hi you doing my friends. well i am in the works of building a center console for a 99 F-150 truck. its a extra cab. i will be building it from the front of the dash all the way to the rear firewall. i will do it out of fiberglass with two JLW6 subs in the back and in the center a 7 inch monitor molded in the front. also the two amps will be displaying on the side of the box. my question is this and may sound akward but its necessary. how much can i charge for this kind of labor? my client will be providing the materials. i will just build it and leave it ready for paint. can u advice me please my time is running out and i dont have an estimate for my client. any advice is apreciative.
to do a bid you must consider two things: how long it will take and how much work and effort is going to have to be put into it. if it takes you 30 man hours to finish the console and get it ready for paint, then charge for 30 hours. then you must determine how much each hour of your time is worth to you. if you feel your labor is worth $40 per hour then charge it...if you feel $80, then so be it. at our shop we charge between $40/hr to $100/hr depending on the level of difficulty. paint finish glasswork takes a lot of sanding and precision so don't cheat yourself. i would estimate around 60+ dollars per hour of work and probably 15 hours of labor or more. so i might guess around $1000 should be fair.
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"If a man made it, another can modify it...it just takes some thinking."
"If you ask questions, you're a fool for 5 minutes; if you don't, you're a fool for a lifetime."
wow is that a fact? and to think that until now im considering to charge. i would just do it because to me its a passion. i recently incorporated a 5.6 monitor in a dash of a 93 chevy silverado. i molded where the radio control was located above the AC controls. how much do u think that was worth. i had it done in two days. i'de say it took me about 30 hours total to finish. so can you advice on how to make my client understand that labor sometimes is like pay the cost to be the boss?
thanks alot for your help my friend i am grateful. ill keep you posted if i make this enclosure. thank you.
Now you also have to take into account your location too. I'm sure there is at least 1 other shop nearby that does custom work too. Talk to them about a project and find out how much they charge for it. You might find that you are on the losing end and you could have made a lot more money or that you have been charging way too much and people are going to the competition for work.
Best thing to do is know the market for your area and be competitive in pricing. For example, in some areas I have been to, average job for an area was about $25-$30 per hour (labor only) for a custom job and in other areas, I have seen as much as $50-$60 per hour for labor. I remember one city I went to, the average for the part of the city I was at was $80-$120 per hour, but the work was top notch.
So know what your competition is asking for and be competitive but fair.
Ganbatte ne!
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Never send your ducks to eagle school.
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
The 3Ls of life: Learn from the Past, Live for the Present, Look to the Future.