Sooner or later anyone who has their own lawn care business will ask themselves this question.  Should you or shouldn’t you?

A lawn tractor is likely to cost you a fair amount of money, which should provide the first clue as to whether it’s a good idea to buy one or not.  Can your business stand the four figure sum you are likely to have to spend to get one?  Even if you buy a used model you are still going to be paying quite a bit to get it – and you’ll have no guarantee with it either.

You should also think about the kind of gardens and yards you currently deal with.  If you seem to be taking ages to mow half of them because they each cover a large area, buying a lawn tractor could be a good investment.  Let’s say for example that you charge someone $30 to mow their lawn.  If they have a huge sized lawn it might take you a couple of hours to mow it.  That’s $30 to you – and $15 an hour in wages.

Now if you had a ride on mower you could probably halve the time it takes to do it.  You’d still get the $30 though – and now you’ve doubled your wages to $30 an hour instead.

So if you work ten hours a day you can fit in twice the amount of lawns you would if you mowed them all by hand.  Instead of bringing in $150 you’d bring in $300 instead.  I’ve simplified this hugely of course – no two gardens are going to be the same and I’m assuming no travel time between them either!  But it’s a simple example to show you the power of the figures and how they can work in your favor when you have large gardens to tend to.

In this situation the $150 a day additional wages you could earn would soon pay for the lawn tractor – and then you’re into additional income you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to earn.

Now let’s look at the flip side of the coin.  Here we’ll see what your best decision would be if you had lots of much smaller lawns to mow.  If a lawn only takes you around twenty minutes or so to mow, there is no point investing in a ride on mower.  For starters the garden needs to be a certain size for you to turn the mower safely; if you can’t get a good turning circle you simply don’t need it at all.

In the early stages of your business you might want to put off investing in this kind of equipment, even if the gardens you take care of do warrant it.  Once you have developed a good and stable client base you can think about whether a lawn tractor would be a good addition to your business for the long term.  That’s the best way to tackle the answer to this question.

Interested in starting a Lawn Care Business? Click here to learn more about our Lawn Care Business Guide.