Set it at half a day of burdened labor, plus the truck, plus the trip you made to price it, divided by your cost ratio. In 2026 numbers that is about $510 for one person and $805 for a two-person crew. The inputs are public: the Bureau of Labor Statistics put construction compensation at $51.96 per hour worked in June 2026, the IRS business rate is 76 cents a mile from July 1, and NAHB puts the average remodeler's gross margin at 29.9%. Charge the $100 to $250 a plumber posts for a service call after you drove out to look first, and you are $106 to $206 short on direct cost before a dollar of overhead is paid.
What goes into a contractor's minimum charge?
Four costs that do not shrink when the job does. The labor you lose for the part of the day the job breaks, the truck, the visit you made to price it, and the consumables you open for it. Then margin on top, because a minimum that only covers cost is a polite way of working for free.
Here is the build for one person, using the public figures above. Swap in your own numbers line by line.
| Line | Arithmetic | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Job day, half a day | 4 hours x $51.96 | $207.84 |
| Truck, job day | 30-mile round trip x $0.76 | $22.80 |
| Estimate visit | 1.5 hours x $51.96 + 30 miles x $0.76 | $100.74 |
| Consumables | caulk, blades, tape, drop cloths (placeholder) | $25.00 |
| Direct cost | $356.38 | |
| Minimum at 29.9% gross margin | $356.38 / 0.701 | $508.39 |
Call it $510. For a two-person crew the labor line doubles to 8 hours, the direct cost comes to $564.22, and the minimum lands at $804.88.
Two of those inputs flatter you. The BLS figure is cost per hour worked, not per hour you can invoice, so the real number is higher once drive time and callbacks come out of the year; the labor pricing breakdown does that division. And the estimate visit is valued at a field rate, when the hour belongs to the owner, which is usually the most expensive hour in the company.
Why half a day, when the job takes forty minutes?
Because nobody can sell you the rest of the afternoon. A 40-minute door adjustment across town at 11am ends your day as a production day. You will not start a tile floor at 1:30. You will stop at the supply house for the one hinge that does not match, and the homeowner will find two more things while you are packing up.
That last part is worth planning for. Write the minimum as a block of time, not a fee: "$510 covers up to four hours on site and standard materials." Then the "while you're here" list fills a block the customer has already paid for, instead of stretching a job you priced at forty minutes. Customers take a block of time better than a fee, too, because they can see what they are buying.
Why do plumbers and electricians get away with $100 to $250?
Because they are not doing what you are doing. HomeAdvisor lists plumbing service calls at $100 to $250 including the first hour, and electricians at $100 to $200 for the first hour, with minimums of one to four hours common. Those shops route four or five calls into a day and price from the phone. Nobody drives out to look first.
Run the same arithmetic that way. Drop the estimate visit, cut the calendar time to two hours because the next call is ten minutes away, and the direct cost is $151.72. At the same margin the minimum comes to $216.43. That is squarely inside the posted service-call range, which tells you the published numbers are not wrong. They describe a different business.
| Trade | Published small-job pricing (2026) | What it assumes |
|---|---|---|
| Plumber | $100-$250 service call incl. first hour; $50-$300 trip fees | Routed day, priced by phone |
| Electrician | $100-$200 first hour; 1-4 hour minimums | Routed day, priced by phone |
| Handyman | $60-$125/hour; $390 average project | Several small jobs per day |
| Remodeler / GC | No published figure | Site visit to price, crew-based day |
The last row is the honest one. Nobody publishes a remodeler's minimum because there is no market for one: a GC's small job is a favor, a callback, or a door into something bigger. The minimum has to come from your own arithmetic.
What if the customer won't pay $510 for a small job?
Then you change the job, not the price. There are three levers that actually move the cost, and a discount is not one of them.
- Kill the estimate visit. Price from photos and a phone call for anything under half a day. That alone takes $100.74 of direct cost out, and the minimum drops to about $365.
- Batch it. Hold small jobs in one area until you have three, then run them in one morning. They share a single drive and a single half day, which is the same fixed-cost problem the square-foot pricing piece works through for area-based rates.
- Credit it forward. If the small job is the door into a bathroom or a deck, charge the full minimum and credit it against the larger contract if it signs within 30 days. You keep the floor on the jobs that never grow.
Discounting the minimum is the one move that never works. The truck burns the same 76 cents a mile whatever you charged.
When should you say no to a small job?
When it cannot carry the minimum after all three levers, and it leads nowhere. Say it plainly and give a name. "That's under what we can send a truck for, but here's a handyman who does good work." The customer leaves with a solution, and you do not lose the afternoon.
In California there is a second reason. The Contractors State License Board raised the minor work exemption from $500 to $1,000 on January 1, 2025, so unlicensed operators can legally take non-permit jobs under $1,000 as long as they work alone. Your two-person minimum of about $805 sits right under that line. You are bidding against people with no comp policy and no license fees, on work where the customer cannot see the difference. That is a fight you lose on price every time, so either batch the work or let it go.
The exception is past clients. A $200 favor for someone who signed a $60,000 kitchen two years ago is marketing, not a pricing decision. Log it as marketing, so it does not drag the job-cost numbers you price from.
What this misses
The inputs are averages. BLS compensation is a national construction figure. Workers' comp alone swings tenfold by state: Oregon's premium rate ranking puts residential carpentry at $38.79 per $100 of payroll in Georgia and $3.68 in Wyoming. Rebuild the table with your own payroll before you print a number on anything.
Overhead is inside the margin, not on top of it. Dividing by 0.701 recovers NAHB's average 23.6% operating expense and its 6.3% net. If your overhead runs heavier, work out your own per-hour figure and use it instead.
Thirty miles is a placeholder. A dense city route and a rural one produce very different truck lines from the same method. So does parking twice and carrying tools up three flights.
Permit work breaks the arithmetic. A small job that needs an inspection is two or three trips, not one. Price each trip, or price the job as a project.
The minimum is easy to agree to in the driveway and easy to forget by the time the invoice goes out, especially the estimate visit, which happened days earlier and feels free in hindsight. BidWalk puts the trip and the visit on the estimate while you are still standing in the driveway, so the half day gets priced before you agree to give it away.
