Plumber Hourly Rate: What Should a One-Van Shop Charge? (2026)
Updated September 7, 2026
A one-van plumbing shop with realistic overhead and an $85,000 owner salary target needs to bill about $120 an hour - and most solo plumbers who feel busy-but-broke are charging well under their own cost without knowing it. The number is not a market average and not what the franchise trucks charge; it comes out of your own overhead, your salary target and the hours you can actually bill. Here is the whole calculation, using numbers a real one-van shop can check against its own bank statements.
Why the wage sites are wrong for you
Search “plumber hourly rate” and you get salary sites quoting what a company pays an employee. That figure has nothing in it for the van, the drain machine, the insurance that covers water damage claims, the supply house runs, or the fact that you are now both employer and employee at tax time. An employee wage is what your hands earn; a shop rate is what your business must sell an hour for to exist. Confusing the two is how good plumbers go broke doing good work.
The overhead a plumbing van actually carries
Plumbing overhead runs heavier than most one-van trades because of the iron you carry and what happens when water goes wrong:
| Overhead line (per year) | Amount |
|---|---|
| Van payment or lease | $7,800 |
| Fuel, maintenance, tires | $6,000 |
| Insurance (liability + vehicle) | $4,500 |
| Phone and internet | $1,500 |
| Tools replacement (drain machines, press tools, cameras) | $3,000 |
| Software, accounting, bank fees | $1,000 |
| Licenses, permits, continuing ed | $900 |
| Website and marketing | $2,000 |
| Everything else | $2,300 |
| Total | $29,000 |
Every one of those is paid from billable hours, and a solo shop has fewer of those than it feels like.
The math, start to finish
- Salary target: $85,000, plus 20 percent burden (self-employment tax, health, retirement) = $102,000.
- Hours: 48 weeks x 50 hours = 2,400 worked. But between driving, quoting, the supply house and callbacks, about 55 percent is billable: 1,320 hours.
- True cost: ($29,000 + $102,000) / 1,320 = $99.24 an hour. Bill under that and you are paying customers for the privilege of plumbing.
- With a 15 percent margin: $99.24 / 0.85 = $116.76 - round up to $120 an hour.
Your numbers are different; the arithmetic is not. The plumber hourly rate calculator runs this exact math with your own overhead lines, free, no signup wall - two minutes gets you your floor.
Turning the rate into prices customers can hear
Nobody wants to hear “$120 an hour” on the phone; they want to know what the water heater costs. That is what flat-rate pricing is for: rate times honest hours per job, plus marked-up material, quoted as one number before you start. The rate stays private; the price stays firm; the fast day pays you instead of punishing you. Two rules that protect the small stuff:
- Minimum job charge. A $100-150 minimum means the dripping-hose-bib visit still pays for the drive and the conversation.
- Service call fee for diagnosis. Leak-finding is the product even when the fix is a $6 washer - most shops fold the first diagnostic block into a $100-200 service fee and quote the repair on top.
For a printable feel of what flat-rate output looks like, grab the one-page Flat-Rate Cheat Sheet (PDF) - 20 common jobs at three shop rates - at /downloads/flat-rate-cheat-sheet.pdf. (It is built on our electrical task list, but the pricing structure is exactly what a plumbing book looks like.)
Where a plumbing week actually leaks
The 55 percent billable figure surprises people until they log a week. Fifty worked hours in a typical solo service week breaks down something like this:
| Where the hours go | Hours |
|---|---|
| On the wrench, billable | 27.5 |
| Driving between calls | 7 |
| Supply house runs | 4 |
| Quoting, phone, invoicing, chasing payment | 6.5 |
| Callbacks and warranty visits | 2 |
| Maintenance on the van and machines | 3 |
Every non-billable line is a lever. Stocking the van deeper trades a few hundred dollars of shelf inventory for the supply-house hours. Tightening your service area trades a little top-line for drive time. Cutting callbacks is mostly about slowing down on the last ten minutes of every job. Each recovered hour at 55 percent billable is worth roughly $120 of capacity a week - which is why tracking one honest week in a notebook is the highest-paying job in this article.
Defending $120 in a franchise market
The franchise trucks in your market bill more than you think, they just never say the hourly number out loud - everything is flat-rate. You should do the same. When a customer pushes back, the sentence that works is about certainty, not cost: “That price covers the job start to finish - the trip, the parts, and it does not change if it fights me. You know the number before I touch a wrench.” The customer comparing you to their own wage is comparing the wrong things; the job price makes that comparison disappear.
And the one-time guy with a pickup and no insurance? He is not your competitor for any customer worth keeping. Water damage is why your insurance line exists and why his customers eventually become yours.
FAQ
Is $120 an hour high for a solo plumber? Not if your costs say so. Run the calculator with your real overhead: most one-van shops that do land between $100 and $150. What is genuinely high-risk is billing $75 because it “feels fair” while your true cost is $99.
Should emergency and after-hours work be the same rate? Same underlying rate, plus a stated premium - 1.5x is common - and the service call fee. The premium is not greed; nights and weekends are hours you sold twice: once to the customer, once from your own life.
How does my billable percentage change the number? Brutally. At 65 percent billable the same shop needs about $101 before margin; at 45 percent it needs about $121 before margin. Tracking one honest week of where your hours go is worth more than any pricing article, this one included.
Should I publish my hourly rate on my website? No. Publish flat prices and your service call fee instead. The hourly rate is an internal number - the engine that generates your prices - and publishing it invites customers to do arithmetic about your time instead of comparing finished jobs. Every shop that quotes flat keeps the rate in the drawer.
Is there a plumbing price book like the electrical one? Not yet - the electrician book shipped first. Run your rate, then leave your email in the calculator and tell us your trade; the most-requested trade gets its book built next, and plumbing is in the running.