Striping
No survey separates striping on its own, so this page shows Paving's figures as the nearest comparable trade, labelled as derived, and lists 4 mechanisms that cost striping contractors money and the step that fixes each.
No survey separates striping, and it isn't one of the 48 trades in the SPM reference. The figures on this page are Paving's, the nearest comparable trade that's in it, and every table and export labels them as derived. They describe a trade that works like this one, not striping itself. Use them to find the neighbourhood, then let your own job costing be the answer.
Striping by revenue band
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M | $25M–$50MModeled | $50M–$100MModeled | $100M–$500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M–$5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 14% | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% | 8% | 13% |
| Gross margin | 20% | 22% | 23% | 25% | 26% | 28% | 29% | 23% |
| Net profit | 6% | 9% | 11% | 14% | 16% | 19% | 21% | 10% |
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 13% | 12% | 11% |
| Gross margin | 23% | 24.5% | 25.5% |
| Net profit | 10% | 12.5% | 14.5% |
Modeled extension of the survey curve, not reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. That applies to the 4 bands above $10M to $25M, and no CFOS target is published for them.
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA, Jones Maresca and SPM's own trade data, because those are the figures those sources report by trade and size. Net profit is calculated from them as gross margin minus overhead, so the three rows tie. That makes it an operating profit figure: what is left before interest, other income and expense, and the tax planning choices owners make, such as bonuses, depreciation methods and retirement contributions.
Surveys report net income before taxes after those items, so a reported net can run below the figure here. At the typical contractor the difference is small: CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. It grows with size. Against the separate measured net profit dataset, the calculated net runs 0.8 points higher at $1M to $5M, 2.2 points at $5M to $10M and 3.5 points at $10M to $25M, because the gross margin and overhead rows change faster with size than reported net profit does.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, and the calculated net there runs well above survey medians, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Run On CFOS. Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference: Striping. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/striping. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead come from figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish, and Run On CFOS derives net profit as gross margin minus overhead. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2025.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M extend the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is explained on the methodology page.
4 problems specific to striping
Your bid is in linear feet, stalls, and legends, but your money goes out in crew-days. Your markings looked right in daylight and failed the night ride. You priced the thermoplastic two summers before anybody let you on the road. The preformed legends and custom stencils stayed in the shop all season waiting on somebody else's paving date.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a striping problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| You Bid In Feet And Spend In Days | Most trades bid and spend in roughly the same units: hours against square feet, or material against assembly count. Striping quotes in four different units at once and pays in a fifth. A mobilization charge stays flat while the bid unit scales, so two jobs priced at the same rate per foot can finish on opposite sides of breakeven purely on how much of the day got painted. | Estimating system |
| The Night Ride Decides Whether You Got Paid | Almost every other trade is accepted on a walk-through you can see and argue about. Striping is accepted on a number a machine produces, after dark, days after your crew is gone, against a floor printed in the spec. No other trade on that site has an acceptance criterion that can only be read at night with an instrument, or a repair rule that expands the defect by a foot in every direction before you're allowed to repaint it. | Standards and accountability |
| You Lock The Price At Bid And Buy Paint Two Years On | Every trade grumbles about material prices, and most of them buy within weeks of bidding. Striping falls at the tail of the prime, so the stretch between the number you signed and the day you buy can run two full seasons of commodity movement. On thermoplastic and durable systems the material is a far larger share of the line than on waterborne paint, which means one bad buyout can take the entire marking package with it. | Estimating system |
| Custom Stencils Are Cash Parked On Your Shop Floor | The general complaint about buying material early doesn't reach this. A preformed thermoplastic legend with a specific arrow and a specific logo, or a stencil cut for one customer's lot, has one home and no resale value. The paving date that governs it belongs to the paving contractor and the weather, and striping is the trade waiting on both. | Job cost structure |
Other civil and earthwork trades
What owners ask
What gross margin should a striping contractor run?
No survey reports striping on its own, so there's no figure of its own to give you. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Paving, which runs 20% gross margin at $1M–$5M. That's the number this page shows, labelled as derived. Treat it as the neighbourhood, because striping can run above or below it.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
From Paving. In the surveys striping rolls into 238990 All Other Specialty Trade, which mixes it with several other trades, so the reference pairs it with the nearest trade it does measure. Gross margin and overhead are that trade's, and net profit is calculated as gross margin minus overhead, so the three tie out. Every table and every export says "Derived from the nearest comparable trade."
What costs a striping contractor the most money?
You Bid In Feet And Spend In Days. Your bid is in linear feet, stalls, and legends, but your money goes out in crew-days. Until those two meet on the same job, a good day and a bad day look identical. That's one of 4 on this page, and 2 of the 4 resolve to step 04, estimating system.
Which steps does striping keep pointing to?
step 04 estimating system on 2 of them, step 08 standards and accountability on 1 of them, step 01 job cost structure on 1 of them. That distribution is the install order for this trade, because the step with the most mechanisms is the one holding the most money.
What should a striping contractor use instead?
Work the mechanisms on this page first, since they're specific and actionable. For a rough sense of the economics, read the civil and earthwork group, which is the nearest published context. Your own job costing beats any industry average once step 01 is installed.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, and CONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for striping 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.