Is this a reasonable price?

Cobra04 said:
I jsut spent about 25 hours the past 3 days on a '99 F-450 dump truck. Cleaned the entire frame, rear end, engine bay, engine, interior, removed heavy rail dust and overspray off the entire cab. Polished/corrected, full klasse treatment, souveran paste.

You guys think $250 is too much to charge? I was really thourough with this thing and it was extremely dirty as evident by how long it took.

Pics and writeup soon btw;)
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Bro you need to bump up your price, if i took 3 days on a customer vehicle... wow. I just did a 40ft rv, wash and 360'd the whole body. Only took me 6 hrs and I charged the guy $325. So compare that to all the work you did, and you should bump your price. $500-$600. Don't low ball yourself, you'll never recover.
 
omg....250.....thats what i charge on big truck for full detail and doesnt count the frame and all that stuff.....and it takes me round 4 hours tops......im not saying your slow...but you should be charging alot more if your doing all that stuff
 
FMINUS said:
You cant put the number of hours YOU put into it. You have to take into consideration how long it would take a "normal" detailer to complete the job. You cant levy your inexperience (no offense) onto your customer.

Its like a new mechanic charging you double because he couldnt find the oil drain plug for an hour.
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I agree, but $250 is still way too cheap IMO. I think the typical experienced detailer would be foolish to take on such a job for any less than $500 or so.
 
Once you've done a few vehicles you will be able to gauge your time better. $40-60 an hour is fine if you are efficient and experienced. If your are new it would be silly to expect an hourly rate like that. I see many experienced detailers that still use their time poorly. Knowing what to do for each task to reducing trial and error will help. It also helps to know when further efforts won't produce improved results. If you can do the job correctly and quickly it's gravy from there. I find with my local competition that I can almost always do the same package better and faster than they can. As a result I can use better products, charge the same or less and end up making more per hour.

Best of luck to you and I look forward to pictures of that monster.
 
Thanks for the replys guys. Thats what I was thinking...it was a bigger job then normal, but still, a more experienced detailer could have done it in less time so i think the price was fair.

Im doing a '95 E-350 white van next week. Dont know what ill charge for it but Im gonna really try and do it in a day, have a plan all layed out before hand....also after doing this one truck ive gotten allot better with the UDM, which is a fantastic machine!

I also have a few things that will be here monday from AG that should really help my interior detailing. 2 bottles of DP all purpose interior cleaner and a big bottle of 303 protectant :) Oh and some DP engine cleaner and a bottle of liquid souveran :)
 
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