What are you suggesting? that i have my milling machines, lathe, sheers, rollers, brakes, english wheel, shrinking machines, tig welder, bead rollers, carb shop equipment, anodizing equipment, metal finishing equipment, electrical shop, tool cabinets, hydraulic pipe and tubing benders and a quarter million dollars in hand & specialty tooling and work on a dirt floor with a half working flourescent fixture in a swaybacked building behind the town dump? The fuck is the matter with you...i am working at $40hr because my customers can't afford to pay me $45. Everybody is starving, loosing thier homes, can't find work and can't afford to pay thier bills when they come due. People are more worried about getting thier heating oil tank refilled than having a set of headers made for the old 'a' bone. And that is what i am competing against. I also have a retail sale area in my shop, guys used to cruise on in to have a looksee at what we were working on and pick up some doodad that caught thier eye. I used to do several hundred a day in sales - not any more. The guys can't afford to go for a ride to see what oj is doing, no more casual visiting - if a guy walks thru my door now it is because he absolutely needs something. Last week i sold a carb return spring for $10 - that was my total retail sales. I am charging $40hr because i just can't work for less and pay the bills - my priority right now is to stay in business and keep the doors open.
Bingo. Now some are going to get all butt hurt over these posts, but the reality of the situation here is that I couldn't operate the shop and pay the bills/overhead with less than $70hr. I was losing tons of work to backyard shops charging less than 1/2 that which was pushing towards my rates going up. And a lot of times I ended up fixing some of that work later. But now since I can't beat them I think I'll join them, but still stay as legit as I can with proper licensing and insurance but less overhead, or at least paying myself rent. My opinion, if you do any kind of suspension, brake, or anything that has any safety issues without liability insurance you are a moron. Still rates around here vary from $60-100 for legit shops and $25-40 for the backyard variety. And for the record this has been brought up a ton of times. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=484862 also of help http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=451880
we're at 35 ph for full builds. 40 ph for small stuff. its tough. we are just scraping by with our overhead and all. but we arent looking to get rich doing it. it just gives us the ability to do what we love and make a living at it. anyone who is doing for any other reason is either a fool or very lucky!
the backyard shops and the " oh my buddy does that on the side" are whats killing people alot these days. especialy when you get people that have cars and dont know what good work is to start out with. "oh i can get the car painted at maaco for 1200$" yea well its going to look like a 1200$ paint job. but to them they see there hobbled together 1200 painted abortion of a car next to a restored car with a 12,000$ paint job and dont see a difference. It drives me nuts.. Another thing i cant stand is the " oh well i mean i dont want it THAT nice" yea well i dont do not nice work asshole. people like that are really wats hurting alot of shops in my area.
I used to work for a ferrari restoration shop where we did ferrari bodies and we charged our customers 135 per hour.
We charge $55. We are in a very small town (pop 250?), but we carry proper insurance. We have also always reinvested our profits back into tools, equipment and facilities.
Don't get offended here,I was asking a reasonable fucking question.With all that equipment you have, 40 bucks an hour doesn't even sound like you can break even.From the tone of your reply it appears that way. You're probably a quality shop and hopefully things will improve for you,good luck
i cant charge per hour because of how anal i am about my stuff. too many guys around here have no problem sculpting a car. i only do stuff on the cosmetic side so if it takes me longer than i was hoping, then im eating it. i am anal about my work and cant give someone less quality. its my downfall. i try to quote it at about $150 a day. some days im there for 8 hrs, some im there for 20. i do a lot of starying on the custom work and i dont see that i can charge for that (maybe enough for a pot of coffee and a pack of smokes for the staring). now im not trying to out bid the other other shops in my area, because i know its going tho be the same price for better quality work, but its going to take me longer. i would just rather be struggling then knowing my hands did shitty work in order to make some money.
im down to charging 30 an houror flat rates on jobs....im a solo manned shop so im a lil slower than the rest
One thing to conciter when setting your labor rate is how much do you make on parts. If you make between 25 and 45% on parts, it adds conciterable to yout final profit, probaly more profit than you make from your labor. Don't let your customers supply thier own parts. It sets you up for lost time when waiting for the correct parts and you loose your profit. And dont forget to charge for those 1/4-20 bolts and nuts.
Yeah, Customer supplying his own parts is like: Ya walkin into a resturant with a ribeye and askin them how much to cook it? Thanx 4 all the input guys Guess I'm gonna bump my labor rate up to $75 from $60. And yes I do charge for every nut,bolt, washer,shop rags etc. If the customer don't like it--- Go sumwhere else.
The independants around here are about $75./hr; the dealers about $90.~$100. And I always ask the question about if a shop is insured. If I leave my car, and it is stolen, damaged, or perhaps destroyed in a shop fire, is the shop insured to at least partially repay my loss? If not, I go elsewhere. Jon.
In my opinion the shops skill level also sets the the rate.For example if you can do metal shape work or build a car from scratch.It all goes in hand,if someone can afford a car built from scratch,they can afford to pay for the skill involved to achieve this. my weekly metal work blog www.themetalsurgeon.com
same old story if you want bondo sculpture artists you'll pay a way lower rate! if you you metal finished where you can primer straight on top of the metal with no bondo the rate reflects,but you will save man hours on the other side on filler materials and application.The result is a very thin car and no bondo falling out down the line. my weekly metal work blog www.themetalsurgeon.com
I'd like to bump this up... I'm collecting shop rates for a little economic experiment I'm doing- mostly just because I'm intrigued. You can post here or on our Facebook page if you like. Thanks!
$50/hr - Rocky Mountains I tell my customers, I have a min standard and I do not deviate from that. I don't rush and I won't cut corners. If they want it half assed, then I'm not the guy. My name is on it and if I do somebody a favor by doing an "it'll do" job, then later somebody will ask who did that. They say I did but never say that is what they asked for. So no more. I will allow them to pay the vendor for parts w/o an adder, if I order them and they are delivered here. I have a 3 yr wait right now, must be doing something right.
I'm in at $45.00 for general fab work. I work out of my home shop at the moment, so my overhead is low, and I only take work from folks who understand what it takes to do the job right. An amazing amount of my work is rework of something somebody else started and needs at least some tweeking. I'm pretty steady for work and I'll be moving into a larger facility in the spring where I can set up my sheetmetal/finishing much better. The rate will need to increase accordingly at that time. Most likely in the $65.00 rate which is still low for this area. I will admit that my work, especially chassis stuff is pretty damn good and I get a lot done in an hours time. I do carry insurance and as an LLC I pay taxes. Most of the guys I know who are doing things under the table aren't that good, (not all!), but generally take forever to get anything finished.
Locally here in Whittier/Santa Fe Springs CA most hot Rod shops charge from $60 t $110 per hour. It seems like the more they charge and the more you pay the less work you get for your money. Go figure.
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