Evergreen Lawns

This article is in no means intended to be some hard fast rule on pricing sod installation work.  This is just what pricing matrix I used in my own company for sod installation work.

I can remember just 3 or 4 years ago when you could get a pallet of San Augustine sod for around $65.00 a pallet.  A pallet as you probably already knows covers approximately 450 sq/ft.  Thus, at the time my cost for sod was running me a little under .15¢ a sq/ft for materials.  Today on the other hand, sod is going for as high as $115.00 a pallet depending on where you purchase it from.  That escalates the price per square foot to a whopping .26¢ sq/ft.  Talk about inflation.

The crews that were installing could lay 1 ½ pallets of sod per man per hour if the sod was properly staged.  By staging I mean, you don’t want your sod winding up in the middle of where you are working, but then again you don’t want to  have to walk all the way across the yard to get more sod.  Actually I  had a couple guys that could do 2 pallets an hour, but there was no reason to just overwork  your crew.  Not to mention, when they get in a race, the quality of the installation goes down hill.  And if the weather was hot, like around August down here in Southeast Texas, then it was closer to around a pallet of sod per hour.  You’ve got to take additional rest breaks and have your guys rehydrate frequently.  I’ve had a couple of guys that had gotten close to heat stroke on different occations, and there’s no landscape job that is important enough to risk one of you employees health and well being.

Anyway, if  you put some numbers to the labor cost I would arrive at around .0148¢ per sq/ft.  Obviously the labor here in Southeast Texas was cheap.  Regular crew members were earning $10.00 p/hr wage.  I was charging the customer .12¢ per sq/ft. for labor.  With todays pricing, that would be closer to .15¢ per sq/ft. for labor.

So if you go by todays pricing, I would be pricing sod installation at around $276.75 per man hour installed.  It sounds high when you tell a customer that way.  Thus, the way I would always relay the price to the customer was by telling them we charged .41¢ per sq/ft installed.  It comes out the same, but it just doesn’t sound quite as expensive when you give the customer the price per sq/ft installed.

Again, this is in no way meant to be a pricing suggestions for different parts of the country.  This is just what I would price a sod installation job with todays prices here in Southeast Texas.  I would though be interested in hearing what sod installation is going for in other parts of the country as well if you would like to leave a comment below.