How to Price Aeration: A Rule-Based Method for Lawn Pros
Aeration is a short job with a long list of ways to underprice it. A tight gate, hard clay or an unmarked sprinkler head can turn a good-looking quote into a bad afternoon. Fall and spring stack the requests up, so you need prices you can give without stopping to think.
This post shows how to price aeration with rules instead of gut feel. The method is built for the fall rush. Every dollar figure below is a labeled hypothetical, so swap in your own numbers.
What changes the price of an aeration job?
Four things move the price. Check them in this order every time, because each one builds on the one before.
- Size. The turf you'll actually aerate, not the lot. House, drive, patio and beds come out.
- Access. Gates, slopes, fences, tight side yards and a long walk from the truck.
- Condition. Compacted clay, thick thatch, rocks, roots and sprinkler heads nobody marked.
- Add-ons. Overseeding, starter fertilizer or a second pass over a hard lawn.
Size is the only input you can measure from your truck seat. The other three need a rule, because you won't see them until you're standing on the lawn. So ask for a gate width and a sprinkler yes or no on your quote form, and let the rule read the answer.
Flag every sprinkler head before the machine comes out. A tine through a head is a repair bill that can wipe out the whole job.
How to price aeration with five quote rules
Write these once, then use them on every lead. Skipping a step is how a Friday evening quote loses money.
- Measure the turf. Use a satellite measurement and subtract the house, drive, patio and beds. Round up to the next 500 sq ft.
- Multiply by a base rate per 1,000 sq ft. A per-foot rate is a fraction of a cent, and it invites typos. Per 1,000 keeps the math readable.
- Check the minimum. If the size charge lands under your minimum, charge the minimum. The drive, the load and the setup cost the same on a small yard.
- Add access and condition charges. Make each one an if-then rule. If the gate is narrower than the aerator, add the hand-carry fee. If the soil is compacted clay, add the second-pass fee.
- Add overseeding as its own line. Price it by the same 1,000 sq ft, with the seed in the rate.
Then run one sanity check. Divide the quote by the hours your crew will spend on site, drive time included. If the answer is under your hourly floor, raise the minimum, not the base rate, because small lawns are where the money leaks.
Keep the rules in a sheet anyone on the crew can read. A rule you have to remember is a rule you'll skip.
How much should you charge for aeration per sq ft?
Quote per 1,000 sq ft and let the rule do the math. The right rate is yours, not ours, because it depends on your machine, your fuel, your crew cost and what the next lawn would pay you for the same hour.
Say your rate sheet looks like the one below. These are made-up numbers that show the shape of the rules, not a price to copy.
| Input | If-then rule | Hypothetical charge |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Turf area times the base rate | $9 per 1,000 sq ft |
| Minimum | If the size charge is lower, charge this instead | $85 |
| Access | If the gate is narrower than the aerator, add a hand-carry fee | plus $20 |
| Condition | If the soil is compacted clay or thatch is thick, add a second pass | plus $15 |
| Overseeding | Turf area times the seeding rate, seed included | $14 per 1,000 sq ft |
Say a lawn measures 12,000 sq ft of turf, with a narrow gate and hard clay. Twelve times $9 comes to $108, plus $20 for the gate and $15 for the clay, so the aeration total comes to $143.
Say a second lawn measures 8,000 sq ft. Eight times $9 comes to $72, which is under the $85 minimum, so the quote is $85. Without the minimum, you'd set up the machine for $72 and a stop that can take nearly as long as the bigger one.
Per acre works the same way, with a tier. An acre is 43,560 sq ft, and big lawns usually go faster per sq ft, so add a lower rate past a size breakpoint.
Say your rate drops to $7 per 1,000 past 20,000 sq ft. The first 20,000 sq ft is 20 times $9, which comes to $180. The remaining 23,560 sq ft is about 23.56 times $7, which comes to about $165, so the acre totals about $345.
How do you price aeration and overseeding together?
Price them as two lines on one quote. The customer sees one visit, but you see two sets of costs. Two lines let a customer drop the seed without a re-quote, and they let you change the seed rate when your supplier changes.
Say that same 12,000 sq ft lawn gets overseeded at $14 per 1,000, seed included. Twelve times $14 comes to $168. Add the $143 aeration and the total comes to $311.
Seed is bought by the bag, so check your seeding rate against the bag price every season. If your supplier raises the price, change one number in the sheet, and every future quote updates.
Here's a reply you can copy. Fill in the capitals from your rules, and keep the two lines separate.
Hi NAME, here's your quote for ADDRESS. Core aeration, TURF SIZE sq ft: AMOUNT. Notes: any gate, clay or other charges, and why. Overseeding, seed included, optional: AMOUNT. Total if you take both: AMOUNT. This price holds for NUMBER days. Pick a time here: BOOKING LINK.
Screen out bad jobs, then quote the rest fast
Not every request should get an instant price. Some conditions change the job so much that no rule can see them. Hold the quote and take a quick look first when:
- The lawn was laid or seeded recently and may not be established.
- There's an irrigation system and nobody can mark the heads.
- The satellite image is blocked by trees, so the turf size is a guess.
- The lot has heavy rock or buried lines you can't see.
- The request is for a week your crew has already closed.
Everything else gets priced by the rules, and speed matters here.
Say a request comes in at 7:40 on a Friday evening in late September for the $311 job above. Suppose you reply Monday morning, and the owner already booked whoever answered Friday night. That's $311 gone.
Say your weekend brings four requests like it, and all four are answered late. The total comes to four times $311, which is $1,244.
A Harvard Business Review study from 2011 found that the companies that did reply to a web lead took 42 hours on average. The same Harvard Business Review analysis found that reaching out within the hour made a company about 7x more likely to qualify the lead than waiting even one hour more.
Workely's Price workflow handles the quoting half of this. A lead that fits your rules gets a quote from your own prices in about 60 seconds, sent with a booking link. A lead that doesn't fit waits for your OK, which is where the hold list above goes. You can read how lead capture and qualification works, or how it fits lawn care and landscaping crews.
Your next step
Pick five numbers this week: the base rate per 1,000 sq ft, the minimum, the gate fee, the clay fee and the seed rate. Put them in a sheet. Then test them on three lawns you've already done, and fix any rule that gives a result you'd hate to quote.
Once you know how to price aeration as rules, the work left is speed. Workely quotes from your own rules and sends a booking link, and follow-ups go out automatically until the lead books. When you're ready, look at Workely plans and pricing.