Mulch Blowing Case Study

Do you apply the mulch manually or via WeBlow?

Here’s the scenario – your project needs 20m3 of Garden Mulch to buy and install on a mix of existing mature and new garden beds. That’s pretty standard for our customers.

The stockpile of Mulch will be 50m from the garden and cannot be located any closer. That’s pretty standard too.

And let’s say you use your regular, tried-and-tested method of moving and installing yourself :

The Do-It-Yourself method.

• You arrange delivery from the local landscape supplier
• Upon delivery, it’s then stockpiled 50 metres away
• One of your employees, most likely an apprentice, spends the next 4 days moving this mulch to those garden beds

4 DAYS !!

It couldn’t possibly take that long, surely?
• 1m3 mulch = 13 wheelbarrow loads
• 20m3 mulch = 260 wheelbarrow loads
• Those wheelbarrows all need to be loaded via fork / spade, by the way
• Wheelbarrow moved 50m from the stockpile to the garden bed
• Mulch unloaded & spread evenly over the garden bed
• Wheelbarrow moved 50m back to the stockpile
• Repeat this. 260 times.
• 50m to the garden bed, 50m back to the stockpile. That’s 100m for each trip.
• Done 260 times – you’ve just moved 20m3 of mulch 26 kilometres.
• That’s more than half a marathon, just moving mulch.
• Are you insane?

And we’re assuming an average time per wheelbarrow load of just over 7 minutes. That’s quick, considering you have 100m of distance to cover in there too. We’re betting by the end of the day, that’s 10 minutes per load due to fatigue. Realistically, this manual install just blew itself out to 5 days!

Ask yourself the question – is this the most valuable use of your time? Your employee’s time? Didn’t think so.

So what’s the better alternative? What if you could get this done in 3 hours?

The better way. The WeBlow method.

• We arrange sourcing of the mulch supply direct via our in-house resources, no third-parties involved
• We’ve organised all the permits and the traffic management in advance
• We arrive at your worksite, directly outside, 50m from the garden beds.
• We arrange the hoses from the truck to the garden beds.
• We blow the mulch directly onto the garden beds.
• We clean up, pack up, and leave.
• In 3 hours.

3 HOURS !!  That’s a time saving of 3 ½ days.

But I have apprentices and employees, why can’t they just do it?
They can. If their skill-set is moving mulch a distance longer than a half-marathon.
But we’re sure your team is better equipped than that.

And that’s assuming you can move the mulch along flat ground. What if the path between the stockpile & garden bed is uphill? That probably adds another half-day to your job.
Or only accessible through someone’s house. No doubt the builder or homeowner will be thrilled with that.
Or worse, it’s a rooftop garden 20 storeys high? Wheelbarrows won’t help you now .

And that stockpile that’s sitting outside, unattended for 3 nights?
Sneaky neighbours and drive-bys love nothing better than some free mulch. Just back-up the trailer in the dead of night …

But here’s the most important reason for using WeBlow, often overlooked – safety of your people.
Monotonous jobs like moving 260 wheelbarrow loads of mulch are the exact kind of repetitious, manual tasks that regularly injure people. You’re just asking for it.

What is the cost of injured staff? Anyone who’s had to administer a Workcover claim knows how time-consuming, and costly, these unfortunate situations can be for your business. Why put your employees at risk?

Do you still want to move and install this mulch manually? Really?

The financial savings
Is it financially beneficial to use WeBlow to move your landscape materials? Yes, and here’s why the WeBlow method makes sense.

The Do-It-Yourself method.
• Mulch cost : 20m3 at $50/m3 = $1,000
• Labour cost 5 days, full days, no overtime. 38hrs @ $28/hr = $1,064
• Labour on-costs (workcover, super, travel, allowances, say 35% or $9.80/hr) :38hrs @ $9.80/hr = $372.40
• Total financial cost to purchase and manually move 20m3 of mulch = $2,436.40

The WeBlow method.
Using WeBlow this job would cost $2,618 + GST**. All in, one fee.

Now come the savings :

• Your job is completed at least 3 days quicker, so you can move onto your next project. Which potentially earns you thousands of dollars
• No injury to any of your employees. That potentially saves you thousands of dollars
• The collateral damage you just caused onsite? The clean-up from the stockpile location, the landscape damage from wheeled equipment running across and compacting soils / turf? Non-existent. That just saved you more clean-up fees to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

How about the indirect savings?
• Your employees can be engaged in higher-value activities for your project, rather than pushing wheelbarrows. Your project will inevitably be better!
• And with better projects and higher-value activities for your employees, you’ll attract and retain better workers to your business – we all know how hard it is to get great help in this tight labour market. So no recruitment and re-training costs.

What if I need more than 20m3 of product?
Our trucks can hold up to 40m3 of material, and if your job is larger we can simply re-load our Blower truck using our Slinger truck right at your worksite, ensuring zero interruption to your installation.

In fact, WeBlow can move in-excess of 100m3 of material in a standard working day! Now that’s productivity.

Bring on the easier solution
Are you still rocking a Nokia mobile phone whilst listening to your CD Walkman ? Neither are we, because it’s the 21st century. Manual installation of materials belongs in the last millennium, with that flip-top phone and typewriter.

Our clients are most likely your competitors. They know better. They can’t afford to be waiting around while someone trudges mulch for 4 days.

They need to get the job done – quickly & professionally. No mess. No fuss.
Which is why they use WeBlow.

Do you want to be stuck, labouring over a manual mulch installation, whilst your competitors have done the same job in hours not days, and have now moved onto their next high-paying project? The same project you quoted on, but didn’t win, because your timeframe was too long because of your ‘last century’ manual work-flows? Maybe even the same project that you probably couldn’t quote on because you couldn’t fit it into your already fully-booked schedule.

Be a smart business operator, a 21st century business operator.

You can do more work, more top-shelf work for your clients, when you use WeBlow.
No mess no fuss, just a quality job completed quickly and effectively.
It’s why WeBlow is Your Project Partner.

** this is indicative pricing