Job price calculator
A shop rate is not a number you pick. It is what falls out of four facts you already have: what the tech costs loaded, how much of the day is billable, what the doors cost to keep open, and what you need to keep. Put those in and the rate is arithmetic — and so is the price of the job in front of you.
Every field is yours. This asserts no national wage, rate or margin.
What lands in the tech's pocket, before burden.
Payroll tax, comp, benefits, PTO.
Drive time, stock runs and callbacks are not billable.
- Loaded wage
- $42.88 /h
- Overhead recovery
- $45.06 /h
- Break-even cost
- $87.94 /h
- Shop rate to hit target
- $112.75 /h
Gross on the job $161.01 (28.7%). Labour $281.86 · material $261.00 · trip $18.00.
| Billable share | Overhead / h | Shop rate |
|---|---|---|
| 45% | $62.09 | $134.57 |
| 55% | $50.80 | $120.10 |
| 62% | $45.06 | $112.75 |
| 70% | $39.91 | $106.14 |
| 80% | $34.92 | $99.75 |
Margin on price, not markup on cost
This is the single arithmetic error that empties a price book. Adding 20% to a cost gives you a gross margin of 16.7%, not 20. To keep 20% of the price you divide by 0.80. Over a year of small jobs the gap between those two operations is the difference between a profitable shop and a busy one.
Do not mark up to margin
The billable-hours lever
Overhead recovery per hour is total overhead divided by hours you can actually invoice. A tech paid for 173 hours a month who bills 62% of them gives you about 107 billable hours; at 45% you get 78. The same overhead spread over fewer hours pushes the required shop rate up by tens of dollars, which is why drive time and stock runs are a pricing problem before they are a scheduling one.
Watch that column in the table as you change the percentage. It is usually the fastest route to a lower price without touching margin.
Wage is not rate
The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the 2025 median pay for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters at $63,800 a year, or $30.67 an hour. That is what the person earns. What the customer pays covers that wage, the burden on it, the unbillable half of the day, the truck, the van stock, the phone that answers, and the margin. Anyone comparing the two numbers directly is comparing a wage to a price.