You Make Four Trips and the Bid Prices One
You make four trips to a job you priced like one trip, and the auger rides along on every one of them.
The cure clock is what makes this specifically a fencing problem. You can't hang a heavy gate leaf on a post you set yesterday, so the trade builds a mandatory return trip into its own method before anybody else on site does anything wrong. Then, because you're one of the last trades in, your finished runs get cut out for other people's equipment access, which buys you another trip no change order was written for.
The size of it
Trips two through five are almost never in the bid and almost never billed. The last trade on site is also the one holding closeout, so backcharges for damage you didn't cause tend to hit that same final invoice.
Permanent fence goes in after final grade and often after landscaping, which parks you near the end of the sequence. Then the work splits itself into pieces. You set posts on the first trip and wait on concrete cure before hanging panels and heavy gate leaves. A third trip covers gate operators and hardware. Punch list brings you back once more, along with the runs other trades cut out to move equipment through. Every one of those trips drags a skid steer, an auger or post driver, and a trailer to the site, and that equipment cost hits once per mobilization no matter how many feet go in that day. On a $40,000 fence contract, mobilization is a visible share of the job, while on a $2 million mechanical contract it's a rounding error.
Three moves, in order
Step 02: Equipment cost basis
A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it.
What else costs fencing contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What fencing owners ask
How to price mobilization on a small fence job?
You make four trips to a job you priced like one trip, and the auger rides along on every one of them.
What does it cost?
Trips two through five are almost never in the bid and almost never billed. The last trade on site is also the one holding closeout, so backcharges for damage you didn't cause tend to hit that same final invoice.
What do I do first?
Count trips in the estimate the way the work really runs: post set, hang after cure, operators and hardware, and punch. Price all four.
What are fencing contractors supposed to be making?
No survey separates fencing, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Sitework, which runs 18% gross margin, 15% overhead and 3% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10% net. Those are derived figures, not fencing's own. Read them as the neighbourhood, and read your own job costing as the answer.
Which part of the system fixes it?
The step is number 02, equipment cost basis. A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it. It comes from chapter 2 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for fencing contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.