The Real Cost of a Fence Site Visit (Windshield Math Every Contractor Should Do)
"Free estimates!" is on every fence company's website, including mine. But free for the homeowner is not free for you. Let's do the math most contractors never do.
The inputs (plug in your own numbers)
- Average round-trip drive: 40 minutes
- On-site walk and measure: 30 minutes
- Quote write-up afterward: 20 minutes
- Your loaded value per hour in season (what an hour earns you installing): $60–100/hr
- Fuel and truck wear: $15 per trip
That's 1.5 hours per estimate. At $75/hr of opportunity cost plus fuel, each "free" estimate costs you about $125.
Now layer on close rate. If you close 1 in 3, you're spending roughly $375 of time per won job just on the measuring ritual — before you've set a single post. Quote 20 jobs a month and you've spent 30 hours — most of a working week — driving to yards, two-thirds of which you'll never see again.
The part that actually hurts: those 30 hours come out of evenings and Saturdays, or they come out of install time. Either you're burning family time or you're burning revenue. In peak season, an hour of install capacity is worth more than almost anything else you own.
What I do instead. Map-quote everything first. Imagery plus parcel lines gets a residential quote accurate enough to send within minutes. Then I apply a simple filter: I only drive to properties where (a) the job is signed or seriously hot, (b) the quote is over $15K, or (c) the satellite genuinely can't answer a question — heavy canopy, visible grade issues, new construction.
The result is that site visits flipped from a qualification cost to a closing tool. When I do show up, it's usually to confirm details with someone who already said yes — and showing up to a committed customer builds the relationship instead of burning a Tuesday on a tire-kicker who collected five bids for a project that never happens.
Run your own numbers. Quotes per month × 1.5 hours × your hourly value. If that figure doesn't bother you, carry on. It bothered me enough to build software about it.
Cut the windshield time
- Satellite fence estimating — quote the yard without driving to it
- How to quote a fence from satellite imagery — the step-by-step method
- Speed-to-lead for fence companies — why the first quote usually wins
Frequently asked questions
How much does a 'free' fence estimate actually cost the contractor?
Roughly $125 per estimate for a typical operation: a 40-minute round trip, 30 minutes on site, 20 minutes of write-up, plus fuel — about 1.5 hours of time worth $60–100/hour in season. At a one-in-three close rate, that's about $375 of measuring time per won job.
Should fence contractors stop doing site visits?
No — they should stop doing site visits to qualify leads. Map-quote everything first, then drive only to signed or seriously hot jobs, quotes over about $15,000, or properties where imagery genuinely can't answer a question. The visit becomes a closing tool instead of a qualification cost.
How many hours per month do fence contractors spend on estimates?
A contractor quoting 20 jobs monthly the traditional way spends about 30 hours — most of a working week — on driving, measuring, and write-ups, typically out of evenings and weekends or directly out of billable install time.