Fence pricing looks simple from the outside: feet times a rate. The contractors who lose money on fences are usually the ones who stopped there. Here’s the whole method.
Build your per-foot rate from costs
For each fence type and height you sell, add up what one linear foot costs you:
- Materials. Posts (with concrete), rails, pickets or fabric or panels, fasteners, and hardware, divided across the post spacing. Price it from your current supplier numbers, not last year’s.
- Labor. Crew hours for a typical run (layout, holes, set, build), times loaded labor cost, divided by the footage. Holes are most of it.
- Overhead. Truck, auger, insurance, fuel, phone. It belongs in the rate.
- Margin. A line item, not the leftovers.
That sum is your floor. Do it once per fence type and height, and stop re-deriving prices in the driveway.
Height is a rate, not a multiplier
A 6 ft privacy fence isn’t a 4 ft fence times 1.5. Taller means longer posts, deeper holes, more concrete, and more material per foot of run. Carry each height you sell as its own rate. Same logic for material: wood, chain link, and vinyl are separate rate tables, not one number with adjustments in your head.
Gates are their own line
A gate carries a frame, hinges, a latch, and the highest expectations on the whole fence. Price walk gates and drive gates each. A 150 foot fence with two gates is a 150 foot quote plus two gate line items, and the customer should see it that way.
The conditions that wreck flat rates
- Tear-out. Old fence out, concrete footings broken, everything hauled. Per foot, plus dump.
- Digging. Rock, roots, hardpan, and old footings in the way. If the ground is bad, say so in the quote with a per-foot add-on.
- Slope and steps. Stepped panels and racked runs are slower than flat ground.
- Access. A backyard you can’t get a machine into is a hand-dig job.
Put the rates somewhere you can use them
The method above is worth doing exactly once. After that, the rates should live in a calculator on your phone: pick the fence type, enter the feet, tap the height, add tear-out, and text the itemized number while you’re still standing on the line. That’s what PriceDesk does, with your rates, free for 14 days.
Test your numbers on the wood privacy fence calculator, chain link calculator, or vinyl calculator. Weighing the boards themselves, cedar vs pressure-treated fence covers the trade-off.