Running a route

How to Price Weekly Pool Service on Your Route

Set a weekly pool service price from your time, drive minutes, chemical cost and pay target. Worked example you can rerun with your own numbers.

Nobody can hand you the right price for weekly pool service. It depends on your costs, your market, the pool and what a visit includes. What you can do is run the math with your own numbers so the price covers your time, your truck and your chemicals.

Every dollar figure on this page is an example. Swap in your own before you quote anyone.

Step 1: Find your cost per route hour

Add up what the business has to earn in a month. Then divide by the hours you spend at pools and driving between them.

1. Pay target. What you want to take home. Ask an accountant how self-employment tax or payroll tax applies to you.
2. Overhead. Truck payment or depreciation, fuel, insurance, phone, software, test supplies, tools, repairs and license fees.
3. Route hours. Hours on site plus hours driving. Supply runs, estimates and paperwork take time too, so count fewer billable hours than you work.

Example: pay target $5,000 a month and overhead $2,400 a month. You count 6 route hours a day, 5 days a week, 4.33 weeks a month, which is about 130 hours.

($5,000 + $2,400) / 130 = about $57 per route hour.

The other 2 hours of an 8-hour day go to loading the truck, buying chemicals, callbacks and notes. The rate has to pay for that time too, so you divide by the route hours.

Step 2: Time the visit

Time five visits at the kind of pool you are pricing, from pulling up to pulling away. Add the drive from the previous stop. Average the five visits and ignore your fastest day.

Example: 30 minutes on site and 10 minutes of driving.

Step 3: Build the price per visit

Price per visit = (on-site minutes + drive minutes) / 60 x cost per route hour + chemical cost per visit.

Example with chemicals included at $6 a visit:

• (30 + 10) / 60 x $57 = $38 for time
• $38 + $6 for chemicals = $44 per visit
• $44 x 4.33 visits = about $190 a month

If you bill chemicals separately, the visit price is $38 and chemicals go on top. Chemicals included or billed walks through how to choose.

Run it again for a harder pool

Same $57 rate, now a pool with heavy debris and a spa: 45 minutes on site, 12 minutes of driving and $9 of chemicals a visit. All three are examples.

• (45 + 12) / 60 x $57 = $54.15 for time
• $54.15 + $9 for chemicals = $63.15 per visit
• $63.15 x 4.33 visits = about $273 a month

That is roughly 1.4 times the price of the standard stop, because the visit takes about 1.4 times as long and uses more chemical. A customer who asks why the price is higher gets a straight answer: the pool takes more time.

Write the quote

Before you send a price, divide it back. Take the monthly price, divide by 4.33, subtract chemicals if they are included, then divide by the hours the visit takes. If the result is below your cost per route hour, the visit loses money.

For the standard example: $190 / 4.33 = $43.88, less $6 of chemicals is $37.88, and over 0.67 hours that is about $57. Put the visit scope and the start date next to the price in the quote so the customer can see what the number buys.

What changes the minutes

Two pools on the same street can take very different amounts of time. Price the difference.

Offer clear tiers

A customer should know what the weekly price buys. Write the visit scope as a short list, for example: test and balance the water, skim, empty baskets, brush, check pump and filter pressure, and send a report. Anything outside the list is an extra with its own price.

Two or three tiers are enough. A base tier with the visit scope above and a higher tier for pools with heavy debris or an attached spa works for many routes. Build each tier from its own timed minutes.

Mistakes people make

• Copying what the neighbor charges. Their costs are not yours, and you do not know what their price includes.
• Leaving out drive time. On a spread-out route it can be a third of the visit.
• Counting 8 route hours in an 8-hour day. Nobody works stops from the first minute to the last.
• One price for every pool on the street. The easy pools subsidize the hard ones until the easy customers leave.
• Never re-timing. Pools change, you get faster, and costs rise. Re-time a few stops each year. When it is time to adjust, see raise prices without losing customers.

Check the result

Put your new price into the route profit calculator with your real stop count and costs. If the route does not clear your pay target, the fix is a higher price, a tighter route or fewer low-margin stops. Increasing the number of pools you squeeze into a day rarely fixes it on its own.

Taxes, licensing and business structure vary by state. Check with an accountant or your state's licensing office before you finalize a pricing model.