Fleet washing is usually sold per unit. There’s a price for a tractor, a trailer, a straight truck, a box truck and a van, and a weekly customer often pays less per unit than a monthly one. It’s a good way to sell it. Customers understand it, it grows with their fleet, and an invoice that lists units by number is easy for a fleet manager to approve. What’s left is working out the number.
Step 1. Know your minutes per unit, by unit type
It all starts with time. Say a two-person crew spends 45 minutes on site and washes six tractors. That’s 7.5 minutes of site time per unit, or 15 person-minutes. Measure it over a lot of stops, and only use stops where you have a real arrival and departure. Keep it by unit type, because a 53-foot trailer, a tractor and a garbage truck are different jobs.
Use time on site from arrival to departure. Setup, moving the truck, waiting at the gate and packing up all cost you money on that stop. There’s more on getting this number right in the weekly numbers.
Step 2. Work out what a person-hour costs you
Start with the hourly wage. Add employer payroll taxes, workers’ comp (it runs high for pressure washing), any benefits, and the paid time that isn’t washing, like driving, shop time and training. Spread that non-washing time across the washing hours.
| Made-up example | Per person-hour |
|---|---|
| Wage | $20.00 |
| Payroll taxes and workers’ comp | $4.50 |
| Drive and shop time spread over wash hours (30%) | $7.35 |
| Loaded cost per wash person-hour | $31.85 |
At 15 person-minutes per tractor, labor is about $7.96 per unit.
Step 3. Add materials and the truck
Chemicals and water per unit are small and easy to estimate. Take what you bought last quarter and divide by the units you washed. The truck is a bigger number. Add up a year of the vehicle, the pressure washers, the burner, fuel, insurance and pump maintenance. Divide by the year’s wash hours and you have a truck cost per wash hour. Your minutes per unit turn that into a cost per unit.
| Made-up example, per tractor | |
|---|---|
| Loaded labor (15 person-minutes) | $7.96 |
| Chemicals and water | $2.10 |
| Truck, equipment and fuel (7.5 site-minutes at $48 per truck-hour) | $6.00 |
| Overhead share (office, insurance, software, marketing) | $6.50 |
| Fully loaded cost per unit | $22.56 |
Step 4. Add margin, then check the market
Pick the margin the business needs and divide. A $22.56 cost at a 40% margin is $37.60. Then compare it with what fleets pay in your area. If the market pays more, you have room. If it pays less, matching the price rarely fixes it. Work on the cost side, which in fleet washing mostly means route density and minutes per unit.
Step 5. Price the frequency too
A unit washed weekly cleans up faster than the same unit washed monthly, because less has built up. That’s why weekly customers pay less per unit, and the gap should come from your own minutes. If weekly tractors take 6 site-minutes and monthly ones take 10, run both through the steps above and you get two prices.
Step 6. Set a minimum per visit
A yard with two trucks in on a given night still costs you the drive and the setup. A per-visit minimum or a trip charge covers that. Customers take it fine when it’s on the rate card from day one. It’s a lot harder to add later.
Step 7. Put fuel and card fees on their own lines
Fuel and card fees move around. If they’re baked into every rate, you’re redoing every rate card when diesel jumps. Make them percentage lines, a fuel surcharge and a card processing fee. The customer can see them, you can change them across the whole business at once, and the per-unit price stays put.
Step 8. Review rates every year, in writing
Wages go up every year. If prices don’t, margin shrinks a little every year and nobody decided it should. Pick a month. Send every customer a short notice with the new rates and the date they start, and do it every year so they expect it. Make sure the new rate applies from that date forward and never changes an invoice you’ve already sent.
Where pricing slips after it’s set
- Add-ons done and never billed. The undercarriage wash happened and the invoice doesn’t know.
- Old rate cards. The increase reached new customers and skipped the yard you’ve washed for six years.
- Discounts that stick. A one-time discount that quietly became permanent, or one taken after the card fee when it should come before.
We go through these in seven places a fleet wash business loses money.
Common questions
How much should I charge to wash a semi truck?
It depends on your costs and your market, so there’s no one number. Work out your cost per unit from minutes per unit, loaded labor, chemicals, the truck and overhead, add your margin, and check it against what fleets near you pay. In the made-up example in this article a tractor comes to $37.60.
Should fleet washing be priced per unit or per hour?
Per unit for washing. A fleet manager can check the invoice against their own unit numbers. Bill by the hour for work that doesn’t come in units, like dock washouts and shop floors.
How often should fleet washing rates go up?
Once a year, in the same month, with a short written notice that gives the new rates and the date they start.
How The Wash Book does it
In The Wash Book every yard has its own rates, and the week’s invoices are built from what the crew logged. Minutes per unit by unit type comes out of the same log. Book a demo and we’ll walk you through it, or start free with unit tracking.