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Crew day rate calculator
Work out what one crew really costs per hour and per day, then see your minimum day rate at your margin.
Open the tool: Crew day rate calculatorFree course · Lesson 6 of 7
Pricing every job from your costs
More calls and more booked estimates only help if each job makes money. Many owners price by gut feel or by matching the cheapest company in town. This lesson shows you a simple way to price from your own costs, so you know every job pays for the crew, the gear and you.
By Umair Nawaz, Lirevon. About 8 minutes to read. Last reviewed: October 2026. Short explanation, not tax or accounting advice.
Why price from costs
If you copy a competitor's prices, you also copy their mistakes. You do not know their crew size, their pay, their equipment loans or whether they make any money at all. Your costs are yours. A price built from them is a price you can defend, both to the customer and to yourself.
Pricing from costs does not mean you must be expensive. It means you know your floor: the lowest price where a job still pays its way. Above that floor you can choose how much margin to add, based on the job, the risk and how busy you are.
What goes into your costs
Labor
Hourly pay for every person on the crew, including you if you work in the field. Pay yourself a wage here. Profit comes later.
Payroll costs
Employer FICA is 7.65% of wages. Add your workers comp rate, state and federal unemployment taxes and any benefits. Workers comp for tree work can be a big line, so get your real rate from your insurer.
Equipment
Truck, chipper, stump grinder, saws, climbing and rigging gear. Count loan or lease payments, repairs and wear. Spread each over the days you actually work.
Fuel
Trucks, chipper, grinder and saws. Track a few weeks of receipts to get a real daily number.
Insurance and overhead
Liability insurance, phone, software, marketing, office, accounting, yard rent. Add it all up for the year and divide by the days your crews work.
Job extras
Disposal or dump fees, travel to far jobs, permits, crane or lift rental, traffic control. These change by job, so add them per job, not into the day rate.
To add up one crew day, use the crew day rate calculator. For job extras, see the disposal cost calculator and the travel cost calculator. To check your workers comp number, try the workers comp estimator, then confirm it with your insurer.
The pricing formula, step by step
- Add up one crew day: labor, payroll costs, equipment, fuel and the daily share of insurance and overhead.
- Divide by the hours the crew really works on jobs that day, not the hours on the clock. Drive time and breaks are real.
- That gives your crew cost per hour.
- Estimate the hours the job will take, and multiply by your crew cost per hour.
- Add the job extras: disposal, travel, rentals and permits.
- Pick your target margin. Then divide the job cost by one minus that margin. That is your price.
- Round to a clean number and write down what the price includes and what it does not.
The formula in plain words
Job cost = job hours × crew cost per hour + disposal + travel + rentals and permits.
Price = job cost ÷ (1 − your target margin).
A practice example
These are made-up numbers for practice only. They are not typical prices or costs. Use your own.
| Crew day cost (made-up) | $1,600 |
|---|---|
| Hours worked on jobs | 8, so $200 per hour |
| This job | 5 hours × $200 = $1,000 |
| Disposal + travel | $120 + $40 = $160 |
| Job cost | $1,160 |
| Target margin (your choice) | 25% |
| Price | $1,160 ÷ 0.75 = $1,546.67, rounded to $1,550 |
Notice the last step. Adding 25% to the cost would give $1,450, which is only about a 20% margin. Dividing by one minus the margin is what gets you the margin you planned. Check your own numbers with the profit margin calculator, or run the whole job in the tree job estimator.
Things that change the price
The formula gives you the base. Then you adjust the hours and the extras for the job in front of you. Common reasons a job takes longer or costs more: the tree is close to a house or power lines, there is no truck access and wood must be carried out, the tree is dead or hollow and needs extra rigging care, a crane is needed, or the customer wants the stump ground and the wood hauled away. Write these into the estimate so the customer sees why the price is what it is.
For deposits on big jobs, the job deposit calculator helps. For slow months, the break-even calculator shows how many jobs you need just to cover the bills. And when you want a simple price sheet for common jobs, use the price guide builder.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Leaving yourself out. If you work in the field, your wage is a cost. Profit is what is left after you are paid.
- Forgetting payroll costs. Wages are not the full cost of a worker. Employer FICA, workers comp and unemployment taxes come on top.
- Counting clock hours as job hours. Loading, driving and the dump run take real time. Use the hours spent on paying work.
- Confusing markup and margin. A 25% markup is not a 25% margin. Use the divide step.
- Setting prices once and forgetting them. Fuel, insurance and pay change. Check your costs every few months.
Your task for today
Pull last month's receipts and payroll. Add up the cost of one normal crew day, and divide by the hours spent on paying work to get your crew cost per hour. Pick a target margin. Then re-price your last three jobs with the formula and compare with what you actually charged. If any came in under your cost, you have found money. This takes about 60 minutes.
Checklist
Go deeper
- Pricing tree work guide: the full version of this lesson.
- Estimating tree jobs guide: how to size up a job on site.
- Estimate template: a clean written estimate to send.
- Seasonal cash flow guide: plan for the slow months.
Good pricing works best when you also book more of the right jobs. See our services and pricing, or ask for a free audit. Lirevon is new and has no tree-service clients yet; our first case studies are planned for December 2026.