How I priced it. Two real bids, worked in full.

120,000 sq ft of apartment walkways at 15 cents

A solo operator had a bid for 120,000 sq ft of apartment walkways and was going in at 15 cents a sq ft. Half the replies said too high, half said too low. Neither side had done the math.

Start with how fast you move. A surface cleaner on narrow walkways, with edging and all the stopping, runs about 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft an hour, not the 4,000 you get on a wide open lot. So 120,000 sq ft is 60 to 80 machine hours. Solo that is eight to ten long days. Two people with two machines is four or five.

Then what an hour costs. Two people at $25 each is $50, times 1.25 for taxes and comp is about $63. Chem, fuel and water for two machines is another $20 to $25. The truck, insurance, phone and whatever you spent on marketing, spread over a month of billable hours, is maybe $20 more. Call it $110 an hour of real cost. Seventy hours is about $7,700. Add a couple of hundred for the water fill runs and a day of drive time and you are near $8,500 before you have made a dollar. Divide by 0.7 to keep 30% and the floor is right around $12,000, which is 10 cents a sq ft.

So 15 cents was not crazy. It is $18,000 on a $12,000 floor, and walkways in 2026 run 10 to 25 cents depending on where you are. The advice: do not bid a cent under 10, and if the property manager pushes back, cut scope (skip the back stairs, no second pass on the gum) instead of cutting the rate.

A two story house wash at 10 cents

A new operator had a driveway and house combo and put the house at 10 cents a sq ft of living area, because that is what the driveway was going for. Driveway pricing on a house is the most common first year mistake there is.

Start with the hour again. Solo, paying yourself $35, chem about $12 an hour on a house wash, fuel and wear on the machine another $8, and the insurance, phone, truck and marketing spread over the hours you actually bill at around $25 a job. Call it $65 a wash hour before you make a dollar. A 2,000 sq ft two story with a 12 volt setup is roughly two hours on the walls plus setup, rinse and the drive, so three hours of your day, about $200 of real cost. Divide by 0.65 to keep 35% and the floor is $300, which is 15 cents. Two story adds ladder time and more chem, which is the 1.25 multiplier most operators use, so 19 cents, about $375. Gutters are their own line at $1 to $2 a foot. Never bury them in the house price.

So 10 cents on a two story is $200, which is what it costs you to be there. That is not a cheap quote, it is a free one. House washes in most of the country run 15 to 30 cents right now. The operators at 10 are either driveway pricing everything or have never added up their month.

The method, in one line

Production rate, times your real hourly cost, divided by the margin you keep, then a sanity check against the going rate so you are not leaving money on the table. Every surface on your list can be priced this way once, on one page, and then you quote from the page instead of from memory.