The True Cost of Being a Pool Guy

Ever been told, “You’re only here 15 minutes—why so much?” We pull back the curtain on what it truly costs to run a professional pool service and why a short visit doesn’t equal a small bill. From insurance layers to payroll math, this conversation gives you the numbers, the logic, and the language to price with confidence.

We start with the backbone of a mobile service business: commercial auto insurance and general liability. If you’re hauling chemicals or branded on the road, personal policies can fail you when it matters most. We dig into realistic premium ranges, how vetted groups can reduce liability costs, and why one uncovered incident can wipe out years of profit. 

Health insurance gets the spotlight it deserves. For self‑employed pros, it’s not optional and not “personal.” It’s a monthly cost of staying able to work in a risky, physical trade. Add city licensing, accounting, chemicals, parts, tires, brakes, and fuel, and you have the true base cost of a “simple” stop. We walk through a clean calculation: total fixed overhead divided by active accounts to find the per‑pool surcharge you must recover before any profit. With a sample $2,000 monthly overhead and 100 pools, that’s a $20 baseline per account—before chemicals, labor, and wear.

You’ll leave with a clear script to explain rates to homeowners without sounding defensive: we carry commercial auto, liability, workers’ comp, payroll taxes, and health coverage so your pool stays safe and your property protected. We charge what we charge to stay in business. Whether you’re pricing your first route or recalibrating a mature book, this guide helps you set sustainable rates, avoid silent losses, and communicate value with calm authority.

• commercial auto insurance requirements and risks
• general liability coverage and vetted group savings
• workers’ comp needs and category strategies
• payroll services, employer taxes and true labor cost
• health insurance as a core operating expense
• licensing, accounting, chemicals and vehicle wear
• converting monthly overhead into per‑pool

Support the Pool Guy Podcast Show Sponsors! 

HASA 
https://bit.ly/HASA

The Bottom Feeder. Save $100 with Code: DVB100
https://store.thebottomfeeder.com/

