Hot Rods What is an honest shop rate?

I am just throwing this out there. Lets say that a guy has 25 + years experience in building hot rods. This guy can do fairly high quality work, from ch***is development all the way through to body and paint. What is an honest shop rate for a skill set like this. I ask this because I see shops asking for anything from 60.00$ to 250.00$ an hour for pro level work.

 

Location, location, location?

 

Ordinary repair shops for daily drivers in Calif are over 125.00 an hour.Its getting to the point you have to build your own car,or be a millionaire.

 

any one man show with that skill level that can work from home can write his own ticket to money heaven...

 

Really ? If you're an owner , proprietor of a one man show , doesn't really matter what endeavor , it's really tuff to find enough time for all the hats you need to wear , and sll the " hidden" expenses you incur, try it sometime .

 

^^^^. I’d agree, pretty tough to do everything yourself as a business.
A side gig, sure.

 

Dog walkers around here are earning CAN$25 -$30/hr. Post Covid everything seems to be $$$$.

 

I’m sure it’s area specific. Cost of living would greatly vary. Good fab guy in my area is 100 bucks an hour. Body and paint is a whole other matter.

 

One guy I know with a repair shop is in at $148 an hour. BUT, he is honest and good. He has a good loyal client base. No games and it is fixed the first time. Another guy I know, does only motor swaps. He charges $119 an hour.

 

Not sure about now but years ago when i use to watch those tv rebuild shows, Fantom Works would always at the end when he is talking to the owners he broke down his bills and when he mentioned the totaled hours involved and the total price I broke it down to hourly rate and it was only $80.00. i thought that was cheap. Remember this was a few years ago.

hate to see what shop rate is now for a body shop. just hearing what they charge for doing mechanical work is mind blowing but then some of these parts on newer vehicles cost more than the cars i drive. no clue what shops get or even what they pay their employees anymore, heck you can get $20 an hour at some mc'ds and walmart depending where you are located

 

Most of us know this.
But it's good to remember.

What does the customer want?

Fast
Good
Cheap

Pick 2

If it's fast and good it ain't gonna be cheap.
If it's fast and cheap it ain't gonn be good.
If it's cheap and good it ain't gonna be fast.

My Dad had a little home repair service for when times were slow. One of his customers suggested that he charge more.
She said...
"If you charge too little, people will think you don't do good work."
He did very good work.

Good luck to this multi-skilled person. Whoever they might be.

 

Some good friends of mine that do everything from motor work to complete restorations including paint are in the $125/hr range if I remember right now. That is in Oklahoma and they have been doing this kind of work for 50 or more years now. They are plenty busy with more work than they can keep up with.

 

Prices will differ with the COL in any area, I’m sure it would be cheaper here in Bama than in CA or NY. Quality will also make a big difference, is the place clean and shiny, or does it look like the Russian Army celebrated their last payday in it?

We have an open building here in town, it was built to be a quick oil change, has 5 or 6 bays, two or three 4 post drive on lifts, an used oil storage tank, etc. I know there have been at least 3-4 guys who leased it and ran a shop out of it. Biggest one had about 5-6 employees, smallest was one guy with a part time helper. None of them could make it there. The overhead was just too much. Electric service, water, property lease, it all added up. And it wasn’t due to lack of business, either. A couple of the guys also sold new and used tires along with oil changes and brake jobs and other mechanical jobs. They stayed wrapped up.

They couldn’t charge large town prices in a small town. People would use them a time or two, then go elsewhere looking for a deal. I became friends with a couple of them, both told me the same thing, break even was about it, if they could do that. One of them still does my late model work, he has a shop he built at his house, him and one guy turn out as much as he did here in town, at a much lower overhead. Folks drive the 15 miles out in the country to use him. His rates are reasonable, he usually gives me a rough quote on a job and we go from that.

Lots to consider when talking about rates.

 

Home or very small shops can start around 50 -60 per
Pro shops 90-150 per
General labor
Mechanical labor
Fabrication labor
CNC time

 

Tough question. The natl avg has to be close to if not over $100. And anyone that plies their wares of labor has to decide what they're selling. Quality or price? Hard to sell both. I don't do it all but I do a lot. Fab to finish, and ½ of your success or failure will be the outsourcing you choose. I'm sure I could get double what I charge in certain regions. Back in 2015 I was told by a shop in SOCAL that their hourly rate was $137.50. Odd number, place was full. Fair now? Most dealers are at 150+ for service but remember that's flat rate ****. Body shop rates are notoriously low in that venue. Custom body/paint is a higher standard that lots of ppl never understand. You don't want Bondo Joe on your Ridler/GNRS contender do ya? You also have to avoid the ones who think they deserve a 10 spot for every stroke of the sandpaper.

