mobile welders

[urch55]

Hey everybody im glad to be here. I am getting some great information. I have a question. I worked at a refineary here in Tuscalosa and the rig welders there got paid $30 an hour and $6 hour for there rig the company paid all consumables. So how do some of you get 65 to 100 an hour?

First of all most self employed welders that go mobile don't get subsidized by a company. We have to pay for every thing and that is how you get to an hourly rate.
Also that refinery you worked at did they treat you as employees with benefits and you just supplied your own welder and talent.??
That makes a BIG difference.

[uncled]

I see what your talking about. They must get there insurance paid for plus all there consumable.

[ElementFe]

Uncle Ed-
Look at the $36/hr like this: 30 an hour, forty hours a week = 60k a year. Pretty good salary for a lot of hard work.
The $6 per hour covers your welder.
Now. Think of all the things you DON'T have to worry about that a full service welding shop does have to cover.
Advertising, building and maintaining a workshop, insurance of all kinds, bonding, licensing, a shop full of tools.
The last item was ridiculed a few times earlier in the thread, but if you don't have the equipment to do what needs to be done, customers will simply go to someone who does, at whatever rate that someone charges.
No one can claim to have the equipment and knowledge to do every single job that comes along, but most welding shops have a lot of tools that don't get used every day, so that they can be available when that certain job comes along.
OK, back to the hourly charge.
Take that $60k a year and allow for the fact that you can't be on site forty hours a week doing on-call mobile welding...in fact, most of us have a shop and do some on-call work, so each time out there's some scramble time just to get out the door. Suddenly you aren't working a forty hour a week job, it's more like 25-30 of actual hands on time, so your hourly gross pay might be $60, and your overhead (not all business people actually know what their costs are- only the successful ones) tends to approximately double that.
Here we are, back at $120 per hour.
That make sense for starters?
Andy G.

[FusionKing]

Uncle Ed-
Look at the $36/hr like this: 30 an hour, forty hours a week = 60k a year. Pretty good salary for a lot of hard work.
The $6 per hour covers your welder.
Now. Think of all the things you DON'T have to worry about that a full service welding shop does have to cover.
Advertising, building and maintaining a workshop, insurance of all kinds, bonding, licensing, a shop full of tools.
The last item was ridiculed a few times earlier in the thread, but if you don't have the equipment to do what needs to be done, customers will simply go to someone who does, at whatever rate that someone charges.
No one can claim to have the equipment and knowledge to do every single job that comes along, but most welding shops have a lot of tools that don't get used every day, so that they can be available when that certain job comes along.
OK, back to the hourly charge.
Take that $60k a year and allow for the fact that you can't be on site forty hours a week doing on-call mobile welding...in fact, most of us have a shop and do some on-call work, so each time out there's some scramble time just to get out the door. Suddenly you aren't working a forty hour a week job, it's more like 25-30 of actual hands on time, so your hourly gross pay might be $60, and your overhead (not all business people actually know what their costs are- only the successful ones) tends to approximately double that.
Here we are, back at $120 per hour.
That make sense for starters?
Andy G.

exactly...to make 40 hours takes a ton for me.