Posted Labor Rates

Body and paint at $210 per hour covers structural work, panel repair and replacement, fiberglass, substrate rebuilding, prep and refinish. This is the rate that governs most collision tickets and most of what an insurance file contains. It reflects booth time, fixture time and the technician hours that go into a surface nobody should be able to identify as repaired.

Mechanical and electrical at $260 per hour covers twelve volt and one hundred twenty volt systems, generators, inverters and charging paths, plumbing, appliances and climate equipment. The higher figure reflects the diagnostic burden. On a specialty unit the wiring is frequently undocumented, partly aftermarket, and modified by at least one previous owner who left no notes.

Diagnostics, scan and programming at $285 per hour carries a one hour minimum and is credited against an authorized repair. Detail at $95 per hour covers correction, polish, coating and reconditioning, where the work is measured in passes across a surface rather than in disassembly.

Materials are not a percentage of the total and they are not a flat adder. Paint supplies calculate at a fixed figure per paint hour and body supplies calculate at a fixed figure per body hour. That means the materials line moves with the actual work rather than with the size of the invoice, and it can be checked against the hours on the same page.

A hazmat and disposal charge applies when chemicals, refrigerant or LP is involved. It is a flat figure rather than a percentage because the disposal obligation does not scale with ticket size. A small refrigerant recovery generates the same regulatory paperwork as a large one.

Sales tax at 7.75 percent applies to parts and materials. Labor is not taxed. On a refinish heavy job the materials line can be a real share of the total, which is another reason it is broken out rather than buried.

Published repair times exist for common operations on common chassis. Where one exists it is used, and the estimate cites it. The complication in this segment is that a large share of the work has no published time at all. There is no book time for sectioning a discontinued front cap, or for rebuilding a sidewall on a coach whose manufacturer stopped operating a decade ago.

For those operations the hours come from measured shop history on comparable work, and the estimate says so. It documents the operation, the access required to reach it, and the comparable job the figure is drawn from. An owner or an adjuster can then argue with the comparison, which is a far more productive conversation than arguing with a number that appeared without explanation.

Access is the variable most often underestimated. Reaching a leak at the base of a slide opening can require removing the room, and the removal is most of the labor. The visible repair is an hour. The path to it is twelve.

Rate and duration are separate questions. A high hour job is not necessarily a long calendar job, and a short job can sit for weeks waiting on a discontinued part. The turnaround bands below describe calendar time, not labor hours, and the two frequently do not track each other.

Where they do interact is scheduling. A job with a large hour count occupies a bay and a technician for a predictable stretch, which is easier to schedule around than a small job blocked on parts. Owners planning around a trip or a route are usually better served by asking which band a job falls in than by asking how many hours it takes.