Sold 60 percent of my crew's year before January, and it held through a lumber jump

What does blended hourly actually mean? Is that everybody on the crew billing the same number regardless of whether it's you or the newest guy?

93 percent booked on a three man crew is the number I'd interrogate. That works right up until one of those two clients stops buying. The flipper at 240 hours a month is a bit over half your capacity. If he has a bad spring and drops to 80, do you have a bench of investors who can absorb 160 hours on four weeks notice, or do you carry three guys through a soft quarter on the credit line that already scared you in April?

Which index do you cite in the escalation clause, and did the clients push back on who picks it? I can imagine an owner saying they don't accept a number they can't see.

What you built is a capacity presale, and the economics rest on one assumption: that the reserved block is genuinely paid whether filled or not, and that you'd actually enforce that against a repeat client. Most crews write the clause and then waive it the first time a good customer has a slow month, at which point the reserved rate is just a discount for volume you were going to get anyway. Your 93 percent fill rate does not tell us whether the clause held, because nobody tested it.

On the pricing, the $18 spread between reserved and unreserved is doing the scheduling work. That spread has to be wide enough to change behavior and narrow enough that the client doesn't feel penalized for growth. At 240 hours a month the flipper is paying about $20,640 for reserved capacity, and buying 60 more hours at $104 costs him $6,240. If his overflow is regularly above 40 hours he'll ask to raise the block, which is the outcome you want, so watch for that conversation as the signal to hire.

The wage exposure keystone is pointing at is the real structural risk. You sold hours at a rate set against a wage base that the labor shortage moves against you mid term. A $6 raise on one carpenter is roughly $12,500 a year of margin off a fixed price block. Consider a wage escalation term parallel to your materials one, or shorter reserved terms with an annual reset.

Enforceability of pay timing terms and any lien rights you'd rely on if a draw stalls again vary by state, so have a construction attorney review both agreements before you renew.

The $71k net is the number I'd want decomposed before calling this replicable. How much of it is the 12 percent materials markup? On $340k that's $40,800 of gross before whatever the handling actually costs you in truck time and returns. If materials markup is more than half your net, you're running a procurement business with a carpentry department attached, and tariff driven price moves hit your margin differently than they hit your labor.

So the client reserves hours, is there a physical document, or is it a handshake with a rate sheet? I can't picture what the thing you signed looks like.

As someone planning a first purchase, the part I took from this is that a good crew's calendar is bought months ahead. I'd assumed I'd call three GCs when I close and pick one. Sounds like the answer by then is whoever has a hole.

Check whether either agreement has a pay when paid or pay if paid clause hiding in the landlord group's paperwork, because you described your April problem as a draw delay and that's exactly the fact pattern those clauses are written for. The two phrases are not the same animal and courts in different states treat them very differently, so that's a question for a construction attorney in your state rather than a forum. Also, net 10 from invoice is only as good as the date the invoice is deemed received. I've seen that argued over.

Running four guys and I've never gotten anyone to pay for unfilled hours. What did you give up to get it? My assumption has always been that the client only accepts that if the reserved rate is meaningfully below what they'd pay you cold, and $86 against $104 is 17 percent, which is a real discount for them. So you're effectively selling a fifth of your margin for schedule certainty. That's a trade I'd probably take after the April story, I just want to name it as a trade rather than free.

lantern, did you know how to price the block, or did you guess and correct? I'm trying to work out where I fit on the service side and every one of these posts assumes the author already knew what an hour of their time was worth.