How to calculate your hourly rate as a contractor
Add up what you want to pay yourself in a year and what the business spends in a year on overhead: truck payments and fuel, insurance, tools, licenses, phone, software, marketing and accounting. That total is what your billable hours have to cover.
Divide it by your billable hours. If you want $60,000 and overhead is $30,000, you need $90,000. At 30 billable hours a week for 48 weeks, that is 1,440 hours and a break-even rate of $62.50 an hour.
Why billable hours are lower than you think
A 50-hour week is not 50 billable hours. Estimates, supply runs, driving, phone calls, invoicing and callbacks all eat the day. Most owner-operators bill somewhere between 25 and 35 hours a week. Be honest here and the rest of the math works.
Take out holidays, weather days and slow season too. 46 to 48 working weeks a year is a realistic starting point for most trades.
Add profit on top of break-even
Break-even pays you and the bills. Profit is what lets you buy the next truck, survive a slow month and hire help. A 15% to 25% margin on top of break-even is a healthy target for a small trades business.
If the number feels high next to what others charge locally, that is useful information. You can raise the rate, cut overhead, or get more billable hours by spending less time on paperwork.
Win back billable hours
Every hour spent rewriting quotes, chasing signatures and building invoices is an hour you cannot bill. QuotesForge turns a quote into an invoice in one click, follows up for you and plans your day, so more of the week goes to paid work.