Try Skimmer FREE for 30 days:
https://getskimmer.com/poolguy 

Get UPA Liability Insurance $64 a month! https://forms.gle/F9YoTWNQ8WnvT4QBA

Pool Guy Coaching: https://bit.ly/40wFE6y

Transcript

Setting The Stakes On Pricing

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Game Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to go over some hidden costs of pool service. If you ever had a customer ask you why you're charging so much, you're only at the pool for 15 minutes and you should charge a lot less than you're charging. I'll go over some things you can actually explain to people and some of the hidden costs, again, that are in pool service businesses and of course in a lot of self-employed businesses. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. I remember a couple years ago I was questioning a bill I got from my HVAC servicer, and it was just for a small part that he had to change out, but the bill was like$185. And my question was, you know, it was a little bit I thought it was a little on the high side for something very simple. And he said to me, and this is a direct quote, he said, Dave, I charge what I charge to stay in business. Again, he said, I charge what I charge to stay in business. And that kind of stuck with me, and I realized that I was mistaken to question the bill. And of course, as a small business operator myself, I know that there are a lot of hidden costs in the business that we don't really discuss too much or talk about. That does go into the higher rates that we charge. And if we didn't charge these full service rates to the customers, we wouldn't really be able to stay in business or make a profit. And we'd be better off just working, you know, at In N Out Burger, flipping burgers all day, because these hidden costs can actually take all your profit away, and really you're you're making less money than you actually think you're making, unless you actually put these hidden costs inside of your expenses. When you're doing your calculations of your per pool rate and how much you're paying your employees, all these are factors that that impact the profit that we make each month on our pool route. I'll go over a cost that is something that you probably need to implement if you haven't done this so far in your business, and that is commercial auto insurance. If you're using your truck for any kind of business and you get in an accident, your insurance company can deny the claim if you're if you're not insured with a commercial policy. Now, these commercial policies are a lot more expensive than your standard policy, which are expensive to begin with anyway. But the commercial insurance policies, of course, come with a higher price tag. It could be anywhere from$150 to$400 per month, depending on your area. I can't give you a direct quote because every single area is different. And of course, you have different providers, state farm, you know, farmers, all these provide. You have to kind of compare your quotes. The bad thing about it is a lot of times you're gonna lose a lot of the discounts you get by combining insurances or having you know two or three cars on the same policy. It's unfortunate, but it's part of what you need because they're gonna categorize you as a commercial vehicle if you transport chemicals or equipment, if you you know have signage on your truck, you're definitely not someone driving a regular vehicle back and forth to work. And so your insurance company could flag you for that if you're in an accident and you know you have like tropical pool service all over your truck. It's definitely gonna be a problem for the underwriter for the insurance company or your agent to say, well, you know, he's he does have a business, but he was driving the vehicle at that point for his personal use. So there's definitely the added expense of a more expensive insurance, and this is why you're at a pool for 15 or 20 minutes and you're charging what you're charging because you have this added expense that the homeowner doesn't have to worry about. Another expense that can be something that can be mitigated, actually, if you join my UPA insurance group, you can get a really good discount on your general liability insurance. It's actually$64 a month for non-group members, which is my coaching group. And if you're in my coaching group, you can get the insurance for$59 a month. You'll see the link for the Google form to join the insurance policy, or to get the insurance, I should say, in the description of the podcast. If you would rather just find a quick link, just go to swimmingpoollearning.com and on the homepage there's a UPA link. Just click that and that'll take you to the Google form to fill out. It takes about two weeks for them to get back to you. The reason they can offer the the policy so low is they actually vent the pool pros that are allowed to enter the group, they don't want anyone with claims, of course, or who doesn't fit the mold of someone who has professional conduct. And this is something that, of course, is an expense. And if you go anywhere else, you're gonna be paying well over$100 a month for your general liability insurance. And this is a great way to kind of save on one of these hidden costs that are in the pool service. And you definitely need general liability insurance to protect yourself from any claims or any kind of oversights or anything that you may do that causes liability out there. So you need to operate with this, especially if you do commercial accounts, they're gonna want to see your certificate of insurance and it's something that is a cost that's added on to you know a normal you know W-2 job, you don't have to worry about having this insurance with you. You can have regular car insurance as well if you're driving back and forth in and out burger. It's not a big deal for you if you're working for somebody, but as a self-employed person, these are extra expenses that are added to your business. Insurance, commercial insurance, and then another one if you have employees is workers' comp. Now, this is something that a lot a lot more people are having to get some commercial accounts, require it. And if you have an employee that gets injured on the job and that you don't have workers' comp, you can actually get in a lot of trouble from the state. They're really particular about this, and there's all of course, there's also the threat of uh you know, kind of like a blackmail kind of thing. If someone gets hurt, you don't have workers' comp and they want you to pay all their medical bills and pay them for their loss of wages, or they're gonna report you in. This has happened to people I know, so it's not unrealistic. So workers comp adds another layer to your expenses. The good thing is that for pool service, you generally don't need to have construction workers' comp. You can get away with janitorial workers' comp because you're basically cleaning the pool, and you can kind of get away with that category to save some money, but it is definitely an added expense with an employee to have the workers' comp. Also, with an employee, you have added fees for payroll. Most typical payroll companies that will manage the payroll for you, do all the paperwork basically, charge about a hundred dollars per employee. So that's an added expense right there. So that's twelve hundred dollars a year. And then, of course, you got to realize that if you're paying your employee twenty dollars an hour to do per pool, you're actually adding more to that with the payroll taxes that you have to pay. For example, in Los Angeles County, where I'm at, if you have an employee making five thousand a month, you're probably going to pay about three hundred and eighty-two dollars in FICA, and then there's a FUTA, thirty dollars. The California tax is about$135, and so you're looking at roughly about$550 a month or 10% of the$5,000 going towards your portion of the payroll taxes. In California, of course, every state's different, so that's about$6,000 a month a year, I should say, not a month yet, but California's headed that way.