← Mobile detailing bid calculator
A price built from hands-on hours alone prices three-quarters of the job. A three-hour detail with 45 minutes of drive time and 30 minutes of setup and cleanup is really a 4.25-hour stop — about 40% more hours than the hands-on time a quote usually starts from. Every one of those extra minutes is billed time you're not detailing anyone's car, and it doesn't show up unless you put it in the quote.
Open the free mobile detailing bid calculator
Travel, setup, and cleanup. These are hours the customer is paying for even though the polisher isn't running. A stop across town and a stop next door are not the same job at the same price.
Vehicle cost. Round-trip miles at a real per-mile rate — fuel, wear, insurance — are a cost of doing the job mobile, not a rounding error.
Card fees and margin, together. A payment processing fee and a target margin are both slices of the same final price. Priced separately they look small; added together they can claim more of the ticket than either looks like alone.
The calculator does that arithmetic in your browser. It's not a promise of profit or a recommendation to accept a job — it's arithmetic on the numbers you enter, for you to check against your own vehicle, payment, and overhead costs.
Three hands-on hours, 45 minutes of travel, 15 minutes of setup, and 15 minutes of cleanup is a 4.25-hour stop for a 3-hour detail. Add 24 round-trip miles at real vehicle cost, $18 of supplies, a $12 overhead allocation, and a 3% card fee, and a $180 quote that looked comfortable against three hours of labor can be a thin margin — or a loss — against the whole stop. The calculator shows the break-even quote and what a target margin actually requires before you promise a price on the phone.
Start from the whole stop, not just the hands-on labor: hands-on hours plus travel, setup, and cleanup, times a loaded hourly wage, plus the vehicle cost for the round-trip miles, plus supplies and a card-processing fee if you take cards. A $180 quote that only covers three hands-on hours can still lose money once 45 minutes of driving and 30 minutes of setup and cleanup are added on top.
Travel is billed time you are not detailing anyone's car. A 3-hour job with 45 minutes of drive time and 30 minutes of setup and cleanup is really a 4.25-hour stop — about 40% more hours than the hands-on time alone. Quoting off hands-on hours only prices three-quarters of the job.
Yes, and it compounds with margin. A 3% card fee and a 35% target margin are both slices of the same final price, so together they can claim more of the ticket than either looks like alone. Price them as their own lines rather than assuming they come out of "whatever's left."