Calculator
Turning labour hours into a number you can check
Enter the hours from an estimate and this returns what those hours cost at the posted rates, with paint and body supplies and hazmat added the way the shop adds them. It is arithmetic on figures already published here, not a quote for your vehicle.
The arithmetic every repair order runs
A collision estimate is hours multiplied by a rate, plus materials, plus parts, plus tax on the parts and materials. The rates are posted: body and paint labour at $210 an hour, mechanical and electrical at $260, diagnostic at $285 with a one hour minimum, detail at $95. Nothing on this page is a rate you have to ask for.
Materials are where estimates diverge most between shops, because some quote a rate that excludes them. Paint supplies bill at $55 for every paint hour and body supplies at $5 for every body hour, so a job with twenty paint hours carries eleven hundred dollars of supplies before a single part is ordered. Hazmat is a flat $45. Those lines are not padding; they are the consumables the hours physically use.
Labour is not taxed and parts are
California taxes tangible goods, not the labour that installs them. On a repair order that means the 7.75% applies to parts and materials and never to the hours line. An estimate that applies tax to the whole total is either from another state or wrong, and it is worth asking which.
The practical effect is that two estimates with the same bottom line can have very different tax exposure depending on how each one splits parts against labour. A parts heavy scope carries more tax. A labour heavy scope carries less. Neither is better, but knowing the split tells you which lines to question.
What an hour of RV body labour is paying for
An RV body hour costs more than an automotive body hour, and the reason is not that the shop charges more for the same work. Almost nothing on a motorhome has a published factory repair procedure or a flat rate time. On a car, a quarter panel replacement has a number that a database supplies and both sides accept. On a Class A coach, the same operation is assessed by somebody who has done it before, on a structure that was bonded rather than welded.
That assessment is the hours line. It also means the hours are arguable in a way automotive hours are not, which cuts both ways: a shop can pad them and an owner can question them. A published rate at least removes one of the two variables from the argument.
Three lines worth checking before you authorise
Access operations come first on a well written estimate and are the most commonly missing. Removing a window, a light bar or an awning to reach a panel is real time, and an estimate that jumps straight to the damaged panel has usually left it out. That is where supplements come from.
- Access and refinish operations listed above the damaged panel, not below it
- Paint hours separated from body hours, since they bill supplies at different rates
- Blend time into adjacent panels, which carriers frequently strike
- Tax applied to parts and materials only
- A deposit line if the order is over $2,000
Run the arithmetic
It cannot tell you whether the hours are right. That is the only number on an estimate that requires somebody to look at the vehicle.
Structural and panel labour.
Refinish labour. Bills supplies at the higher rate.
Enter a figure above and the arithmetic appears here.
It cannot tell you whether the hours are right. That is the only number on an estimate that requires somebody to look at the vehicle. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere: the rates are built into the page and the arithmetic runs in your browser. This is not an estimate and it is not a quote.
Related
Questions about this
How do I turn the labour hours on an estimate into a dollar figure?
Multiply each block of hours by the rate that trade bills at, then add materials. Body and paint labour is $210 per hour. Mechanical and electrical is $260. Diagnostics, scan and programming is $285 with a one hour minimum. Detail is $95. Paint supplies add $55 per paint hour and body supplies add $5 per body hour, automatically. Sales tax of 7.75 percent applies to parts and materials only, never to labour.
Why do two shops write different hours for the same damaged panel?
Because they are describing different repairs. One wrote a skin repair and a spot blend. The other wrote a panel section, a structural check behind it and a blend into two adjacent panels. Hours are a description of method, so comparing totals without comparing line items compares nothing. Ask each shop which panels get blended and whether structure was measured. The cheaper sheet is often the one that stopped at the surface.