Hourly rates

[Scott Stone]

I am curious how different people figure their pricing. I have seen some claim on here, and other forums, that they make up to $500 an hour, but then, that is just wash time. When you figure out how much you make, do you include marketing, including winter marketing? Do you include travel time, and meeting before and after the job with a customer, if necessary? Do you include your time, or do you just figure you are sunk cost, and just include employee time?
Just wondering.

 

[Kory]

How about billing and accounting time?

 

[Tony Shelton]

I include travel time, job time and reporting time.

All the other stuff is a straight overhead cost similar to a truck payment and insurance. If you are going to add in marketing and billing you might as well divide your truck payment into the mix along with paper costs, stamps, internet, and everything else.

This all comes together at tax time, then you can really figure out your hourly if you've kept up with the hours.

 

[Clean County PW]

I pay my workers from the time they leave until the time they get back. To figure out my hourly wage I just take the total of the job and then minus there wages and the cost of materials.

I don't know if thats the answer your looking for. As for that $500/hr rate I hit that a couple of times and man does that get you spoil when you can do that. I also hit $0/hr when something has gone terribly wrong. So it all adds up in the end. The example of the $0/hr job was just last year when my guys were out making some good money and then they call me with this. "The truck and trailer is holding up all kinds of traffic and we can't move it" I get there and tow my truck and trailer attached to a mechanic who diagnosed my truck with a blow tranny. $2500 later it was fixed. The net for that day was less negative/per hour.

 

[Ron Musgraves]

All the costs have evaluation in bottom line, however when I say we clean 4500 sqaure and hour that does not include market sales office or any other expense. We do back charge production rate if a salary employee has to fix a job.

 

[Scott Stone]

I guess a better question would be, how much time do you spend to get an average job? For instance, no one but Ron gets every job, and that is commercial and industrial type work. I would think that residential would be even worse. So here is my thinking, if you spend an hour and a half on a job that makes $500, you are thinking you are making about $315 an hour. You also need to include travel time, which is 20 minutes each way, plus the effort to make a bid on that job, which is the same 20 minutes each way, plus 10 to 15 to make the bid, plus, whatever time you spend getting the homeowner comfortable with you. At this point, you are another hour and a half into the job. Then of course, you have to make at least 3 bids, in the same time frame, to get that job. This takes it up to 5 hours. Now, you have all the marketing, that averages an hour per job. Now we are at six hours of labor per job. So, I am figuring that the magic $315 is really closer to $80 per man hour. If there are two guys on the job, it goes to 8.5 hours per job and drops the payout to $58.82 per man hour.
Does this make sense?

 

[Ron Musgraves]

I see it, you see it. Will you convince anyone else?

This is why o can't make sense of this residential .

 

[kcpowerclean]

I hear everyone talking about hourly rates and it seems pretty much useless.

IMO-The only thing that matters is what you kept at the end of the year. God knows we all spend every waking minute either thinking, working, or dreaming about our businesses. The average person works 2000hrs/year. The average pressure washing biz owner works probably works 3500.

Call me nuts but it seems like there is always something more to learn, someone else to meet, a new thing to wash, another piece of crap to repair, and on and on and on.

But its a pleasure doing it cause its our own baby. Probably to a fault for most of us. I've grown up seeing my dad not value his own time properly and charge appropriately for it just because he enjoys what he does so much. he's worth so much more but he doesn't charge accordinly because he doesn't mind working 18 hr days, but his marriages and family have taken a beating from it.

 

[Tony Shelton]

I guess a better question would be, how much time do you spend to get an average job? For instance, no one but Ron gets every job, and that is commercial and industrial type work. I would think that residential would be even worse. So here is my thinking, if you spend an hour and a half on a job that makes $500, you are thinking you are making about $315 an hour. You also need to include travel time, which is 20 minutes each way, plus the effort to make a bid on that job, which is the same 20 minutes each way, plus 10 to 15 to make the bid, plus, whatever time you spend getting the homeowner comfortable with you. At this point, you are another hour and a half into the job. Then of course, you have to make at least 3 bids, in the same time frame, to get that job. This takes it up to 5 hours. Now, you have all the marketing, that averages an hour per job. Now we are at six hours of labor per job. So, I am figuring that the magic $315 is really closer to $80 per man hour. If there are two guys on the job, it goes to 8.5 hours per job and drops the payout to $58.82 per man hour.
Does this make sense?

That's only the first time Scott. That's the sweet thing about contract cleaning. After the first time it's all in a route and it may only be a couple of minutes from the last stop.

 

[Jonathan Ellis]

I see exactly what you are talking about, Scott. I will agree that in many cases, doing a house wash will bring in more per hour than a regular account, but with regular accounts you are back there again in a week, month, quarter, and there is no "hey man, we still on!" type talk. You just do it. In the long run, I will take $ 100 per hour commercal on a regular basis over a $ 500 house cleaning one time in my life, okay, maybe two.