Priced the way Heavy & Ag Equipment work is billed
A field service call and a undercarriage / tracks don't get quoted the same way, so why would every trade? SideWRK prices Heavy & Ag Equipment the way the work is really billed: by the hour + parts (default rate ~$135/hr). Tap the work, put in the numbers, and the line prices itself — no napkin math, no undercharging a job because you rushed the quote.
What Heavy & Ag Equipment jobs actually run
These are the starting numbers SideWRK loads for common Heavy & Ag Equipment work — researched to be realistic, so you can send an estimate that isn't a guess. Adjust any of them to your market in a tap.
Typical starting prices in the app — your area, your materials, and your reputation move them. You set your own; these just keep you from undercharging on the first quote.
Undercarriage / tracks, priced out
Numbers only mean something on a real job, so here's how SideWRK builds the ticket on a common one:
SideWRK puts the parts on at what you actually paid — so the $700 of labor is what you clear, not a marked-up parts total dressed up as profit.
What moves a Heavy & Ag Equipment price
Two Heavy & Ag Equipment jobs that look the same on paper can be a hundred dollars apart once you're on site. Here's what actually changes the number — the things to size up before you quote:
- Travel and field time — you bill from the shop to the job site, so a remote breakdown is windshield time you shouldn't absorb.
- Engine hours, not age — the hour meter tells the real story, and a high-hour machine needs more than a low-hour one the same year.
- Diesel emissions systems — DPF, DEF, and SCR work is specialized, and it prices above a straight hydraulic or undercarriage repair.
What a Heavy & Ag Equipment job puts on the record
Every trade documents something different, and Heavy & Ag Equipment is no exception. SideWRK captures the engine-hour meter in and out — not a VIN and the rest of what your work needs on the record — the details that protect you and make the invoice stand up:
- the engine-hour meter in and out — not a VIN
- the serial or PIN number
- the emissions tier (Tier 1 through Tier 4 Final)
- a ROPS, PTO, and forklift safety check
- a diesel-emissions guard (DPF/DEF/SCR/EGR)
Example note on a job: "Repaired to operational — advised undercarriage nearing replacement."
How to price a Heavy & Ag Equipment job in SideWRK
- 1
Start the job and add your work
Open a Heavy & Ag Equipment job and tap a suggestion like "Field service call" or "Hydraulic repair" — the common work is already loaded, so you tap instead of type.
- 2
Price it by the hour + parts
Enter the numbers and the line prices itself, by the hour + parts (default rate ~$135/hr). Put parts on at your cost so what you clear is real profit, not just the Heavy & Ag Equipment ticket total.
- 3
Note the details
Add a plain-English note — for example, "Repaired to operational — advised undercarriage nearing replacement." — and a photo of the work.
- 4
Log what the job needs
Capture the Heavy & Ag Equipment-specific records: the engine-hour meter in and out — not a VIN, and the serial or PIN number.
- 5
Send it and get paid
Send the Heavy & Ag Equipment estimate for approval. Your customer approves from their phone, the invoice goes out, and you get paid — card or Apple Pay, on the spot.
Staying on the right side of the rules
SideWRK documents your Heavy & Ag Equipment work — it doesn't make you licensed, and it says so plainly. What to know: OSHA safety items on forklifts and ROPS/PTO, and a Clean Air Act guard on diesel emissions — it's off-road equipment, so there's no motor-vehicle registration.
Heavy & Ag Equipment pricing — common questions
How do I price a Heavy & Ag Equipment job in SideWRK?
You bill by the hour + parts (default rate ~$135/hr). Add the work — Field service call, Hydraulic repair, Engine service — enter the numbers, and each line prices itself. Parts go on at your cost, so you see real profit and not just the total.
What does a typical Heavy & Ag Equipment job cost?
It depends on the work, but as a realistic starting point a common job like undercarriage / tracks runs about $1,400 in the app — roughly $700 of that is your labor and about $700 is parts at your cost. Common Heavy & Ag Equipment work ranges from about $220 to $1,400. Those are defaults you can change — you always set your own prices.
What does SideWRK document on a Heavy & Ag Equipment job?
The records Heavy & Ag Equipment work actually needs: the engine-hour meter in and out — not a VIN; the serial or PIN number; the emissions tier (Tier 1 through Tier 4 Final). They stay on the job as you work, so the paper trail is built instead of reconstructed later, and the disclosures this trade needs print on the estimate and invoice themselves.
