Shop rate and break-even calculator

Build the fully loaded cost of one hour of your own wrench time, put it next to a vendor's rate, and find the annual labour hours at which running the shop starts to pay.

The method behind this is explained in In-house shop or outsourced maintenance? .

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Technician

Base wage per hour ($) Straight time. Overtime and callout premiums belong here too.

Fringe and payroll burden (% of wages) Your finance office almost certainly publishes an approved rate. Massachusetts’ FY2026 approved rates are 35.6% fringe plus 2.21% payroll tax — 37.81% together.

Paid hours per year What payroll pays for. Leave is paid out of this.

Available hours per year Paid hours less leave, holidays, sick and training time. Chattanooga’s audit reached about 1,760 this way — run your own actuals through the same method.

Direct labour share (%) Labour hours posted to work orders over 12 months, divided by available hours.

Technicians on staff Wrench-turning headcount only. Supervision is overhead below.

Shop overhead (whole shop, per year)

Facility, utilities and waste disposal ($/yr) Charge the building even if the city owns it. A vendor’s rate includes theirs.

Tools, lifts, equipment and diagnostic subscriptions ($/yr) Amortise the big items. Scan tool and OEM software licences renew annually and once per make.

Shop supplies, uniforms and safety ($/yr) Whatever is not charged out to a work order.

Training and certification ($/yr) The money only. The hours already came out of available hours.

Supervision, parts room and back office ($/yr) Shop supervisor, parts ordering and receiving, work-order and telematics systems. Real cost, no wrench time.

The work you are comparing

Annual labour hours in scope The hours this decision covers, in-house or out.

Vendor labour rate ($/hr) Springfield, Missouri holds its own rates to 77.5–82.5% of surveyed market, and published 127.11 light duty and 157.43 heavy (FY2023-24 actual).

Parts at cost per year ($)

Added cost to do this work in-house ($/yr) Tooling, certification and training you do not have yet. Leave this at zero and every comparison says keep it — which is the wage-to-invoice mistake pointing the other way.

Internal parts markup (%) Public shops usually charge themselves parts at cost.

Vendor parts markup (%)

Loaded internal rate

—/hr

Break-even labour hours

—

Cost of one technician

Loaded wage per paid hour	—
Wages and benefits per year	—
Shop overhead share	—
Total per year	—

Rate build

Billable hours per technician	—
Wages and benefits per billable hour	—
Overhead per billable hour	—
Loaded shop rate	—

In-house against the vendor, annual

In-house labour	—
In-house parts	—
Added tooling, certification and training	—
In-house total	—
Vendor labour	—
Vendor parts	—
Vendor total	—
Difference	—

Billable capacity

—

Billable share of paid hours

—

Rate at the hours in scope

—

Sources

City of Chattanooga Internal Audit — General Services, Fleet Services Efficiency Review (Audit 09-12, August 2010) Primary — source of the available-hours method behind the 1,760 default
City of Springfield, Missouri — Service Center, FY2024-25 published budget Primary — a published municipal shop rate and rate-band policy to sanity-check against
Massachusetts Office of the Comptroller — approved FY2026 fringe benefit and payroll tax rates Primary — an example of how a public-sector fringe load is set, not a national figure
Denver Auditor — Department of Transportation & Infrastructure, Fleet Management (October 2024) Primary — what outsourcing without a documented comparison costs