Cover Story Extra: Quick Tip

If you have primarily residential clients who like their properties maintained just before the weekend, schedule your mowing crews for Tuesday through Friday each week (10-hour days), leaving Mondays open, suggests Shayne Newman, president of YardApes, New Milford, Conn. “We do this purposely to create an opening when we get behind due to weather,” he says, pointing out that if it’s going to rain later in the week the crews mow on Monday and then get the rainy day off.

During the busy spring season, this also increases the number of employees who can help with enhancement jobs. “Seventy-five percent of our maintenance crewmembers help the enhancement crew on Mondays during the first six weeks of the season – early April to late May – and that helps complete that work in a timely fashion as well as get our regular maintenance work done on schedule.”