscaping does not think those options are beneficial but we work with customers to keep costs down.
- "Hidden" costs include the cost to purchase, run and service equipment, insurance, licensing, and trucks. Many times these can increase by over the small contracted increases of 2% or 3% seen in other landscaping contracts. We never want to decrease the level of service we provide to our customers to pay for these increases so it is important that our customers and us work together on landscape management plans to keep costs down.
What is being done at the properties you own or work with to make sure the correct people are working at your properties?
The cost (including enviornmental) to run machines.
One of the major equipment manufactures put a gas use calculator on their website comparing their blowers gas use to others. The average gas use of six "brand name" blowers came out to just over one gallon of gas per hour per blower. We used the calculator for running a blower 30 hours a week. This equates to about 1560 gallons of gas a year. Now consider how many machines get used at properties you manage or own and multiply that by the number of years it has been going on.
There are less expensive ways to achieve a well maintained landscaping with out these costs and pollution.
Fertilizer
Granular fertilizer is commonly used. It is typically is activated when it gets wet and the Vegas valley gets rain only a few times a year which means the fertilizer might not get activated when the plants need the nutrients so it is a waste of money and polluting.
There is an alternative that delivers nutrients to plants through the irrigation system. This means the nutrients can be applied to plants when there is a good chance they need them. In turn there is a good chance that less fertilizer and water is needed.
Water usually costs more per gallon the more is used so the less water that is used saves customers money.