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A lot of variable here.
Unfortuately I think you may have little uptake at that price bracket given what some of the national franchises charge....
Drop spreaders have their place, as do rotary (wheeled) and rotary (hand) spreaders. Some products like long life coated fertilsers cannot be used in a drop spreader as it damages the slow release coating.
Very much depends on the size of area you are treating and what product you are using.
Never used a "drop spreader" but I'd guess they take much longer compared to a wheeled rotary that I always use. Where I have seenthem used, not been very successful with lines of burnt patches! The fertilzer "Evergreen" I use costs about £25 for 400 square metres. I'd guess your average lawn would be about 100 square metres so a tenner for fert at the most. With a rotary, its a 10 minute job... then you've travelling time. I'd say you should be looking at about £30 if you want to actually get the work.
use a wheeld brordcast spredder with a fert only then a backpack sprayer for any weed killer requierd, you will never get it right with a drop spreader
Forget a drop spreader, useless. We don't do a lot of lawn treatment and have had numerous rotary spreaders , guess you won't want to spend a lot one of the best budget spreaders we are still using is the Cobra around £85 online we bought ours through our dealer as they are difficult to assemble and wanted it put together which they did for £15.
All our work is on a fixed price monthly charge over 12 months and includes lawn treatments where requested, you will find it difficult to make money out of lawn treatment against the nationals , but we have taken substantial volumes of work off them by emphasising that we offer a higher quality service and as we are visiting weekly/fortnightly can supply a more focussed service to their lawn and deal with issues before they become more serious and costly to fix against the nationals who only visit every 3 months and rarely send the same operative therefore never get to know the lawn. If you can't make a decent margin forget it along with watering you will make a rod for your own back.
The way forward is to get your regular maintenance customers on a monthly fixed price over 12 months, it's not difficult most will be used to paying by direct debit monthly for gas and electricity and maybe insurance. Emphasise the convenience of a monthly Standing Order so that they know exactly how much their garden maintenance will cost each month with no bills to deal with. Gone off the subject a bit but it's the only way to make decent money out of lawn treatment.
The local lawn treatment to us starts from £15 per treatment and they seem very well reviewed. Some of the national franchises aren't that much more than that either so i'd guess a minimum price of £50 might be too high. Great if you can get it though.