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on site graphic fitting question please?
Hello All
just trying to set my mind at ease with the prices we charge to fit big printed panels, 4′ x 8.5′ drops to truck sides., in wallpaper drops in a moderately complicated design, i.e. text, pictures to butt join, etc, on 45′ trailers. 2 fitters on site for 9 – 10 hours at the customers location approx. 1.5 hours drive away over a weekend and during the week.
we haven’t in the past differenciated price for weekend work and weekday work, trying to play as fair as poss with the customer as there are quite a few trucks to be done and it COULD be on going.
what are considered to be a good hourly rate to charge for 2 guys?
im not trying to fish for prices because we have been doing this type of work for years but the customer seems to think im too expensive!
my argument is my prices are my prices take it or leave it but i was curious to get some feed back from you all as to what you would deem
an ‘industry standard’ type of cost?regards
Kevin -
12 Replies
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The perennial problem……… 🙂
And a difficult one to answer because we all have different costs. For example, a fitter of my acquaintance does nothing but on-site fitting and can always be cheaper than me because his costs are purely his own wages, the old van he uses to get about in and the squeegee in his @rse pocket. On the other hand, I have to take into account my admin staff and my premises, the costs of which are always there whether the boys are working here or fitting up the road somewhere. I also need to factor a bit in there for my profit too. Really, there is no way I can compete.
It has to get back down to basics. Get out last years accounts, divide all your costs and expenses by the number of working hours in the year, add in a respectable profit and you arrive at an hourly rate that is applicable to YOUR operation and which you cannot under any circumstances reduce. Well, not without going broke anyway. Then it doesn’t matter what your competitors prices are, you know what you have to charge to stay in business.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
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i agree with john.. so many different things to take into account..
my rates maybe far to low for you to compete as you could be in the london area were everything is priced high. meanwhile up here in scotland my rates maybe high to others in my area… 😕easy way of doing it would be to take in travel costs there & back for fitters, an hourly rate that will see you profit. “not scrape by”
you also have to take into account wasting a panel/s and having them replaced, just in case!something i think that is overlooked is the speed that the fitter works at…
i fitted a truck last week. it was fitted in the fashion mentioned and consisted of about 27-28 vinyl panels, approx 48inches by 92inches. it was fitted outside and took about 3 hours. now i know that lots of fitters could have taken twice as long… so how do you price now? -
The Sign Contractor’s Pricing Guide
http://www.signwritersusa.com
says:
Trip Charges: $35.00 + over 10 miles round trip add $1.50/mile
It also lists the following labor rates:
Installer: $48.00/hour
Apprentice helper: $36.00/hour
Hope this helps even if it’s not in pounds or Euros.
Love….Jill -
Rob has a fair point, rates down here in the south are higher than those in the north but the difference is reducing very quickly.
Pearce Signs use sub contractors for virtually all their fitting and the firm they use has the sub contract market pretty well sewn up down here to the extent where they advise the other subbies what rates they can ‘get away with’
As an example the general rate is £35 per hour for a crew of two including van and equipment (for a minimum 8 hour day) – these guys are more experienced in fitting illuminated signage but will fit a bit of vinyl if the job requires it.
Specialist vinyl fitters (as used by Supersine Duramark & Stewart Signs etc) tend to be thinner on the ground (vinyl fitting can be a lot more specialised than people give credit for) but still seem to charge £30 to £35 per hour for a crew of two (single man installations come out at about £25 an hour).
Having just read Jillbeans post it’s interesting to see how much more rates are in the US but you will still find the odd mad man that’s prepared to charge a lower rate because his overheads are lower – amazing how cheaply some people are prepared to sell their skills.
the installation is what can make or break a job, is it really worth trying to save a few quid on the installation only to run the risk of having to recut it when the (cheap) fitter goofs up?
