PressureWashingBossPro Blog — Running a Pressure Washing Business

Pricing a Pressure Washing Business for Profit, Not Just for Volume

A busy pressure washing business is not always a profitable one. Plenty of owners spend a whole summer booked solid and end it wondering where the money went. Usually the answer is pricing: jobs priced to win the quote instead of priced to pay for the rig, the chemicals, the drive time and the owner. This guide covers how to price so the work actually pays.

Get the System in Place First

The previous guide, Switching Your Pressure Washing Business to New Software Without Losing a Customer, covered getting your customers and recurring work into one system. Pricing is easier once that is done, because your past jobs, measurements and prices are all in one place to learn from.

Know What a Day Costs

Before you can price a job, you need to know what it costs to roll the rig out of the driveway in the morning. Add up the real costs:

• Fuel for the truck and the pump.
• Chemicals and surfactant used on a typical day.
• Wear on the pump, hoses, tips and surface cleaner.
• Truck and trailer payments, maintenance and registration.
• Phone, software, marketing and other monthly costs, spread across working days.
• Wages for anyone you pay, including yourself.

Divide that by the number of jobs you can actually finish in a day, counting setup, drive time and cleanup. That is your floor. Anything below it loses money even if the customer is thrilled.

Price the Job, Not Your Hours

Customers do not buy your time. They buy a clean house, driveway or storefront. Pricing by the job lets you earn more as you get faster and better equipped, instead of being punished for it.

Most washing companies price residential work by size and type: square feet of siding, number of stories, square feet of flatwork, linear feet of fence. Build that into a service list so every quote starts from the same numbers. In PressureWashingBossPro you set up your services once (house wash, roof soft wash, driveway and walks, deck, fence, gutter brightening, rust and gum removal), and estimates are built from that list. Prices are always yours to set.

Measure Before You Quote

Guessing square footage is how jobs end up underpriced. A two-story house with a walkout basement is a lot more siding than it looks like from the street. A driveway that wraps around to a side garage is bigger than the front view suggests.

The property map can measure square feet and linear feet from the satellite view, so you can measure a driveway, roof or fence line before you drive out, and estimates can price off those measurements. Stories, siding and method go on the estimate too, and carry onto the job when the customer approves.

Minimums, Add-Ons and Bundles

A small job still costs a full setup and a drive. Set a minimum charge so a single small patio is worth rolling the rig for.

Add-ons are where a lot of profit hides. The house wash gets you on the property, and the driveway, patio, walks and gutter brightening are extra work with no extra drive. Offer them on every quote. Bundles help too: a house wash plus driveway at a set price is easier to say yes to than two separate lines. Just make sure every extra done on site ends up on the invoice, which is covered in Unbilled Add-Ons: Charging for Every Extra Your Pressure Washing Business Does.

Recurring Work Is Priced Differently

A monthly storefront or drive-thru is a lower price per visit than a one-time job, and that is fine. You are trading price for predictability. You know the work is coming, you can route it efficiently, and you do not pay to find a new customer each time.

Price recurring work so each visit still covers the drive and setup with room to spare, and route those stops together. A monthly storefront that sits alone across town is rarely worth it.

Raise Prices When the Calendar Fills

If you are booked several weeks out and accepting almost every quote, that is a sign to raise prices. Do it for new customers first, then for existing ones at the start of a season with a short, honest note. Some customers will leave. The ones who stay pay for the time you get back.

Pricing is the lever that touches everything else in the business. For the rest of the owner's guides, from the work mix to growing past one rig, visit the pressure washing business software page.