The worked example
A crew of 3 delivers a 20x40 frame tent. Each person spends 3 hours on site (setup and takedown), 1 hour driving and 1 hour loading and cleaning: 15 crew hours. At $20 an hour plus 12% payroll cost, labor is $336.00. The truck drives 40 miles at 11 mpg and $3.70 a gallon, so fuel is $13.45, plus $14.00 of wear. Supplies are $18, the damage reserve is $25 and card fees are 3% of the quote, $21.75.
The tent cost $5,200 and should survive 150 rentals, which is $34.67 a rental. Yearly storage, insurance and the truck payment are $6,000 over 90 jobs, $66.67 on each job.
| Line | Per job |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $725.00 |
| Total costs | $529.54 |
| True profit | $195.46 |
| Margin | 27.0% |
| Profit per crew hour | $13.03 |
| Take-home after a 25% set-aside | $146.60 |
At 90 jobs that is $17,592 of profit a year. The job needs about 23 jobs a year just to cover the overhead.
What the quote has to be
For a 30% margin after 3% card fees, the costs that do not move with price ($507.79) are divided by 0.67, which gives a total of $757.89. At $725.00 this job is $32.89 short, which means a rental price of $682.89 with the same delivery fee.
Does the tent pay for itself?
One rental earns $230.13 above its direct costs, before the tent's own wear. The tent costs $5,200, so it needs 22.6 rentals, about 0.9 years at 25 rentals a year, well inside its 150-rental life.
Comparing two jobs
A smaller job brings in $430 plus $60 delivery with a crew of 2 working 4 hours each. It makes $124.31 against $195.46 for the first, but $15.54 per crew hour against $13.03. On a busy Saturday where crew hours are the limit, the smaller job fills the calendar better.
Run your own numbers: open the calculator.
Common questions
How do I price a tent rental so it makes money?
Add up the crew hours the job really takes (loading, driving, setup, takedown and cleaning for every person), multiply by the loaded hourly cost, then add fuel and truck wear, supplies, a damage reserve, card fees, the tent's wear per rental and a share of your yearly storage, insurance and truck payment. Divide the costs that do not scale with price by one minus your card-fee percentage and your target margin to get the lowest total quote.
How many times does a party tent have to be rented to pay for itself?
Take what one rental earns above its direct costs (everything except the tent's own depreciation) and divide the tent's price by that. The calculator shows the rentals and the years at the rate you expect to rent it, and warns if the answer is more than the rentals you expect in the tent's life.
Why does my quote look profitable but the job loses money?
Most of the cost is crew time that never appears on the quote: the warehouse load and clean, the drive and the takedown after the event. A three-person crew on a five-hour job is fifteen paid crew hours, so labor is often more than half of the job's cost.
Which job should I take when my crew can only do so many?
Compare profit per job and profit per crew hour. When crew hours are the limit, the job with the higher profit per crew hour fills the calendar better even if another job makes more by itself.