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remember this post folks, it got a little hot in the kitchen. well worth a read if you didn’t see it first time round. All relavent to this post. https://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.p … highlight=
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thanks everyone
good to see i’m not the only one thinking of these issues on a SUNDAY!!i aree totally with the georaphic placement of different companies,
people in london being dearer etc, but suprisingly i’ve found over the past few years London guys arent’t really any dearer. maybe for somethings but not for specialised vinyl application.
i note too no one has posted there idea of pricing for this type of work so i’ll get the ball rolling…,to travel to site, stay over night accomodation at £45.00 per man,
i know you can get travel inn etc at £45.00 per room but not at short notice, i.e. 5.45 pm friday to start 8am sat morning…
anyway
approx 90miles to site, 8 am kick off, non stop flat out fitting, all but for 20 mins sandwich break, each 45 foot trailer taking 1 hr 40 mins to complete, dry fit, cold weather, pourin rain etc on trailers prior to fit,
15 mins to take trailer out on shunter cab and next 1 in.. all in all 2 hours per trailer.
to give you also an indication, 4 other teams of 2 fitters were on site wet applying still taking exactly the same time.i price this type of work out at £100 per hour, including the above costs.
the likes of people doing it for £35 per hour for 2 guys i don’t understand.
a good vinyl fitter would cost me £8.00 – £ 10.00 per hour, plus travel, accom, etc. for normal hour rates, to get them out there over a weekend, and ultimately do the job properly, so that when the trucks are on the motorway 6am monday they don’t flap off, what would they want?i do have a fairly large premises, staff, machinery, etc to account for,
but even if i still worked from home, had low overheads i still value my experience to go out and get on with jobs like this, so very littlewould change charge wise.
am i being greedy? in fairness Rob that seemed like good going to do that truck, maybe me,my guy and the other installers on site that day are too slow for this game?Kevin
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hi kev
to travel to site, stay over night accommodation at £45.00 per man,
I know you can get travel inn etc at £45.00 per room but not at short notice, i.e. 5.45 pm Friday to start 8am sat morning…Even if you can get cheap accommodation, “I think” you should start making money from the time you set off… little bits here and there build up when handing in a break down so don’t appear as much in the overall bill.
quote :anyway
approx 90miles to site, 8 am kick off, non stop flat out fitting, all but for 20 mins sandwich break, each 45 foot trailer taking 1 hr 40 mins to complete, dry fit, cold weather, pourin rain etc on trailers prior to fit,
15 mins to take trailer out on shunter cab and next 1 in.. All in all 2 hours per trailer.
To give you also an indication, 4 other teams of 2 fitters were on site wet applying still taking exactly the same time.That’s quick mate… are you taking into account cleaning the truck?
With the best will in the world a brand new truck of that size will be covered in dust from the yard unless it’s inside prior to you fitting.
Anyway… 22 panels in that time is good going… which comes to my point…
Lets say you are fitting only… and it takes 2 hours = £200
Joe bloggs takes about 4 hours at £75 = up to £300
At that you are certainly NOT expensive. You being able to fit fast is your upside because you can fit more vehicles in on one day, & fitting them faster lowers the cost to the company.
e.g.
In one day you fit 5 trucks = labour is £1000
In one day Joe bloggs fits 2 trucks at £600Ok so im not giving Joe bloggs much credit but I am knocking a ¼ off the hourly rate.
I like you have fitted trucks along side a team of wet applicators outside. Fast maybe, but their downfall “in my opinion” is quality. Wet app on trucks this size is fine for short term but long term? Well ill not go into it…
quote :The likes of people doing it for £35 per hour for 2 guys I don’t understand.We would fit standard text to a transit van for two guys at £35 per van & that would probably only take 30mins at an easy going pace.
Panels of this size or any kind of wrap then they have to be either self employed and struggling for work, cowboys, or a large firm like supersine that will make from the graphics also, on a major fleet contract.It’s like you have said. It’s valuing your skills and giving the customer what they are looking for. The problem is… “Customers need educating” and they generally aren’t interested in us taking them back to school for 5 minutes.
