Landscaping Bid Markup: The Overhead Math for a Two-Person Crew

Updated August 28, 2026

A two-person landscaping crew should mark up a bid by first pricing its labor at a crew hour rate that already carries the overhead - trucks, trailer, mowers, insurance, fuel, dump fees, the unbillable hours - then adding materials at cost plus 20 to 35 percent, then applying a profit margin of 15 to 20 percent to the whole job. The mistake most small crews make is adding one “markup” percentage on top of wages and material and hoping it covers everything. It does not, because the overhead of a landscaping operation is mostly equipment and drive time, and neither shows up in a wage. Here is the math, with a planting and mulch job priced all the way through.

Why landscaping math is different from a service trade

An electrician’s overhead is mostly one van and insurance; labor is the product. A landscaping crew’s overhead is a truck, a trailer, two mowers, a blower, a trimmer, a skid steer rental now and then, dump fees, and a fuel bill that scales with every job. Materials - mulch, plants, stone, sod - can be half the invoice. And a two-person crew has two sets of wages and one owner who is also on the crew half the time.

So the engine has three parts instead of two: crew labor cost per billable hour, materials with markup, and margin on the whole job.

Step 1: The crew hour

Start with overhead. A realistic year for a two-person crew:

Now labor. The owner wants $65,000 and works on the crew; one helper at $22 an hour for 1,800 hours is $39,600. Add a 20 percent burden for taxes, workers comp and benefits on both:

Total annual cost: $33,200 + $125,520 = $158,720.

Billable hours for the crew, not per person: 40 weeks (weather and winter) at 45 hours, and 60 percent billable once you count drive time, loading, dump runs and estimates:

40 x 45 x 0.60 = 1,080 billable crew hours

Crew hour cost: $158,720 / 1,080 = $146.96 per crew hour. That is break-even for the two of you on site, with the truck and everything on it. Bill less and the season ends with nothing.

Add margin. At 15 percent on price: $146.96 / 0.85 = $172.89. Round up to $175 per crew hour.

The free Trade Hourly Rate Finder does this arithmetic; put the helper’s wages in as an overhead line if you use it for a crew.

Step 2: Materials with markup

Materials on a landscaping job carry real handling cost: sourcing, pickup or delivery coordination, loading, waste, plant guarantees, and the money tied up until the invoice is paid. Twenty to 35 percent is the normal range for a small crew; use less on bulk commodity (mulch by the yard, stone) and more on plants you guarantee.

Step 3: The worked bid

A front-bed refresh: remove old shrubs, plant 12 shrubs and 20 perennials, edge the bed, lay fabric, spread 6 yards of mulch.

Labor. Estimate crew hours by task, then grade the job. Easy 0.80, Normal 1.00, Hard 1.35 - Hard is a steep bed, poor access for the trailer, or clay that fights the spade.

Normal grade, $175 crew hour: 9.0 x $175 = $1,575 labor.

Materials.

Bid.

Gross margin check: cost of the job is 9 x $146.96 = $1,323 labor plus $1,150 materials = $2,473. The bid of $3,055 leaves $582, or 19 percent of the price. Above the 15 percent target because materials carry their own markup; that is the cushion for the plant that dies.

If you had priced it the way many crews do - two people at $25 an hour “times two” for 9 hours, plus material at cost plus 20 percent - you would have bid about $1,830, worked a full day, and lost roughly $640 before you paid yourself.

The danger zone

Run one check on every bid: margin on price, computed as (bid minus labor cost minus material cost) divided by bid. Under 8 percent and a single rained-out day or a dead plant turns the job negative. If a customer negotiates you under it, walk. The cheapest bid in the county is the one that goes out of business in October.

Recurring maintenance: the same engine, weekly

Mowing and maintenance is priced per visit from the same crew hour. A property that takes the crew 35 minutes including load and unload is 0.58 crew hours at $175: about $102 per visit. If you are charging $45 because the neighbor’s kid does, you are paying $40 a week to mow that lawn. Route density - the number of stops within a few minutes of each other - is what moves billable share from 60 to 70 percent and is worth more than any price increase; a route profitability check is the single best spreadsheet a small crew can build.

Build the calculator in an afternoon

One tab: overhead lines, owner salary, helper wages and hours, burden, weeks, hours per week, billable share, margin, producing a crew hour cell. Second tab: a bid sheet with task rows and crew hours, a grade dropdown, material rows with a markup column by type, a pass-through row for dump fees and permits, a total rounded to $5, and the margin check as an IF formula that flashes when it is under 8 percent. The mechanics are the same as the electrical price book guide walks through.

Next step

Put your real truck, insurance and helper wages into the free Trade Hourly Rate Finder and see what a crew hour actually costs you. Most crews find it is about double what they have been billing.

Frequently asked questions

Should I show the customer labor and materials separately? Show one price for the job with a scope list. Itemizing invites the customer to source the plants at the big-box store and ask you to install them at your labor rate, which strips the material margin and the guarantee.

What margin should I target? Fifteen to 20 percent on price for installs, higher for design-build. Maintenance can run tighter because the route is predictable, but never under the 8 percent danger line.

How do I price when the owner is not on the crew? Take the owner salary out of the crew labor and put it into overhead, then price the crew hour on the two employees’ wages plus burden. The owner’s pay still has to come out of billable hours; it just moves lines.

Do I mark up a subcontractor, like an irrigation tech? Yes, 10 to 20 percent for coordination and the risk you carry on their work. Pass-through only for permits and dump fees.