Do I need a license to do Heavy & Ag Equipment work?
That depends on your state and the job, but here's the shape of it: OSHA safety items on forklifts and ROPS/PTO, and a Clean Air Act guard on diesel emissions — it's off-road equipment, so there's no motor-vehicle registration. SideWRK documents the work; it doesn't certify you.
Does SideWRK work for trades other than Heavy & Ag Equipment?
Yes — it runs all 42 trades, each priced and documented its own way. If you run more than one, the Multi-Trade plan unlocks them all and switches between them in a tap.
Your first jobs
On iron, your first customer is usually an office. A homeowner decides about you in a driveway. A rental yard, a farm office and a general contractor decide about you in an accounts-payable queue, weeks after the machine was already running again. Fix a hydraulic line on a rented excavator at six in the morning so the crew can pour by nine, hand the superintendent a ticket torn off a pad, and it can sit at the bottom of that queue behind three vendors who submitted something the office could code. That isn't a cash-flow problem. It's a paperwork problem, and it's most of the difference between one repair call and a name they keep.
Which is why shaving your rate is the wrong lever. The outfits paying field rates aren't comparing you to a cheaper hobbyist — they're comparing you to the dealer's field truck and the wait that comes with it. Three doors open first, and none of them cost anything: rental yards, which field repair calls all day on equipment they have no in-house tech for and usually keep an informal list of who to point renters toward; ag co-ops and farm-supply boards, where a card reading on-site repair, hour-logged invoicing, all makes still beats a handwritten "fixes tractors"; and one GC's bid list, because superintendents talk to each other far more than they talk to their own office.
What gets that first ticket paid on the first pass is boring and specific. Here's what a back office is looking for, and where each piece already sits on the document SideWRK sends:
| What the back office needs | Where it already is on your ticket |
|---|---|
| Their PO or job-cost number | The job title, or the details line under it — both print at the top of the estimate and the invoice |
| Engine hours at the time of service | Engine hours in and out on the job; the pair prints in the document header, "1,180 → 1,186 hrs" |
| Labor and parts split out, parts identified | Every line carries its own quantity and price, and a part that isn't new prints its tag: used, rebuilt, reman, recond., aftermarket, salvage, customer-supplied |
| Your business or license number | The "Business / license #" field in Shop, printed under your business name on everything you send |
| Photos of the failure and the fix | The job's photos ride the same link the customer opens to approve |
Some outfits won't reimburse an aftermarket or used component unless it's identified as one, which is why the condition tag is on that list and not a nicety. One unflagged reman starter can hold up a whole check.
The estimate itself is the part most side mechanics skip, and to an office it is the document. Send it and the customer gets a page on his phone headed by your business name, the machine and the priced lines under it. He fills in his name — the page tells him in plain words that his typed name is his electronic signature on this approval — taps Approve, and the job holds on to the three things an argument later turns on: the amount, the name, the date. All three come back on the invoice under Approved by. Your job photos load on that same page, so the man releasing the money is looking at the split hose while he decides. And if the teardown runs past the figure he said yes to, the job raises a caution naming both numbers — this total against the one the customer authorized — and points you at Log authorization or a re-send. Logging it takes who cleared it, how you reached him, and the total he cleared. Written down before you cut the second hose, it ends the conversation. Written down after, it starts one.
One thing no app does for you: the vendor file. A GC or a co-op that wants a W-9 and a certificate of insurance before it will add you as a vendor isn't brushing you off — that's the same process it runs on every supplier, and clearing it once is what makes every later invoice move. Get through it before the emergency call, not during it.
Repeat business — the hour meter
Most trades have to guess when the next visit is due. You don't. The machine keeps its own count and the number is right there on the dash — diesel engines and hydraulic systems wear on hours, not months, and a meter reading tells you what's coming long before a calendar knows anything about it. All of which is worth exactly nothing if nobody wrote the reading down.
- Two readings a job, and they print. A heavy-equipment job's Schedule card carries Engine hours in and Engine hours out where a car shop would have an odometer, and the pair lands in the header of the customer's document — "1,180 → 1,186 hrs". Nothing to reconstruct six months on: open the last job and the machine tells you how hard it's been run since.
- "Do this again." A wrapped job copies into a fresh estimate for the same customer and the same machine, the work carried at the prices you charged last time. The service you wrote up line by line in the spring is a two-tap quote in the fall — change what changed, send it.
