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.
Run On CFOS publishes the full benchmark reference: 48 trades across all 7 revenue bands, $1M to $500M and above. The 4 bands above $25M are modeled and labeled that way in every table, and no CFOS target is published for them. Run On CFOS computes net profit as gross margin minus overhead, before taxes.
No survey separates striping, and it isn't one of the 48 trades in the 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 to $5M | $5M to $10M | $10M to $25M | $25M to $50MModeled | $50M to $100MModeled | $100M to $500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M to $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 to $5M | $5M to $10M | $10M to $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 figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish by trade and size. Net profit is computed, not surveyed: net profit = gross margin minus overhead. Nothing comes out for taxes, interest or other income and expense, so it is a before tax figure, on the same basis as CFMA's net income before taxes.
CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. Gross margin minus overhead leaves out interest and other income and expense, so a figure here can come in a little above or below a reported net income on the same business.
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, 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 computes net profit from them: net profit = gross margin minus overhead, before taxes. 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 to $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 cover 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 have?
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 has 20% gross margin at $1M to $5M. That's the number this page shows, labelled as derived. Treat it as the neighbourhood, because striping can be 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 that trade's gross margin minus overhead, stated before taxes. 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, led by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.