After I began to use the BioPac'r I started to see my bottom line get bigger. Beside noting that my lawn crew was more productive in a day due to an additional hour or more to bill out, the profits that could be gained by selling the lawn clippings as silage became a very true realization.
On the BioPac'r website I have added the "BioPac'r Opportunity Calculator" to perform some simple calculations for you to estimate your bottom line. As I added up the additional costs of running a mowing business, I discovered quickly that the $100 per hour I was billing out, may not be enough revenue to keep the mowing division off of welfare and I searched for additional ways to save money and bill out. Keep in mind that during the 90 minutes at the landfill when my 2 man crew was kicking off lawn clippings, we were not able to bill out!
So in addition to the labor and dump fees, my 2 man crew wasn't billing out 90 minutes each day. How could I capture the 7.5 hours per week of Opportunity Cost or in other words, How can I capture all or part of that $750 dollars of lost revenue each week?
My hourly labor rate is $16 /man hour + Taxes + Insurance, comes to about $25 per man hour. In other words, everyday we go to the dump it would cost: $90 per ton for the clippings + $75 in labor per round trip + $750 of lost opportunity or a whooping $915 each week in direct cost associated with going to a landfill.
Let me continue the math for you ... $915per week X a 30 week mowing season equals $27,500 in expenses plus the inability to charge $100 per hour. Again, the complexity of making all these calculations is why I created the Online Calculator
I tried mulching the grass clippings, attempting to put a dent in that $27,500 in expenses and started recycling the clippings. "Professionals" claimed this practice supplied the equivalent of one fertilization of free Nitrogen contained withing the recycled clippings. That whole scam was false advertising to divert green waste and sell more mulching mowers! All of us veterans (30 years plus in business) have learned that we can't reduce the annual fertilization needs on mulched lawns because they become yellow and the incident of leaf diseases and insect damage only increased over the years.
The end result, my lawns like yours, being mulched didn't look as pretty they looked like the kid down the street mowed it! There is windowed grass everywhere and the competitors lawns whose clippings are bagged just looked cleaner!

I can still throw away the clipping because now it only take a few minutes to unload them so I save thousands of dollars in labor costs...
... I can ensile them in a Custom BioPac'r Bag and sell the new commodity as livestock feed called Lawn Clipping Silage™.
Until Next Time,
Todd