I intend making up an area within our new reception area showing what can and does go wrong with vinyls applied badly. I am also wanting to make some kind of portfolio showing the same thing.
If I am trying to explain about something but showing what can go wrong if these vinyl’s aren’t fitted correctly and the bill that looms over them if it goes pear shaped, then this should help me win the work… if not and im too expensive.. Then im too expensive!we took on the telewest contract for 1600 vans. we charged that at about £150 per van fitting only based on that amount. it would take one guy about 2 hours to fit one.
that was after doing say 5 and we got into a method of applying them more easy. we never finished the contract due to funds not being available but did fit about 500 or so.. maybe more..
the thing is.. when we fitted them, i questioned things with the company giving me the graphics.. just trivial things… a few weeks into it i would get calls around the country asking advice from other fitters?
they were finding panels popping back out here and there and not being able to apply to certain areas & wanted to know how i tackled it.
so all these jobs around the country coming back to bite their bum now… very costly i would imagine. how much would they have saved if just getting reputable fitters from each area rather than going on a low cost fitting charge?
these graphics were supplied by supersine, i would have thought at least they would have had contacts around the uk to take this on? -
Kevin…….
I thought I had explained why my figures were of no use to you. 🙂
Anyway, here goes……I wouldn’t work on a price per hour, and certainly wouldn’t quote one to the customer, because what works on one job may not be any good on the next one. For example, a job where the work and travelling fits neatly into a nice eight hour day is very efficient whereas if the job is only a little bigger so that it takes ten hours then other expenses, like overtime or an overnight stay, come into play. Then what was a good hourly rate for the eight hour job turns into a loss maker for the ten hour one. For this reason we quote every job individually.
We don’t do big trucks, mainly the small service vehicles like Transit and Scudo, but even so our work varies widely. We can travel two hundred miles to do one van, or twenty miles to do fifty vans so dividing costs per van is pointless. Say if we go one hundred miles for five vans then the £100 travel costs are twenty pounds each. The next time the same customer wants us to go and do one van the costs are £100 then if we had a flat rate, per vehicle or per hour, then we would get into discussions with the client as to why this van is dearer than the last one you did for us. Therefore, we look at what is involved and add up all the individual bits before coming to total price to the customer.
For one man in a van we charge £1 per mile for travelling to cover the drivers time and vehicle running costs. If it’s a blat up the motorway we earn very well out of that but, if it’s a hack round a city, not so well but do make a little bit. Obviously, if there are two men in the van then that goes up. That average works well for us but we are based out in the open near a motorway hub, giving us easy access to all directions, and someone based in a city would need to tweak that figure a bit.
We can never get a room anywhere for £45. The places we go it’s usually more like £60 to £70 per night at short notice. Working away from home is also miserable for the fitters with long evenings to kill so I always pay for their evening meals and a couple of drinks. Consequently I charge £100 per night for one man and £140 for two, and even then I don’t make a fat lot out of it.
On top of that goes the hourly rate for actually doing the work. Minimum £30 per hour or, if I think the job rates it, more.
To finish it off I add ten to fifteen per cent BAF (buggering about factor) because there are always little hold-ups that weren’t foreseen.
I then give the client a total all-inclusive price, never ever a breakdown because that just gives them some ammunition to knock me down. “I know where you can get accomodation cheaper”, which is probably twenty miles away from the job, or “Can’t you do the travelling for a bit less”. Don’t give them the opportunity.
We had the same experience as Robert with Telewest, although we never managed to get his price. £120 was the best we ever did, and even less than that sometimes on the bigger batches. On the upside however, we are still doing them. 🙂 But to back up his point, earlier this year we were working alongside other companies doing these vans and whereas they were only doing two vans per day my boys were doing four each. It worked out that my lads were doing £360 each of chargeable work per day whereas our competitiors were only achieving £220, even though they were charging more per van.
Robert, I think the reason SSDM didn’t get involved in the fitting was because they weren’t asked to. Certainly in this area Telewest wanted to carry on using their existing fitting companies. Ones they know and trust.
