How to Price Stump Grinding Jobs

Start with the model the market already speaks

Stump grinding is priced per inch of diameter almost everywhere: $2 to $5 per inch for softwood, $3 to $7 for hardwood. Fighting that convention costs you jobs, because customers comparison-shop in per-inch terms. The leverage is not in inventing a new model. It is in how you measure, what your minimum is, and what you charge extra for.

Measure at the widest point at ground level, root flare included, not the clean cut surface on top. A stump that was cut at 14 inches can measure 24 inches where the grinder actually has to work. Quote from the top-of-stump number and you just gave away 40 percent of the job. Put the measuring rule on your quote so the customer sees it before the neighbor with a tape measure does.

Your minimum is a mobilization fee in disguise

The industry minimum of $100 to $200 per visit exists because the grinding is the cheap part. Load the machine, tow it across town, unload, walk it to the backyard, grind, rake the chips, load again, drive home. A single 12-inch stump is a two-hour round trip of which maybe 15 minutes is grinding.

So set the minimum from your numbers, not the market's: your hourly operating cost times the two hours the smallest possible job takes. If that lands above $200, your travel radius is too big or your rig costs too much to move, and the minimum just told you so. That is useful information, not a pricing problem. The mobilization fee calculator does this math per mile and per hour.

Discount the fifth stump, not the first

Once you are on site, each additional stump costs you only teeth, fuel, and minutes. That is why multi-stump discounts are standard: 10 to 20 percent off at 5 or more stumps, or full price for the first stump and 60 to 70 percent of rate for each additional one. Structured either way, you are sharing the mobilization saving, not cutting your grinding rate.

The floor on any discount is your marginal cost. Carbide teeth are the sneaky line: in rocky ground a grinder eats them fast enough that a deep discount on stump number nine can go underwater without you noticing until resharpening day.

When per-inch stops working, switch to hourly

Per-inch pricing assumes you can count and measure everything before you quote. Some jobs will not let you: overgrown lots where half the stumps are hidden, root chasing that wanders, rock that turns a 20-minute stump into an hour and a set of teeth. For those, quote hourly, typically $150 to $250 per hour for machine and operator, and say why: the customer pays for what the ground actually holds, and you stop underwriting surprises.

The add-ons follow the same logic. Chip haul-away runs $4 to $6 per inch, root chasing $50 to $150, grinding deeper than the standard 6 to 12 inches costs more because it takes disproportionately longer. Price them as line items. Bundled-in extras are invisible generosity: the customer does not know you gave them anything, and your margin quietly leaves.

The rate is only half the number

Everything above is structure. The level comes from your own cost per hour: fuel, teeth, depreciation, insurance, the truck and trailer that get the grinder to the job, and your time. If you have never computed that number honestly, start with the break-even guide. The machines differ but the math is identical, and it is the difference between a rate you chose and a rate you inherited from whoever you underbid.