I'm looking to hire a person/s to wrap vehicles as required and am curious to know what the "average" hourly rate would be? I'm in Vancouver Canada but I don't think the location should really mean to much if they have certification an such or just experience the price should be fairly similiar. Should I start at 50 an hour an go from there or is that way to low/high? Any sort of help, guidance would be appreciated.
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Hiring Vehicle Wrapper Cost
- Thread starter morty87
- Start date
Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
Is it full time or just part time as needed?
On an on-call basis at least to start and it would be more for full wraps instead of just lettering windows and windshields.
So if the material, ink and printing costs are somewhere between $4-$5.50 per square foot and another $2-$3.50 per square foot in installation costs are added, does that mean that the local competitors doing wraps for under $10 per square foot installed will soon run themselves out of business?
I sure hope so. We get tired of seeing their half ass work and losing nearly every wrap bid because we're deemed "too expensive" at $12.00 per square foot installed.
I sure hope so. We get tired of seeing their half ass work and losing nearly every wrap bid because we're deemed "too expensive" at $12.00 per square foot installed.
Kentucky Wraps
Kentucky Wraps
What materials are you using? Material cost with premium cast vinyl, ink, and overlam should be half what you mentioned if printed in house.
Cargo van at $12 a sft is perfectly priced for profit at a competitive rate.
Box truck or trailer at $12...not so much. I'll do a box truck for $8 sft every day...with JOY.
Are you subbing out your printing?
Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
Yes. Most of my work is as a contract installer. I'm $2.50 for window perf, and $3.15 for box trucks
$50 is way too low for a good installer. Pay per sq ft. That way you won't be getting bottom of the barrel installers. I can now average $200/hr. at the above rates.
Ok, thanks for your advice. So what would be a good sq foot rate be for a custom car wrap? Removing trim, bumpers, door handles etc. a solid professional job that won't be peeling away in 3-6 months sort of thing. I want to pay well, but also want to insure they don't cut corners just cause it may take some extra work to do it right, professionally.
I wasn't talking about box trucks or mostly flat cargo vans. We have shops in our area doing full wraps on all manner of cars, trucks, etc. for between $8-10 per square foot installed.
Media, overlam and ink aren't the only "costs" involved in a wrap job.
Most premium cast wrap vinyls and laminates are a little under $1.00 per square foot. IJ180C is $1.09 per square foot. Ink costs are far less per square foot than the media is, but the electricity, shop rent, insurance, computers, overhead, etc., labor to run the printers, laminate the prints, design the wraps, trim the prints is easily a couple bucks per square foot. We aren't paying Kentucky wages out here in Cali.
The stuff doesn't get magically get designed, printed and lammed on its own.
Maybe you're enjoying bigger savings on materials if you're a bigger company than us.
XtremeXccessories
New Member
I hope you don't mean under $1.00 for both vinyl and lam, otherwise I've been overpaying for years...
Nope. The print media depending on brand and quality is somewhere between .85 and $1.30 per square foot. On that high end, the new hot stuff 3M product is around $850 for a 54"x150' roll. The lam is around the same price and also dependent on those factors.
I'm no math major, but that would put the COMBINED cost of just your media and lam at somewhere between $1.70 and $2.60 or so. Ink, labor or other overhead costs would need to be added to that.
I'm really wondering about this fixation on my post. I don't think the numbers are off very much if one factors in ALL the costs associated with a wrap.
I totally get it that folks can do a flat surfaced, box truck or cargo van for under $10 per square foot in certain locations and with economies of scale in purchasing power applied, but here in the most expensive county to live in in California, that kind of pricing is a major drag on the market and especially the shops who want to pay their help appropriately and make a profit on our work.
Kentucky Wraps
Kentucky Wraps
Overhead and Material costs are 2 different things.
And BOTH need to be incorporated into the price if one expects to fully cover all the costs and expenses related to opening and creating a successful business. Its not complicated and applies to every type of business in existence.
Kentucky Wraps
Kentucky Wraps
I guess that means the small shop will charge 1/24th what a large shop will for a wrap if we're rolling in all our overhead into the sq.ft. price.
You do what you gotta do to make it happen buddy. There is a general market value that does not correlate to the size of the shop.
I get where you're coming from, I just don't think that if you have 10 times the overhead of your nearest 4 competitors, you can charge accordingly.
But that's just me.
Ciao
bannertime
Active Member
I haven't been following the whole thread, but a larger shop's price will likely not encompass the whole cost of the overhead. If a small shop has a $8k month overhead and can produce 2-3 orders an hour while a larger shop is closer to (5:1) $40k a month but can produce 10-15 orders an hour; their pricing should be about the same. If the $40k month shop is producing 1:1 with the smaller shop, then that's just bad business management on the larger shop's part. These numbers are obviously made up, but I'd expect a $40k month shop doing the same type of work as a $8k a month shop to have better pricing than them anyway.
Check Craigslist. Vancouver area is generally $30iah an hour for installers on call. But that's from a shop that hired these people every other day.
Wages in Vancouver are low in every industry. $50 is too high for our area. You could likely get some of the highest tier for that price, depending on how much work you give them.
As others have said though, it's better to pay by sqft. Why pay the guy who takes 8 hour s to wrap a vehicle $400 when a more experienced pro can do it in 5, do a better job and will only get $250.
And Vancouver rates are way different than USA rates.. You need to find out what you can afford to pay, and charge that. What works for one shop doesn't work for every shop.
Vancouver has too many car wrap shops. There's dozens, and the pricing is brutal. Unless you plan on going at it hard core, having enough work to keep the contractor happy and around,and being very competitive in prices, it's probably best to farm it out.
Wrap guys will install for $75 a. Hour... There's also vehicle graphics, SII, Etc. If youre only.doing a wrap a month.
. It's best to farm it out to a reputable shop than try to find a contractor who will stick around for a job a month.