I'm off the road here a minute, I've seen build hours literally bragged about. "...a no expense spared 14,000 hour restoration was performed..." and to that I say with what? A single cresent wrench. Did you know they invented air tools? 14,000 hours? Coulda hand formed all 4 fenders with a hammer n dolly. Must have brush painted the ****er with a 1" brush. How dafuq can that be justified? I know the car inside out and could have built 2 or 3 in that time...AND ****IN WIN EVERYTHING.

Fair is a loaded question but today 70-100 has to be it. As long as you remember that NOBODY NEEDS A ****IN THING that we're dedicated to in these pages and you're asking for discretionary funds, you should be good and fair with all of it. I run a little shop, almost a ****hole until you see what's in there sometimes. Always a mess because there's only 2 of us and we get senior discounts. I'll stop now...

 

Here in Eastern PA I am hearing rates from $65/hr for a far guy doing fair work but not complicated work, IE no intense computer related work, no major motor work. Country setting. The high end new car dealers in the Lehigh Valley area were in the $150 range last I asked around. They are probably higher now.

An easy way to figure out what you need to charge is take your expenses for the year. Divide them out to the cost per hour for a 40 hour week. Then you have to remember you will never work 40 billable hours in the week.
Then you need to decide how much a week you want on top of that.
If you are a one man shop You will be waiting and looking for parts about 2 hours per day.
A 3 man shop really needs an office person another expense. But that should keep the workers working closer to the 8 hours per day.

 

Oh Ricky! Truer words have never been spoken. Most of our walk in customers (non fleet) want us to patch their junk back together for 35 cents on the dollar. Fleets for the most part don’t give a **** was it costs, they just need it done and back on the road generating revenue.
I don’t have a clue what car shop labor rates are, I take care of our daily’s myself and they are both less than two years old . I’ve never had any hot rod work done by anyone but myself. I can tell you our hourly rate at work is $150/hour in the shop and $180/hour for road service. My nephew works at the local Mack Truck dealer and they are $179/hour.

 

I did remodeling, my old partner is doing fairly high end bath and kitchen remodels now. He is up to 150 an hour,
with a basic bath remodel over 20k, yet he says he made more money 3 years ago when he charged 80. The cost of
insurance, pay rates for employees, supplies, vehicle expenses etc are rising faster than his income, and he is booked
for 6 months in advance.

 

You what to charge enough to keep the riffraft away and don’t be bashful about getting money ahead. I’ve done projects that were months long and the customer came in the first of the month and paid me for four weeks of labor with a final settlement at the end. That way there’s no surprises like the last car I did working for a shop. I put quarters, outer wheel housings, rear frame rails and a complete paint job on an early mustang. The week before it was supposed to go out the door the owner came in and said he was getting a divorce and had no money. The guy I worked for never did say what he did to get the car paid for but lawyers were involved.

 

I've noticed that no one who has answered this question has mentioned the astronomical price of insurance as part of their overhead. When I was helping my son with his ornamental iron fence and gate business, he would have to compete with the guy who would use inferior materials, who had little experience in fabricating and was willing to take on a job at a cheaper price because he had no shop, no overhead, no licenses and no liability or worker's comp insurance. Looks like the people in the auto repair business have the same problems. A reputable shop has all those expenses while the one or two man shops don't usually carry coverage for faulty work.

 

I see on these pages a lot of guys 'n gals can fabricate to paint in a small shop.
It's not as feasible in a pro environment. You need dedicated spray space, dedicated parts cleaning space, etc.
You want a place that can handle more than a single car in a single space because then you are tied down to a single customer and any issues tie up the whole operation.
This causes the overhead to double or triple compared to the single space, plus business costs as covered by many. Most of us remember the bike fad of a decade or two back, and how every Tom, **** and Harry had a shop catering to machines that take up 1/4 the space. How many are still around and how many customers got burned? How many owners lost it all?
All of this to say, you need to have a business plan and once that is fully fleshed out, you will have a figure that will keep things afloat at least, hopefully grow. If you don't have that all known, asking others for a number shows your plan is junk and will fail.
There was a guy who moved into this area and bought a shop, bought a bunch of stuff to fill the shop and a bunch of cars. Figure at least 2-3 million dollars. That's fully invested, not a pay as you go. Those monthly expenses like power and water and taxes/fees would easily add up to a grand a month, and nobody is hired and working, no insurance, no advertising. Why would you take that kind of money out of a money market account at a safe 5% or even a savings account at 0.1% and risk it on a shop?
EDIT:
The small local bank has CDs at 0.15% APR. For 2M, that's 30K a year to sit on your ****. Doesn't beat inflation, but why would you risk without reward?
As the story goes, the street racer won't turn a fan belt for less than 50 bucks.
Also, look at it from the OP question. This guy has the talent and skills to do it all. What are they going to expect to earn an hour without all this risk? I'd guess at least 40 bucks per hour for every hour they are in the shop, not flat rate. At 40 hours a week, times 52 weeks, that is 2080 hours or 83.2K a year.
The owner better have this guy scheduled well, or he's going to have to lower the wage and lose him or cut into his own profits. This guy isn't going to be answering the phone or sweeping the shop, either.

