Most nights this month, Tyler has backed my dad's little utility trailer into our carport around 7:30, unhooked it, and come inside with grass stuck to his jeans up past the ankle. He drinks a full glass of water standing at the sink and says the same thing every time: "Good yard." Even when it clearly wasn't.
Two months ago he had no customers, no mower and no plan beyond a few comments over supper about how many yards in town looked like nobody had touched them since fall. Now he mows six yards a week. Here's how that happened and what it pays.
How it started
The first customer was our landlord. Mr. Dale owns our duplex and two others in town, and he mows all three himself, slowly, with a knee that complains the whole time. In early May, Tyler offered to take the other two off his hands. Mr. Dale offered $30 a yard. Tyler said $35. Mr. Dale said he'd been robbed and shook on it.
After that it was word of mouth, the small-town kind. A woman I work with asked if he'd do her mother's yard. A retired couple who spend every weekend at Long Branch Lake heard about it from her. A widower on the north side whose son lives in St. Louis called. A young family where both parents work twelve-hour shifts flagged Tyler down while he was mowing next door to them. By mid-June he had six.
He charges $35 a week per yard. That covers mowing, trimming along the fences and walks, and blowing the clippings off the driveway. Most of these are regular in-town lots, around a quarter acre.
The mower came off Facebook Marketplace for $180 from a man out near Bevier who had just bought a rider. It's a 21-inch push mower, a few years old, and it started on the second pull when Tyler tried it in the man's driveway. Tyler changed the oil, put in a new spark plug and air filter, and sharpened the blade. That was $24 in parts. He already owned a string trimmer and a leaf blower.
The trailer is my dad's. Tyler's truck bed sits high, and wrestling a mower up two ramps after a full shift at the plant is how a person hurts his back. Dad's trailer has a fold-down gate, so the mower just rolls on. Dad wouldn't take rent for it. His price is that Tyler mows his place out in the county once a month, which Tyler would have done anyway.
What it's made so far
| Weeks | Yards mowed | Money in |
|---|---|---|
| May 12 to May 30 | 10 | $350 |
| June 2 to June 20 | 15 | $525 |
| Total so far | 25 | $875 |
Against that: the $180 mower, $24 in parts, $38 in gas and $12 of trimmer line. That's $254. So in about six weeks, the business has paid for its own mower and then some.
Now that he's up to six yards, a full week brings in $210. Each yard takes about 50 minutes with the trimming, plus loading and driving, so call it six hours a week. That's $35 an hour on paper. Take out about $10 a week in gas and the 25% we set aside for taxes, and it's closer to $25 an hour. That's about what he makes at the plant. The difference is the heat. A lot of those hours have been in the 90s.
Taxes and where the money goes
This is self-employment money, so nothing gets taken out of it the way it does from a paycheck. I'm not a tax person, and we'll sit down with someone who is before next spring. What we're doing for now is setting aside 25% of every payment the day it comes in, into a separate savings bucket we call the tax bucket. So far that's $218.75. It might be more than we need. I'd rather be wrong in that direction.
Customers pay however they like. Two leave cash in an envelope under the doormat, one writes a check every two weeks, and the rest use a payment app. Every payment goes on the Extra tab in the sheet the night it comes in, with the customer's name and the date.
After the tax bucket and gas, the rest goes to the house fund every Sunday night. If all six yards hold through September, that's 15 more weeks at $210, or around $3,150 more this season. August usually dries everything up around here, though, and nobody needs their yard mowed when it's brown. My real guess for the whole year is about $3,300.
Mowing six yards won't buy a house. But $3,300 is real money to us. It's more than eleven months of the car payment we finished in March, earned on evenings and Saturdays with a mower somebody else was done with. Tonight he has two yards left for the week and a sunburn on the back of his neck, and he still says it's a good deal.
