What the work really costs, what to charge for it, and how to keep the margin. Written for contractors.
October 9, 2026
A $30 wage is not a $30 rate. Here is the arithmetic that turns a wage into an hourly rate that covers burden, overhead and profit, and the one number contractors forget to divide by.
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October 7, 2026
Jobber Grow is $199 a month, and that covers one user. Ten people is $399. Here is the whole pricing ladder read off Jobber's own page, and what a ten person crew pays across four tools.
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October 6, 2026
Adding 25 percent to a cost is not a 25 percent margin. On one driveway the difference is $638, and across a year of jobs it is a whole job's worth of cost. Here is the conversion both ways.
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September 30, 2026
California overtime is a daily clock, not a weekly one. Eight hours and one minute is time and a half, twelve is double time, and the seventh straight day is its own rule. Here is the arithmetic on a real week.
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September 28, 2026
Per-foot concrete pricing is an output, not a starting point. Here is the cost stack under a 600 square foot driveway, what it prices at on a real margin, and what a $12 a foot rival actually costs you.
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September 23, 2026
A remodel and a hardscape job are estimated two different ways. Remodel work is priced around unknowns with allowances. Hardscape is measured. Here is both, and what a miss costs.
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September 21, 2026
Yardage is three numbers multiplied and divided by 27. Here is the formula, the waste factor, and the two shortcuts that cost people a truck.
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September 15, 2026
Per-square-foot pricing is an output, not an input. Here is the bottom-up way to price a paver patio: spoil volume, compacted base, pavers with waste, burdened crew hours, disposal and overhead, with a worked 400 square foot example and the math for what happens when you price it at $30 a foot.
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September 14, 2026
Daily overtime after 8, double time after 12, the seventh day, four 10s, prevailing wage jobs, the regular rate, and what the Labor Commissioner charges when a crew's hours are wrong.
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September 14, 2026
The bid, line by line: scope, yardage, delivered concrete, the lines that are not the mud, what an hour of your crew really costs you, overhead, what to charge, and the per-foot sanity check.
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September 8, 2026
The bid-side math: labor hours at burdened rates, materials with waste, the direct lines everyone forgets, overhead, and the cost-to-price step, with one worked re-roof.
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September 7, 2026
What belongs in the cost of a pour, the numbers that hide from concrete contractors specifically, and one worked flatwork job showing where the margin really went.
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September 5, 2026
The six-step math for what a construction job actually made: burdened labor, real material costs, overhead share, and true margin, with a worked example.
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September 4, 2026
The whole system: five cost buckets, what an hour of your crew really costs you, markup versus margin, and one fully worked job so you can see where the money actually goes.
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July 14, 2026
What clock-in tracking does on a real job site, what it fixes, and what a good system deliberately refuses to do.
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