- The fleet that earns a standing visit. A service plan lives on the customer: the lines, the price per visit, and a cadence — weekly, every two weeks, monthly, or every so many days. When one comes due the app opens the job itself, dated for that visit, work already on it, tagged Recurring on the row. Worth naming the seam: that cadence runs on a calendar, not on the hour meter, so you set the interval from the hours you've watched that machine put on.
Turning that into a signed year is its own subject, and this trade has a full piece on it. Turn Breakdown Calls Into Maintenance Contracts builds the tiers in dollars out of these same visit prices, takes apart the fleet-manager percentage rule most contract advice leans on, and names the one moment a contract actually gets a yes. Read it before you quote anybody an annual number.
How heavy equipment bills
Heavy equipment is one of five trades in this app that still bill against a real clock; the other thirty-seven price by area, by the unit, or off a fixed menu. So there's no pricing model to teach here. There's your hour and there's the parts invoice, and every figure in the menu at the top of this page is those two added together and rounded. Pull them back apart and the menu starts saying something it can't say as one number:
| Work | Ticket | Parts at cost | Your labor | Hours at $135 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field service call | $280 | — | $280 | 2.1 |
| Hydraulic repair | $720 | $300 | $420 | 3.1 |
| Engine service | $950 | $350 | $600 | 4.4 |
| Undercarriage / tracks | $1,400 | $700 | $700 | 5.2 |
| Preventive maintenance | $420 | $180 | $240 | 1.8 |
| Diagnostic | $220 | — | $220 | 1.6 |
These are the app's starting numbers and you can type over any of them while you're writing the line. Labor here is simply the ticket with the parts taken back out; the last column is that labor at the $135 default rate. Read that column before you agree to a drive — it's the only one that says what the day is really paying you.
Which brings up the second thing. The drivers up the page tell you not to absorb windshield time; this is the mechanism that stops you, and on a field ticket it's the line most likely to be missing:
You type the round-trip miles and your own rate per mile, and it lands on the estimate as its own line — Travel / mileage — where the customer can see what he's paying for. Behind it the app books what the drive cost you at the IRS standard rate — 72.5 cents a mile in 2026, carried at a whole 73 because the cost column is in cents and the app would rather overstate your cost than your profit — so $43.80 comes straight back out. Parts $300, diesel $43.80, and what you actually clear on the afternoon is $488.70.
Two of those numbers were your money before they were his, and that's the part of commercial work nobody warns you about. Take the visit where you're already on the machine for the undercarriage and the owner asks you to knock out the overdue service while you're in there — $1,400 and $420 on one ticket, $1,820 — and $880 of it crossed a parts counter on your card the morning you ordered it. Net 30 in construction routinely means day 45, or 60. Carry that $880 on a supplier card at 24% for two months and roughly $35 of the job quietly leaves in interest. Survivable once. Four tickets open at the same time is a normal month as soon as the accounts start coming, and you're floating five to seven thousand dollars of your own money so a company ten times your size can manage its cash flow.
So price the float or shorten it. Pricing it is the field service call — bill it on every roll-out, because it's the line that covers the drive out, the first hour and the standing around. Shortening it is the deposit: on the job while it's still an estimate, you ask for 10, 25, 33 or 50 percent — or waive it, or leave it on whatever you set as your shop default — and the customer pays it on the approval page at the moment he says yes. A quarter of that $1,820 collected at the yes covers half the parts before you order them. What you don't do is absorb it quietly. A mechanic who eats the roll-out and the float isn't the cheap option — he's the free bank.
Multiplying jobs
The expensive thing in this trade is the drive, which puts the money in whatever else happens while the truck is already sitting in the yard — and in the follow-through that never survives the ride home. The app handles both:
- The second job on the same roll-out, without a sales call. Any line you write can be marked an optional add-on, which sends it out for the customer to accept or refuse himself; the total on his screen moves as he ticks. The grease service he keeps deferring, the filters while the cover is already off, the second machine parked beside the first — put them on the ticket and let the man paying choose. He reads it at a desk with nobody standing over him, which is when people quietly say yes to the sensible one.
- The truck keeps its own count. Truck stock opens on this trade's own starter list — hydraulic fluid by the gallon, grease cartridges, 15W-40, fuel filters, an O-ring kit, DEF — and every item carries the number you want warning at. Bill one out of stock and the tally comes down as the work saves; empty the shelf and it tells you on the spot, while you can still swing past a supply house instead of learning it forty minutes down a dirt road. Barcodes work for finding an item or dropping it onto a line, and truck stock has the rest.
