Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm really wondering why any contractor should make money on the
supplies they use to do a job. If you charge a proper hourly amount
(or fixed amount by job - whatever), IMO, you should not need to charge
any markup on supplies.

Put yourself in the contractor's position. You buy the material. You put
your money out, you spend the time to order it, receive it, store it, load
up the truck, haul it to the job site, unload the truck, he waits for you to
pay, meantime, he has sent off a check to his supplier, filled out any tax
forms needed, etc.

Should he charge you the same rate as the guy that supplied all the
material? What would YOU do?

In the end the thing one should be concerned about is the total cost of
the job, not exactly how the money is split up. I agree that just
about all contractors are going to mark up the price of materials they
supply to cover their costs. Most are also going to add on some more
margin. And any that don't are very likely going to make up the
difference in profit with higher labor charges, or somewhere else.