Most lawn companies price their first gutter jobs by feel: look at the house, think about the last job, say a number. It works until it does not. The small houses lose money, the big ones scare customers off, and nobody can quote except the owner. A written price sheet fixes all three. This guide walks through building one from the ground up: the base rate, the minimum, the adders that cover the hard jobs, and how to check whether your prices are actually making money. The numbers below are examples to show the math, not rates for your market. Height and steep-roof pricing get their own post, linked below.
Start from what an hour needs to bring in
Before picking a rate per foot, decide what a crew hour has to earn. Add up what a two-person gutter crew costs you per hour: wages and payroll costs, the truck, fuel, insurance, ladders and wear, plus a share of the office and overhead. Then add the profit you want on top.
Say that comes out to $110 an hour for the crew (an example, not a recommendation). If an average one-story house takes about an hour including setup and cleanup, a price around $110 to $130 for that house makes sense before drive time. If your average house takes an hour and a half, the number moves accordingly.
Every other number on the price sheet should trace back to this hourly target. That is what keeps the sheet honest when you add services or raise wages.
The base: price per linear foot
Linear footage is the most common base for gutter pricing because it tracks the work fairly well. More gutter means more scooping, more ladder moves and more debris.
To set a per-foot rate, time a handful of one-story jobs and divide. If your crew clears roughly 150 feet of one-story gutter in an hour and your hourly target is $110, your base is somewhere around 70 to 75 cents a foot. Many markets land higher than that; what matters is that the rate comes from your own job times.
Charge per foot of gutter, not per house type. Two "average" houses can differ by 80 feet of gutter, and flat pricing means one customer is paying for the other. Store the footage on each property so every future quote prices the same way.
The minimum charge
A minimum charge is the most important line on the sheet and the one most often skipped. Every stop costs you the drive, the setup, the ladder moves and the cleanup, no matter how small the house. A garage with 40 feet of gutter does not cost a quarter of a 160-foot house to service.
Set the minimum to cover the real cost of a short stop plus some profit. Many companies land somewhere between $100 and $175, depending on their market and crew costs. Apply it every time. The small jobs are often your lawn customers' sheds or detached garages, and it is tempting to wave the minimum for them. If you want to give a discount, attach the small job to the main house cleaning instead of booking it as its own stop.
Adders for the work that is not average
The base rate covers an average house in average condition. Adders cover everything else, and they are where most gutter jobs either make money or lose it.
Heavy debris or neglect: gutters that have not been cleaned in years, with soil and plants growing in them, can take twice as long. Many companies add a percentage, often 25 to 50 percent, for a first-time heavy clean. Your before photos will justify it.
Guards that have to come off and go back on: price per foot of guarded gutter. Removing and reinstalling screens can double the time on those runs.
Downspouts: either include flushing in the base and say so, or charge per downspout. A clogged underground drain is a separate job, not something to clear for free.
Debris handling: bagging and hauling costs more than leaving debris bagged at the curb for the customer's yard waste pickup. Pick a default and price the other as an option.
Height and steep roofs deserve the biggest adders of all. The two-story pricing post covers how to structure them.
Trip charges and travel
If most of your work is near your lawn routes, you will occasionally get a call from the far side of the county. You have three choices: decline, charge a trip fee, or hold the job until you have others nearby.
A flat trip charge for addresses outside your normal area is simple and fair. Some companies use zones, with the base price for close-in work and a step up for each band further out. Holding the job and telling the customer "we will be in your area the week of the 12th" often works too, and it keeps your days tight. Whatever you pick, put it on the price sheet so the office applies it the same way every time.
Check your prices against real job cost
A price sheet is a guess until you test it. After a few weeks of jobs, look at what each one actually took. Which houses ran long? Did the two-story adder cover the extra time? Are the small jobs making anything after the minimum?
Job costing in IndustryBossPro takes labor from the crew's clock-in times multiplied by each worker's pay rate, adds materials used, and shows planned hours against actual, along with profit and margin per job. A job costing report across your gutter jobs will show quickly whether your per-foot rate and adders are working, or whether certain kinds of houses need a higher price.
Adjust the sheet once a year, in the off season. Put your rates into your service catalog so every estimate uses them, whether the owner writes it or a crew lead does. When the price comes from the sheet instead of from memory, anyone in the company can quote, and the quotes match. The gutter cleaning software hub has more on running the service end to end.
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