- The follow-through, which happens without you. The moment somebody opens an estimate, you hear about it: a push if notifications are switched on, otherwise an email — one channel or the other, never both at once. A quote that goes unanswered gets a short, plain note after three days and one more after seven, then stops; a superintendent who meant to approve it has usually just been dragged onto a breakdown. A wrapped job still owed money nudges the customer on day 3, day 7 and day 14, and the link in that email settles on a card or Apple Pay. Want to keep the processor's cut instead? Build a payment request and it pays into your Venmo, Cash App or Zelle. As for reviews: one ask when the job wraps, one nudge behind it, and that's the lot — capped there deliberately.
- The repair sells the next one. Two shots off a job — the hose that let go, then the machine back moving dirt — file into the gallery on your public page as a matched before and after. A farm manager weighing up two mobile mechanics goes with the one whose work he can look at.
The live heavy equipment demo opens on a seeded outfit — machines logged by serial and hour meter, jobs part-finished, the paperwork already written. Free, nothing to sign up for. The emails above run server-side, so those you meet on real work.
Price it now
There's no square-footage calculator for iron — the menu at the top of this page is the price list. What's left to settle is your hour, and on a field call that number is carrying more than your time: the truck, the tools bolted into it, the diesel out and back, and the hours nobody is paying you for. The same free rate tool the heavy equipment app page runs, right here:
The paper worth keeping
Under the totals, every estimate and invoice this trade sends carries a block of notices nobody made you type. They aren't aimed at your customer. They're on there because on iron the disagreement tends to arrive a season late, and by then one sentence already printed on his copy is worth more than your recollection of having said it out loud. What each one is doing:
- The not-a-motor-vehicle line. Off-road and agricultural equipment isn't a registered motor vehicle, so the state automotive-repair rules that govern a car shop don't reach it — and the notice says so out loud, which settles the question with anyone who assumes otherwise. Then it holds your record to the same practice anyway: a written estimate, authorization before the work, parts disclosed by condition. That's the standard worth keeping whether or not somebody is asking.
- The hour-meter line. Readings are recorded as shown on the machine's meter, and the notice states plainly that off-road equipment isn't covered by odometer or hour-meter disclosure law — the numbers are on there for accuracy and for the customer's own record. The honest version: you wrote down what the meter said, and that's all you claimed.
- The emissions line, and the guard behind it. The document says the shop doesn't remove, disable or defeat emissions controls — DPF, DEF and SCR, EGR — because that's prohibited under the Clean Air Act and California law, and that emissions components get repaired or replaced with a functioning equivalent instead. Then the app holds itself to its own sentence: type a delete, a defeat or a bypass into a work description, a part name or the note and the form stops and tells you why. Routine removing, cleaning and replacing of an emissions part saves normally — it's the permanent defeat it won't write down. Nobody is stopping you doing anything. SideWRK just won't be the paper trail for it.
- The safety closeout. Before the machine goes back, the job puts a card on the screen: rollover protection present and remounted to manufacturer spec, PTO master shield and driveline guards reinstalled and fastened, hydraulic and belt and moving-part guards restored. Tap each one to cycle it done or N/A. Set the machine's type to Forklift and six more appear — tires and wheels, forks and mast and lift chains, hydraulics, brakes and steering, overhead guard and data plate, controls and horn and lights — plus a return-to-service confirmation that a truck found defective stayed out of service until it was restored. Whatever you marked done prints on the customer's copy as one line: Safety verified before return: ROPS, PTO guards, guards. A record of what you checked, not a certificate that the machine is safe.
- Your name and number on all of it. Whatever you put in Shop's "Business / license #" field prints under your business name on every estimate and invoice you send. It's the line a vendor file asks for, and it costs you one typing.
- April, already done. Every numbered invoice, the money that actually landed, and the parts receipts you photographed feed a year-end wrap-up — the rows, the totals by category, exports for a spreadsheet, and one printable page a preparer can work from. The round-trip miles you log on a job go in as well; that field is private and never shows on the customer's copy.
The last notice on the document says it plainly, and so will we: SideWRK is a documentation tool, not legal advice. It doesn't determine or guarantee compliance with any safety, emissions or other legal requirement. It keeps the records; meeting the rules stays yours.