Pricing shop rate

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Hey all I am trying to come up with a shop hourly rate I have a fabricator 252i mig tig stick-propane forge- plasma cutter- 4/4 CNc plasma table- sand blaster- powder coating.
Reply:are you fully insured? whats the shop rates in your area?  are you a cert welder or?High Octane Welding
Reply:What are you willing to pay to have work done________________________________Everlast PA140STEverlast PowerPlasma 50And no you can't Borrow them
Reply:Not insured and have not got cert but plan to.
Reply:I am the owner its a small family buisness
Reply:It doesn't matter what you have but what you know how to do. You could be the best weldor in the world but can't fabricate spit or know how to fix any thing. You will have to start low and work your way up as you become more skilled in what you are wanting to do with the business.
Reply:Originally Posted by FlyingJHey all I am trying to come up with a shop hourly rate I have a fabricator 252i mig tig stick-propane forge- plasma cutter- 4/4 CNc plasma table- sand blaster- powder coating.
Reply:I am competent I have done d rings and trailers to art
Reply:Being a good welder and being good a running a business are 2 entirely different things.  Running your own business requires you to do both.  Don't forget to practice and improve both skills as you move forward.
Reply:id call around to local shops and get quotes on something youd normaly build or ask what they charge hrly. As for the no insurance and stuff id look into that stuff to it suck to run your shop at a set rate then get nailed for something or go get insurance an piss all your customers cuase you have to up your ratesHigh Octane Welding
Reply:I would suggest to find out what the other fab shops are charging for similar work to determine if you can be competitive and make money.      Then figure your cost of doing business.  Labor cost,  Time, materials, Equipment cost and future repair, overhead, depreciation, insurance, taxes , license and accounting.   Might want to use word of mouth advertising, a billboard, face book , news paper, etc to utilize cost for marketing.       You could pro rate all your overhead over say 50 weeks with 50 hours per week labor for one person and then if you hire a helper figure matching taxes for him.   If you work for yourself then your are responsible for both parts of the matching tax for yourself.  I always allowed a figure for Sales and General Administration  if you grow and have to hire someone to answer the phone for you.  Then we also figured a small figure for screw-ups, problems with collecting from some customers in a timely manner.  Some companies will want 30, 60 days terms in you want to grow.   From personal experience  sometimes you can get in trouble being successful by not collecting your receivables quick enough and have a cash flow crunch.  Then if you have to borrow a little money from the bank to pay your vendors on time to get the best price you would need to figure an additional 1% a month to your cost business for loans , loan originations fees, life insurance to cover the loan if you die.    Early 70s I started as a one man shop and eventually hired a helper.  Then we grew. Then we grew some more.  Moved from a barn at the farm to a big rented building in town.  Then we grew some more and build a very large building at the industrial park. Then we expanded the plant in 1989.  Made more money percentage wise on the return on the investment when we stayed small.   However we turned a lot of money and made good money when we went International in 1984 .  This being said   my suggestion is to use all the resource people from this web to learn the good , the bad and the ugly of running a business.  Overhead, misquoting a job, being screwed out of your money or being sued will ruin you.   We went from a one man show to an International Corporation and did work from Mongolia to the Middle East. Customers from NASA, Dupont, DOW Chemical, U.S. Army, and Ministry of Transportation in Japan and many more. Sold out in 1991 due to all the Federal Excise Taxes imposed on us.    I hope this helps.  There are a lot of very smart folks on this forum that can give you information on how to charge, job cost, how to run a business and things to looks for .  Most of all we treated all customers with high respect and we demanded respect back.  We hired quality employees and treated them with respect and paid them well .  We were always honest with our employees and our customers. We always did what we said we would do even if we screwed up and had to eat some of the cost .  We always were accurate with our deliver and told the customer up front if we suspected that there might be a delay.   We always believed our employees were our most valuable asset not the shears, cranes , welding machines or the plant.  We worked as a team and we weeded out not only bad employees , some customers we refused to work for even if there was a lot of money to be made if our engineering and sales staff thought that we would have trouble with them down the road.   Good luck with your welding business I wish you the very best and hope that the information I have shared with help open your eyes and help you be very successful.  Richey
Reply:Thanks
Reply:Go to www.esabna.com. go to education tab then click on ESAB University, Select the Arc Welding Technology Course and go to lesson 9.Has forms that will help figure out the cost of a welding job. You will learn a lot from the whole course also.
Reply:Find out if you have to a be a licensed journeyman in order to advertise for welding work. You supposed to be licensed in Alberta. Can you post some pictures of the work you've done? Saying you've built trailers, for example, doesn't necessarily mean anything. Not saying you didn't do a good job but there's a lot of stuff out there that is pure junk.
Reply:I can't post pics from phone