Early on, I definitely priced more by feel and by what I thought the market would tolerate. Over time, I started looking harder at the true cost of a stop: labor, payroll burden, drive time, fuel, supplies, dump fees, software, and the admin time around the job.
For a route-based business, drive time is a huge one. A yard that takes 15 minutes to service can become a bad account fast if it also requires 20 minutes of windshield time.
I also pay attention to the revenue per visit and whether the route can support our target number of stops per hour (our minimum is 2.5 with the goal of 3+ an hour).
The biggest lesson for me was realizing that competitor pricing is useful context, but it can’t be the calculator. If their labor costs, route density, overhead, or service level are different, copying their price can put you in a hole pretty quickly.
I’d rather know the minimum number that makes the job worth doing before the quote ever goes out.