Anyhow, that’s a lot of verbiage for this time of the morning so I’m going to get dressed and then do some work.
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That’s quick mate… are you taking into account cleaning the truck?
With the best will in the world a brand new truck of that size will be covered in dust from the yard unless it’s inside prior to you fitting.
Anyway… 22 panels in that time is good going… which comes to my point…Sorry Rob
we only applied 1 side of each trailer..
we had to rapid prep them down, they had been washed previously the day before, they were then shunted in as we required them.
the 2 hours i mentioned takes into account the complete time per truck, clean down, waiting for it to come in, unpacking the graphics, etc, etc,the application was taking approx. 1.5 hrs – 1.45 hrs.
it did seem to be taking a while i thought per 1, but even the guys wet applying going hell for leather were still taking the same time exactly.i too like you would only bother dry applying for the same reasons, the trucks were going straight back outside in the cold and rain, not sure how well they will stay down.!
the thing is, the company involved in the job told me they were getting them applied previously in 1 hour.. can’t see how to be honest.at the end of the day £500.00 for 10 hours graft, travel and accom for 2 guys isn’t any good to me, and from the attitude of the other teams on site it wasnt for them either.
Kevin
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“at the end of the day £500.00 for 10 hours graft, travel and accom for 2 guys isn’t any good to me, and from the attitude of the other teams on site it wasnt for them either.”
So how did it get like that Kevin? Has the customer been playing one of you off against the other?
Up at the top of this thread I mentioned the fitter who could undercut us because he doesn’t have our costs. Earlier this year we both quoted for the same job and the customer tried to get me to match my competitor’s price, which I refused to do and he got the job. The problem was that this fitter couldn’t keep up with the volume and the job started to fall horribly behind only two weeks into a four month contract, which is when I got called back in and was given the job at my price.
I think that this is what this thread is all about. If they want cheap then they have to go to somebody who can provide that but have to accept that their man may not be able to do it fast enough and may well, on some days, just not turn up at all because he’s got the flu or had to go to his mother’s funeral or something.
On the other hand if they want reliability, the knowledge that a team will be there when required, although possibly not the same one each time, then they have to go to a supplier who has those resources. And also to pay the price for them.
Good luck, and let us know how you get on.
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So how did it get like that Kevin? Has the customer been playing one of you off against the other?
Hi John
its the age old classic, which after all these years i can’t believe i’ve got involved in, or should i say suckered into.they, the customer, who only get involved in truck graphics gave me the briefing that the job was being done in 1 hour per trailer, i did question this but as earlier mentioned the go ahead came at 5.45pm friday to go sat morning 8am, although we were aware that it could happen that fast.
my overall point to this thread is this, they were offereing to pay £100 per finished trailer, fine and dandy if it could be done in 1 hour, but after arriving on site and getting on with it to time the install, as you can never be exactly accurate time wise with this type of thing, some jobs can line up immediately, others need more attention, same with car and van wraps, some are easy some you have to mess about with.
it was impossible to do them in 1 hour, so my point to the customer was its taking more or less twice the time, by everyone on site, therefore the cost had to be renegotiated.
it doesnt take a mathematician to work out twice the price…needless to say we have left the job, they wont pay so we’ll leave it to someone else who is happy enough to earn £50 per hour for 2 guys, travel,etc.
i think you are totally right, they will end up paying top wack to get the job finished, as it is time sensitive, because they will eventually run out of fitters/companies who will go there, time trial it and walk away..
or maybe not! 🙄 -
The fitting guys we use if required charge as follows for a two man crew:
Labour £35.00 per hour
Traveling time £35.00 per hour
Mileage @ 40p per mile
Accommodation £90.00 per crew (£45.00 each)They have said they will only work per hour or per day and have said they don’t touch per item jobs as they generally incur much more time than the price allows.
I’ve found this to be generally across the board with all installers, but have found the cheaper guys £25-£28 per hour don’t tend to have the required tickets and are not adequately covered re public liability insurance.
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