How To Bid Mulch

I'm going to help you learn how to bid mulch but more importantly than how to bid mulch I'm going to teach you why you need to learn how to bid mulch what I'm really talking about is the difference between a systematic approach to bidding jobs and what I call the lick and stick approach the lick and stick approach is where you kind of look at a job you squint your eye a little bit you lick your thumb and you hold it up you go oh I think that project is going to cost about that in the beginning stages of a company that actually works but as your company grows you have to have some way of transferring your knowledge to the people that work within your organization for instance do you actually think there's five and ten million dollar companies in existence today that use the lincoln stick approach or do you think they have a systemized way that allows other people within the office to come up with the exact same numbers as everyone else so they're all on the same page that's what we're going to talk about today and I'm going to give you those numbers I'm going to walk you through the process and we're gonna start with mulch mulch is something that you may come across but there is a way to define how you bid it so get ready because we're gonna work on about bidding mulch we're going to break mulch down into its two basic components materials and labor what we're going to focus on for this video is the material cost of the mulch I want you to be very careful because the material cost of the mulch will stay cemented as one cost but how far that material goes will depend on how deep you place the mulch and today's example we're going to focus on spreading and laying down mulch with fabric at three inches deep now why is that important let's get into the numbers one cubic yard of mulch will technically cover 108 square feet but just for round numbers we're going to make it a hundred square feet even so when you have a cubic yard of mulch going a hundred square feet and your average cost for mulch is twenty-five dollars in this example mulch $25 per cubic yard what you do is you divide that by 100 and what you come up with is 25 cents per square foot that's an important number to remember you also have to have that bulk mulch delivered whether that's by a pickup truck a dump trailer a dump truck you're going to find that the average cost at 2015 rates is about 15 cents per square foot now I'm breaking everything down in today's example into a per square foot basis we want to have a universal way of measuring our mulch quantity the other factor to this material cost is fabric underneath the fabric generally costs about 10 cents per square foot so let's add up those three components 25 cents per square foot for mulch yeah we're going to add up those three numbers 25 cents per square foot for the material cost of the mulch 15 cents per square foot to have it delivered and 10 cents per square foot for fabric underneath that comes out to be 25 15 40 10 50 cents per square foot so your mulch cost when you want to go to a job site you know that it's going to cost you as the owner of the company 50 cents per square foot to buy the materials to lay down mulch at 3 inches deep but we got to get deeper into that this is where you can add in your labor cost right now on average a good price to get for mulch is about a total of $2 per square foot so when you're breaking your proposals down you actually go out you measure how big of an area you're going to put mulch down if you have a 10 by 10 area you have a hundred square feet you're going to charge them two dollars per square foot that gives you the cost to do that area that way when you go to any area on any job site you have a consistent cost across the board and why is that important that consistency is what makes all your customers equal and when a customer feels equal they tend not to question your cost when you lick and stick they're gonna go how did that guy come up with that number think about going into Walmart everybody pays the same for milk bread eggs everything when they go to this store would you go to Walmart if you didn't know what it was going to cost you or if you didn't know if you're going to pay the same rate that somebody else was paying no but because you have in this formula given the customer the knowledge that this is our rate $2.00 per square foot for mulch with fabric they know that they feel and know that everybody else is being treated the same way you have an advantage there so the next question you should have is what if they don't want just your standard double shorted hardwood mulch and they want colored mulch which costs a little bit more well go back to the formula the formula is the material cost divided by a hundred and that gives you three inches deep if the material costs of colored mulch is $35 per cubic yard divide it by 100 that gives you 35 cents a square foot for the muck mulch your delivery stays the same at 15 cents a square foot and so does the fabric nothing else has changed but now instead of your material costing you a total of 50 cents per square foot it costs you 60 cents per square foot you can modify your numbers quickly and easily and you can go up and down the scale but I want to caution you don't give them too many options it's been proven that when you give too many options you confuse the customer I like to stick with three maximum I use a double shredded hardwood mulch as my face then I use a colored mulch as an option and then I'll go with like a tsipras for a premium quality mulch my average install cost price are two dollars for double shredded hardwood mulch material and labor two dollars and fifty cents I like to make it even and easy for my customers for colored mulch and three dollars per square foot for the high end mulch then that gives them enough choice that they feel like they're in control but not too much where you confuse them