Labor rates per hour - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

PAINTING GURU · 05-20-2009, 02:23 PM

hey yall i have been a member for a while but not much posting ,just reading. i am transitioning from residential new construction to repaints. i have been bidding jobs at 35.00 per hour and getting everything immediately. is my price to low ? i dont want to be the guy who cuts everyones throats, but i have been with the same builder since 1997 and i am so use to them not paying much for extras that i feel like i am out of touch with pricing . i live near toledo,ohio. oh yeah the builder i am working for is just about out of business and just told me i had to take another rate cut of 10 percent on topp of the other 1o percent we took 12 months ago. please help if you can.thanks todd also what percent of mark up do you charge on paint?

naptown CR · 05-20-2009, 02:31 PM

you are probably not charging enough. At least double the cost of the paint don't forget to add in sales tax before multiplying.

NAV · 05-20-2009, 02:39 PM

$35 per hour plus material at a 15% to 30% markup isn't bad for new construction. If you have been doing work with them for a wile they must like the work you do. There are guys out there charging much less.

I bid at $42 to $55 per hour in Cleveland, but I try to stay away from Time and Material bids.

How are you doing bidding to other builders? Who is the builder you are working with?

DavidNTX · 05-20-2009, 04:18 PM

Your hourly rate should be based on how much you pay your employees plus overhead and other markups. It isn't unreasonable to charge a 75% labor overhead and a 33% labor markup for painters in Texas. An employee making $15.00 per hour would be charged out at $31.20 per manhour. That would not include any sales tax on the labor.

You never know what kind of deal the other guy has or how he figures his labor. Find an hourly rate that you are comfortable with and don't look back.

Material is another animal. Some may figure the cost of ordering material and either delivering it or having it delivered to the jobsite as part of their labor overhead. Others might figure this separately. A job I bid this week and got for a painter that I estimated the job for used a 10% material overhead and a 15% material markup.

Generally you can get more per hour in residential repaints than you can in new commercial construction in Houston. It is pretty competitive here.

Hope this helps.

Dave Mac · 05-20-2009, 06:08 PM

If your closing more then 33% of your estimates many sales experts in this type of market, say your price is to low. Sounds like you have room to go up with your rate.

strathd · 05-20-2009, 06:13 PM

If thats ALL your getting beat down. Feel fortunate. I have heard some horror stories. EFF em all in Findlay.

Mr. Mike · 05-20-2009, 06:25 PM

Quote:

If your closing more then 33% of your estimates many sales experts in this type of market, say your price is to low. Sounds like you have room to go up with your rate.

Unless your Mr. Mike

strathd · 05-20-2009, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Mike

Unless your Mr. Mike

Ho's and Gc's are two different worlds Mr. Mike.

antnepi · 05-20-2009, 06:50 PM

I'd say $35 an hour is pretty darn good. Around here you would be on the high end.

**ProWallGuy** · 05-20-2009, 06:57 PM

Just remember, don't believe everything you read on the internet. Some here live in a fantasy land.

DavidNTX · 05-20-2009, 08:15 PM

Maybe it might could come up a little. If I were getting 1 in 3 then yes, I should. In this market it sometimes seems good to get 1 in 10.

It is a rare occasion that we do work on a time and material basis. It is mostly all hard bid work that is extremely competitive. The labor price is kinda built into the bid that calculates material, labor and markups.

I have been pretty good about not advertising my product everytime I see the word estimate popup in a thread but in this situation it might be best to see how this is all calculated if the screenshots will show up here.

The first material is a coat of primer. I am counting on being able to roll this primer on before the ceilings are installed. The first coat of eggshell is also counting on being installed before the ceiling is installed and minimal cut-in.

Time is allowed in the final coat for it to be cut-in and rolled.

In each coat of paint you can see the material cost per gallon, the material cost per sf, the labor cost per manhour and the labor cost per sf as well as a final unit price of .404

This data breaks down in the extended quantities report like this...

The difference in the estimated unit price of .404 in the pricing module and .410 in this report is that in the pricing module waste is calculated as a percentage of the material cost. In this report actual gallons of material are added to the total cost for this task before being divided by the quantity to get the estimated unit price. This number will always come out different because of the fact in this report it is actual gallons. We have no way of knowing the quantities when the task is being built.

We just can't get much more than this in this market.

Mr. Mike · 05-20-2009, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Just remember, don't believe everything you read on the internet. Some here live in a fantasy land.

True that, I need to see about doing a video of me doing a close.

