Labor for fence installation - $17/hr to $125/hr

The Coffee Shop
1

I’m working with my neighbor to replace the split rail fence between our properties. We each got a quote for my section of fence:

Home Depot - $3,400
Independent Contractor - $1,400

Pricing out the materials is easy. The MOST they will cost is what I can buy them for myself, and that came out to $900. The remainder is labor, overhead, and profit. I estimated it was ~20 man hours of work (I just watched them do it).

The contractor came to about $17/hr. The Home Depot quote would have been $125/hr.

Someone, please, make it make sense!

2

I’d go with the contractor’s quote.

3

This

4

You think it was free to go get the materials, order them, determine how much you need, overhead? The contractor didn’t make very much money, imo.

5

FIFY.

Congrats Barry, you found a contractor willing to pay you to build your fence.

Guaranteed the poor bastard will either be out of business in a couple of years, or charging significantly more after learning from his mistake here.

1 Like
6

The funny thing is, I bet the contractor home Depot sends out is only making around $17/hr…

7

There’s exactly one store I’d let install stuff ABT.

8

$170 an hour to dig holes? Why on earth would anyone go to school to be a plumber or electrician when they can make a lot more digging holes?

9

So many “independent contractors” have no idea how to price work.
$17/mh for labor? Poor guy is going broke and does not realize it.

1 Like
10

Nobody is making $170 digging holes.
They are charging you $170 an hour, and paying themselves much less after their expenses are paid.

The guy who put in a labour bid at $17/hr is probably working for close to free and doesn’t know it.

1 Like
11

I know you think I don’t understand this, and i am at a loss at how to explain to you that I fully understand the point you are trying to make.

My company bills $140/hr “to fix medical equipment.” I know that does not mean that the person fixing the equipment gets paid $280,000 a year. $140 includes his salary plus all the expenses of running the service division of an engineering company.

Now replace “fix medical equipment” with “dig holes.” $30 an hour MORE to do basic manual labor. Can you explain that?

Okay, are we all on the same page with this? Do we all now understand that I literally used to work in the serviceability department of a fortune 500 engineering company and ran analytics on our costs?

12

My guess is he’s paying the two migrants ~$10/hr and paying himself $30/hr, which is pretty low for a business owner, but he’s very young. He may figure it out as he gets older.

13

So your choice is help oppress an illegal immigrant or help support an evil BIG corp. What do you choose?

14

Guys, it’s a price from Home Depot. They literally cater to the windy-type who have more money than brains (when it comes manual labor). They just take a price and whack a huge mark-up on it, never even bother to do more than point a contractor to you and then cut a small check back to that contractor.

Hell, the contractor installing the fence is probably the same in either scenario here.

  • Jeff
15

I called ICE.

1 Like
16

Before I even got the second quote I was like WTF?! I did the math, and thought there’s no F’ing way I’m paying that rate!

17

Then why did you write this:

18

I build my fences myself and have my neighbor pay for the materials.

19

To simplify the math. A thousand dollars of material leaves 2400 divided by 20 hours equals one hundred twenty dollars an hour. The independent contractor did not price the job correctly. Either he made a mistake or he is taking on work just to keep his crew busy? BTW how many feet of fencing. Did they cement the posts in place. Split rail fencing should not take much time to install.

My neighbor just had 60 feet of privacy fencing (wood) put up between us and it took 20 hours of labor. They cemented 6 by 6 posts in place and removed four metal posts and the cement plugs holding them in place.

20

Home depot does not have its own intallaticrews, for anything they do. They subcontract all jobs out to some of those same individual contractors.

Home depot is just turnkeying the jobs. You also get jobsite liability and coverage for their jobs, along with quality guarantees. Those all cost.

Im not justifying the HD cost, its just that they have a different client basis … they target customers with more money, no time or ability to do their own homework, cost analysis or to find independent contractos and vett them, etc…

HD is taking the low hanging fruit and charging a premium. Its gravy to them.