Trowel Spin – October 2025

It feels like the type of job we should be making lots,

The We-Cill-It Concrete Construction Ltd crew was eating lunch under a shade tree in a parking lot island. Across the parking lot was a tired looking building they were repurposing for a small environmental company called BrightDoom Industries.  

The scope of work involved adding loading docks, cutting trench drains, and service pits into existing floors. There were also two places where the block wall was broken and had to be cut out and patched in with concrete. It was a hard work, with a ton of labor hours, and they were just on the finishing touches.  

Caleb Cillit, the owner, was sitting with his back against the tree trunk. He had dusty clothes, tired eyes and was punching numbers into his calculator. Dave Strong, the right-hand man, was doing his after-lunch push-ups with a bag of Sackcrete on his back for good measure. Sam Scroll, the kid, lay flat on his back, with his arms straight up in the air, scrolling through his Instagram and wishing for an Iced Cap.  

Caleb paused his punching on the calculator; his eyes had gotten less tired.  

“We are going to make a ton of money on this job,” he commented.  

“It feels like the type of job we should be making lots,” grunted Dave, who had ceased his push-ups and was sitting up and exercising his grip strength on a home-made spring-loaded apparatus.  

“I don’t actually think we did,” Sam broke in, without pausing from his Instagram.  

Dave looked at Sam with an expression that indicated he would like to test his hand grips on Sam’s neck. But he relaxed and with eloquent sarcasm said to Sam.  

“Sam, I highly respect your expertise and remarkable intuition in this matter. Could you enlighten us further?”  

“Well, said Sam. If I was to guess, Caleb estimated this job T-M and not MPH. So, we probably didn’t recover our overhead.”  

“Sam, Dave replied in mock gentleness, MPH is how you measure speed. Did you know that? “

“It means Margin Per Hour.” Sam was unfazed. “Tell me Caleb, what are the stats on this job, how much material and man hours. And what is our cost of labor with payroll burden?”

“It’s 50k of material and 450 man hours,” Caleb replied. He was interested in where this would go. “Our average cost of labor with burden is around 55.00 per hour. You help keep the average down Sam but go on.”  

Sam did go on. “How much is our annual overhead? And how much are you happy with for annual profit?” he asked.  

“What do you call overhead?” Caleb asked.  

“Everything that needs to be paid regardless of whether we work or not. The truck payment, insurance, shop rent, your sales time, and Kayla or whoever that lady is that does the payroll and pays the bills and cleans the office.”

“That’s my wife, Caleb replied, I don’t pay her.”  

“Well pretend you do,” said Sam, “but anyway, what’s the number?  

Caleb thought for a bit and punched on his calculator. “Well, our overhead is about 120k per year, and as a 3 man company I am happy with 150k in profit.  

“So here is the deal,” Sam, was now up on one elbow. “At best we put in about 6000 hours on site annually. And last time I checked the only time we make money is when we are on site working.”

“Who is we?” Dave asked, raising his eyebrows.  

Sam ignored him and went on, “That means our overhead is 20.00 per hr. and we want 25.00 per hour for profit. That means we need 45.00 MPH.  

If I was to guess, Caleb priced this at 50k of materials and travel costs plus 10 % markup, plus 450 hrs at our going rate of 80.00 per hour. That is 55k plus 36k labor. Subtract our costs and divide the margin by the 450 man hours for this site, and it leaves us with about 36.00 MPH. That means we are only recovering about half our overhead on this job.”  

Dave Strong shook his head and asked, “Are you on something for hallucination or do you take something to control it?”  

“It’s my dad, Sam said, He can’t stop talking about this stuff. He works at that crazy construction office on the other side of the city. He preaches this stuff when he tucks me in every night.”  

“You get tucked in???” Dave’s biceps went rigid, and his eyes bulged!

“No, Sam laughed, but it was worth hearing you ask.”

Caleb just stared at Sam. The tiredness had returned to his eyes, but beneath the tiredness was a hopeful gleam.