Guycol said:
Just to let you know my brother's an engineer after 6 years of workshop training and degree. Plumbers have no where near that education.
There is no way my brother can demand $100 per hour for the responsibilities he has to undertake.
He's lucky to get 35 bucks per hour and taxed fully on that (no cash in hand)
that's why so many are turning to D.I.Y jobs.
No disrespect intended to the plumbing trade but realism is setting the pace and the high charges are part cause of our poor economy.
This is exactly why plumbers have to resort to "get rich quick greedy ideas."
How you quantify what a plumber charges with what your engineer brother makes is the problem because they are completely unrelated. An engineer working for a company needs an office, health insurance, FICA, retirement benefits, and some sort of infrastructure to work in. He does not own many thousands of dollars' worth of breakable tools, does not carry liability insurance for damage to others' property, does not wear out trucks quickly nor pay huge sums every month for truck fuel. Somebody has to pay his expenses, and that somebody who pays him $35 per hour has to figure
at least three times that to keep him working.
In a one-man shop, the service plumber works on books, running the business, answers the phone, schedules the work, and CANNOT actually collect for an average of more than three billable hours in a given working day. He may work five hours in one day, then spend the next day collecting for the work he did.
Many of those greedy bastiches are earning no more than five or ten thousand dollars a year while wrecking their bodies and exposing themselves to hazardous chemicals, asbestos, chlorine gas, acids, lifting weights they shouldn't try to lift alone, and finding that after fifty years of plumbing they have nothing to show for it but debt.
Kudos to the plumbers who have managed to stay above that and charge what they're worth, irrespective of what the consumer is willing to part with because he's got a Hummer and a Jaguar in the driveway and thought that plumbing lasts forever and didn't budget for it.
Anybody can build an outhouse; not everybody can be a plumber.
I would guess that of the average percentage of the hourly rate charged by plumbers less than 1/5 is personal income. Now, compare that with your engineer brother. Figure that hourly rate by three billable hours. In a larger shop, there are usually at least two other people for each technician who goes out in the van. They need paychecks, too.