Prevailing Rate Jobs

sofaking

could someone tell if they have experience on rate jobs
what should profit be per hour if rate your paying your men is fifty per hour

SLSTech

First - No double posting
Second - there is no right nor wrong answer for this, it all depends on how your company does its estimates / billing

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sofaking

if you dont know dont i understand

sofaking

second dbaa

HandyHails

I think the nice thing about the prevailing wage jobs is that you get to know several factors that apply to your competition. Those are already written in stone. Throw a number at them you are comfortable w/ and wait for the reply. Lowest bid wins.

Kgmz

There is no such thing as prevailing profit, only prevailing wage for the employees.

And like mentioned before lowest bid wins, so you have to work within these confines.

Darren@Partners

I don't wanna get on a rant but....
Prevailing wage is a Communist principle.
The rate is determined by the location of the job, not by the workers zipcode.
How dare anyone tell me worker A and b are worth the same $.
I don't need to have the govt. looking at another facet of my business(certified payroll report).
After a prevailing wage job, the worker is spoiled having received an outrageous wage, and now does not want to go back to earning a realistic wage.
Loopholes except to exempt certain supervisory employees.
These jobs are funded with tax dollars and the prevailing wage bs only drives up the cost of the job unnecessarily.
The disparity of the rates from one county to another, one year to another is absolutely insane.

All that said, prevailing wages are here to stay and even I have knuckled under and began bidding these jobs again, but do so with #'s that reflect that I'd prefer not to be awarded the job. If by some miracle I come in on one, then the margins are such that retirement is just around the corner....

Deicide1

I would say add like uhhh $500 per man hour to the bid.


That's what I do! It works!

Deicide1

Oh another thing I do is, I pay my guys the prevailing wage and then make them pay me back the difference of the regular wage. It's great.

LawnGuyLand

Sure, just ask the ones serving time how great it is.

thesidingpro

I completely agree. It's like a disease.

You let your guys get a few weeks of twice the money and the regular grind just doesn't appeal to them anymore. Instead of looking at it as a bonus they look at is there getting robbed otherwise.

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Deicide1

This was a joke.

HandyHails

Hell, I used to work for a guide rail company when I was a kid. $45 dollars an hour was not unusual at all. That only applied when we were on state funded jobs. For township or private work, the money dropped to $18 hr. I would be super pissed having to do township work. Not so much because of the wage, but because of other crews staying on the money while I got pulled off. Your right though, the big money ruins guys for the normal wage for sure. Most guys who get a taste of it will be looking for a job that supplies that cash all the time. If you can't keep those big money jobs coming in, you'll end up losing some of your best workers.

eastend

I agree that PW jobs are really a rip-off to the taxpayer. Why should they pay double or triple the market rate; is it to placate the unions?

Floordude

Prevailing wages, is actually what the job should be paying the worker full time. On state and federal work, they make sure the workers are being paid fairly, while they work on state and federal projects. Basically that is the minimum wage for that task. Instead of just another unrespected commodity.

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mattp

I agree 100% with this post. I think everyone else is looking at it backwards. If everyone was paying their workers PW all the time we'd get better workers ( to a certain degree) and it would level out the playing field.

eastend

How can you saw what a fair wage is, Floor Dude? Isn't it specific to the task?
Why should you pay a laborer $50hr to sweep floors and be a go-fer, when you can get perfectly capable workers to do that task for $15-20 hr? The end result (clean floors) is the same, only under PW the taxpayer paid maybe 3x what the market rate was.
And what is wrong with the market rate? Isn't it what most companies would pay their employees for the specific task? Don't the employees have the right to seek work elsewhere if they think they are underpaid?
I've heard the arguments for PW, but I'm just not convinced it's really a fairer system.

Warren

[QUOTE=mattp;653868]I agree 100% with this post. I think everyone else is looking at it backwards. If everyone was paying their workers PW all the time we'd get better workers ( to a certain degree) and it would level out the playing field.[/QUOTE

Simply Ridiculous!

Not only would we not get better workers but simple math tells me that the price of everything would go up if we suddenly paid everybody prevailing wage.

HandyHails

Workers on prevailing wage jobs all get paid the same whether they bust their asses or hide in the shi**er all day. Inevitably, you end up w/ guys carrying a few of the worthless on their backs. At least that's my experience w/ it.

sofaking

thanks to all who had input im bidding double the hour rate hope it pans out thanks it works out to 400 -500 a day per guy profit
im new to this so well see how it works