 

I had to back into the number based on overhead and what I wanted left in my pocket.
My mentor used to say "how do you justify being the cheapest service provider?" ....

 

The body guy doing the rust repair/paint on my Ranch Wagon in Inland SoCal charges $85.00/hr. One man shop working out of his home. Does quality work but it takes a while as he juggles more than one project at once. And of course it turned out to be a bigger project than initially envisioned but then what else is new?

 

"What is an honest shop rate" ...

Well if that ain't the perfect oxy*****, I don't know what is

 

A bucks-up hot rodding friend of a friend whom I had never met contacted me out of the blue, based on the recommendation of our mutal friend, he wondered if I would be willing to scratch-build a steel track nose for his hot rod. I knew of the fellow, but we had never met. I asked the details of what he was looking for, the timeframe he expected etc.. He confirmed that he already had the buck made. I explained that I pretty much work on my own stuff exclusively, and am not really looking for work because I can keep myself pretty busy. But, I'd be willing to set my stuff ***ide for a couple weeks to help him out. I said it would be based on time and materials. The rate would be $50/hr (I have minimum overhead at my home shop and was trying to help a friend of a friend)...and I "guestimated" 100 hours to complete the piece to the level he was asking. Frankly, I thought $5k seemed like a lot of money, but time is time and the math doesn't lie.

He took the project elsewhere (and I am/was very much ok with that). He was talking to his friend afterwards, he said I wasn't charging enough, and that scared him.

 

I live just south of you. Around here, there's a shop that doesn't have to advertise. Their reputation speaks for itself and there is always a waiting list. It's a full fledged business, not a one man show operating out of a garage. They have the manager and at least 3 employees. They're getting $140/hr I believe it was.

Anyone who can stay busy just with referrals is worth their price, whatever that may be. I gladly pay for getting things fixed right, the first time.
As a contractor, I stay busy by word of mouth. I don't drive anything new, my work truck is over 20 years old. I see these new guys driving these fancy trucks and have to wonder if their work is reflective of that or if they just want to look good. I've plied my craft for 30 years now and have become very specialized at doing so many things that others can't or won't do. I can pretty much charge whatever I want sometimes. I had a boss once that said if you're too busy, raise your rates until you have just the right amount of work you want. Don't charge too much or too little. Let the market determine what to charge. I've topped out what I charge. I can't charge anymore without feeling guilty. I stay more than busy enough. Every once in awhile I will give the "I don't want to do that" quote. But it's a number that if they say yes to, I'll get over my hangups.

Good, honest, knowledgeable, hardworking people are getting harder and harder to find.

 

anothercarguy and scotts52, that is true. The people that want the cheapest price are more than likely the most difficult to deal with and take more of your 'off the books' time. If your work is known to be of value, you want and deserve the customer who recognizes that value.

 

I was riding with my buddy to the flea market and I wondered this same thing. They built one of those franchised collision repair places near us. Started with a vacant lot, all the earth moving, concrete, building ,privacy fence etc. Out of the gate they spent more than I made my entire working life. How many cars will they have to fix before they ever make a nickel?
Another newer place near us is a ACE hardware / landscape supply company. Has a small engine repair shop in back, a prominent sign that says " Labor rate $90/ hr" . WTH , to work on chainsaws and weedeaters? A couple hours into a repair job and you might as well throw it away and buy a new one. Maybe they are counting on that , as they are a dealer for Stihl, Husky and Echo. Oh and did you know you cant even tune some of the newer machines without a computer?
The world is a crazy place since Covid and it dont appear to be getting better.
Good luck on your problem. I for sure dont have the answer.

 

Here's a free (worth what you paid) business plan for small engine repair.
https://stepbystepbusiness.com/business-ideas/start-a-small-engine-repair-business/
I doubt they really covered it all realistically. 90% margin sounds very high. No mention of consumables and other expenses, no mention of either the vehicle costs for mobile repair or the commercial space for on site repair, or BOTH.
The 15 hours billable per week (3 a day X 5 days) is probably a decent number, considering having to field calls, get parts, run to customers, do paperwork and selling, all of which are not billable. That's if you can get enough business to bill 3 hours a day.

They also have $200 for insurance (HAH!) and little to no other business costs at the top. Down below, they talk about becoming an LLC, licenses and tax IDs. All this stuff costs time and money.

 

My guess, in the Pacific Northwest for a guy with 25+ years experience, working out of a well equipped home shop with hopefully a paint booth would be $150-$175 per hour.