Frankawitz · 05-21-2009, 06:45 AM

That program looked interesting, but the cost of paint at $17.50 a gallon that has to be some cheap paint. even at the quanity of 172 gallons that's cheap. $35.00 an hour sounds good if you can get it, up here just outside of Detroit your lucky if you can get that, a lot auto workers who are becoming Painters

www.frankawitz.net

DavidNTX · 05-21-2009, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frankawitz

That program looked interesting, but the cost of paint at $17.50 a gallon that has to be some cheap paint. even at the quanity of 172 gallons that's cheap. $35.00 an hour sounds good if you can get it, up here just outside of Detroit your lucky if you can get that, a lot auto workers who are becoming Painters

www.frankawitz.net

These were prices quoted to me by ICI for the line of paint specified for this project. You can't bid this work using top of the line paints and plan on ever getting a job in this commercial market.

Sherwin Williams offered pricing for this same line of paint at about twice the price. Primer at 20.56 a gallon and Egshel at 27.82. We can't get that in this market and for a 3 coat system, the ICI will work just fine.

Mr. Mike · 05-21-2009, 10:43 AM

I love my estimating software now that I have a ton of stuff in it, Paint estimator

DavidNTX · 05-21-2009, 11:59 AM

Mr. Mike

In Louisville there used to be a street in front of the airport named Whitehouse drive or Whitehouse Blvd. or something like that. If memory serves me right it might even be the street coming from the airport, maybe even from the passenger pickup area. I'm sure things have changed since then.

Is that street still there and do you know where it got it's name from?

PAINTING GURU · 05-21-2009, 01:17 PM

thanks for all the help. i will maintain my 35.00 base bid rate it seems to be working. i will try 33 percent mark up on my paint as well. the builder i worked for would let you have zero margins on materials which sucked! the way the economy is around here i will take all i can get at 35.00 p hour. also the builder i was working for was zero draws so youre money was sitting out there for 90-120 days. you werent paid until final touch-up with a walk thru. repaints are so nice i get paid the day i finish which is awesome! thanks todd

Mr. Mike · 05-21-2009, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Mr. Mike

In Louisville there used to be a street in front of the airport named Whitehouse drive or Whitehouse Blvd. or something like that. If memory serves me right it might even be the street coming from the airport, maybe even from the passenger pickup area. I'm sure things have changed since then.

Is that street still there and do you know where it got it's name from?

It may still be there, and it probably came from the Whitehouse family that owned a painting company. That is fantastic, I'm sure they owned some property and called the street whitehouse.

I know the big whitehouse painting company sold that company for just $1.00 I heard and the person would assume all company debt, I then heard the new owner filed for bankruptcy 4 years later, now there is like 3 different whitehouse painting companies in Louisville.

DavidNTX · 05-21-2009, 07:56 PM

Bob Whitehouse was the original owner, perhaps a dad named Bob too. I heard the guy walked away from it with a billion dollars in his pocket. I always wondered if he told me the truth that day he picked me up from the airport and we were at a stop sign when he told me to look at that street sign. I guess he was.

He took me on a tour of his operation the day I was there. I have never seen anything like it. He did industrial painting all over the country and would load an 18 wheeler (his own, he had a few of them) with equipment to send to a jobsite. When you use an 18 wheeler to move your equipment you are a sizable operation and you are doing some sizable jobs. Everytime a piece of equipment came in from a jobsite it was overhauled and repainted with his company colors. He even had his own print shop.

That is one of the things in my life that I will never forget, the tour of his operation. This man also gave me a piece of advice that I carry with me to this very day. Plan today for a lawsuit tomorrow. On the surface that would look like advice only needed if you are going to court. Turns out that is a good basis for any business. It keeps everything up front and a good paper trail of all of your business functions.

I often wondered how well known he was in Louisville and if that street was really named after him or his family.

Mr. Mike · 05-21-2009, 08:28 PM

Quote:

I often wondered how well known he was in Louisville and if that street was really named after him or his family.

The Whitehouse painting company that you are speaking about is very well known, it was a family operating business with jobs and employyes all over, 80 or so year old Albert Whitehouse works for Chas Mann Painting now as an estimator and he is the one that told me about what I said I heard. It is not to hard to get a street named in Louisville especially if you owned property back 100 years ago like them.

Chas Mann and Howell and Howell have taken the place of Whitehouse now around these parts.

It is very impressive for you to have had a chance to pick the brains of this huge painting company and also for them to let you. Whitehouse did a lot for the whole industry I am sure with over 100 years of service.