$6,000 a year for your payroll taxes with an employee making$5,000 a month. That's an expense, of course, that you have to add to your business, bottom line, and subtract that from your profit every month. And so, again, these all add up. And I'm saving the big one here for last because this is something that will discourage a lot of people from actually getting in the pool service and moving away from their W-2 job if they have health insurance benefits to their employer, because health insurance is really expensive, and of course, it's something that you can't live without here in America. Because if you get hurt, break an arm, that could cost you$80,000 without health insurance. Believe me, everything adds up. It's really crazy how expensive the bill could be if you have to go to the hospital, and it could bankrupt you, it does bankrupt a lot of people with medical bills, and of course, you don't want to be bankrupted because you don't have health insurance. But on the other end of it, paying monthly for health insurance kind of bankrupts you anyway, because it's can be super expensive. You know, I pay for health insurance out of pocket, and it's not cheap, and it's something that you have to factor in to all your expenses. And this is again commercial insurance, general liability insurance, which you can save a lot of money with if you join my UPA group and get the discount at$59 or$64, and you hear the you'll hear the blurb in a second about that again. And then you have, of course, workers comp, payroll insurance, and you also have licensing and business fees you have to pay to the city. And these do add up to a lot of money if you put them on paper, and every month you see how much they add up to, which I'm gonna do here for you. So you kind of see what your rate should be to cover all these expenses because you do need to absorb these in your service rate. So if you have one employee and you pay for all these expenses that I mentioned here, you're gonna be paying close to$2,000 or maybe over$2,000 a month if you factor in your health insurance to this as well. I had$200 for the commercial insurance, and I had$64 for your general liability, plus another$60,$64 for your employee for the policy, and then you have your workers' comp at$250, which may be low, maybe a little higher than that, it could be lower than that as well. And then you have your payroll taxes at$550 for someone making$5,000 a month, and then you had your business licensing fees. I put$20 a month to break it down, and your health insurance, I put$1,000 a month for that, and that equals about$2,000 a month. It could be plus or minus$300 or$400, either way, but you have to actually factor that in now to how much you're charging per pool. And that's why when you go to a pool and the customer says, Hey, you're only here for 15-20 minutes, why are you charging me$180 a month? You should be charging me, you know,$120 a month. Well, you can't charge$120 a month because of all these kind of hidden fees of pool service. Now, if you subtract the employee, of course, you're still gonna be over a thousand dollars a month with health insurance, commercial insurance, general liability insurance, and these things add up as well. And it's not something that you could absorb in the account into your service accounts at a low rate, it has to be a rate that covers that. So I'm gonna go off the two thousand dollar amount so you get an idea of what you have to charge to absorb all these hidden costs in your business. Let's say that since you have one employee, you have a hundred service accounts on your route. So you just take that two thousand dollars a month and these expenses that are kind of fixed and there in your business for operational cost, and you divide that by a hundred, and so that's twenty dollars. So you have to charge twenty dollars per pool above your profit rate to absorb these costs. So if you're charging too little, let's say you're charging 150 per account, then you minus the$20 here. So you're actually only getting$130 per account, then you minus your chemical costs, and your other overhead, which is wear and tear on your vehicle, tire changes, brakes, things you have to do to maintain your vehicle. You have other costs associated with business, of course, your CPA breaking that over the course of the year. That could be a substantial amount of money as well. And so your real profit at 150 is actually 130 minus these costs here. And so charging 150 may not be enough to cover these costs. You may have to charge 170 a month, then 150 after these costs. You kind of see where I'm going here, and it's really no different than any other business. If you had a restaurant, you have what's called food costs. This is the amount of percentage of your gross profits that are going towards cost of food, buying the meat, buying the containers, the go to go to go containers, the cups for the drinks, paying for all the food costs there, and then you have employment costs or employee costs, I should say, and all this goes towards your profit, and that's why when you go to your local burger place and you ask for a cheeseburger special, I just got this yesterday actually, it's gonna be$13.99 for a at a mom and pop restaurant for a cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke. It's quite steep, but again, they're factoring in all their food costs into that price, all their rent, operating costs, employees. And a good thing with your pool service business, you don't necessarily have to pay rent because you don't have a building you're renting, but you have other costs, of course, that go with that, chemical costs and things like that. So all of this is to say that every business does this and they pass the cost of these on to the customer. If they didn't, they'd be out of business within three months. And a lot of times you'll see businesses fail because they don't have enough customers ordering food to cover their costs, and they actually go out of business. So it's a good thing, the good thing about pool service is you're not relying on random customers coming in every day. You have a set route with a specific amount of customers at your service every month, which makes calculating these costs very simple and easy. But you have to calculate these costs and put them into your service service route pricing. Otherwise, you're gonna lose money each month, lose profit each month. And this is an easy way to explain to the customer when they ask you why you're charging me$185 a month, you're here for 20 minutes a week, and you just simply explain to them there are a lot of costs associated with business that you don't see commercial auto insurance, general liability insurance, I have to pay for my health insurance, I have to pay workers' comp for my employees. So there is a lot of costs, and I charge what I charge you to stay in business, and you can use that with the customer. And I think a lot of people, most people will it'll click with them and they'll understand that yes, there are these costs associated with someone who's self-employed, that I don't have to worry about working, you know, for IBM or working at whatever, and you know, this may be something that you have to converse with them, especially if they question the price increase or question your rate all the time, and explain to them that these are costs of operation that you unfortunately have to pass on to them, just like a fast food restaurant passes on the cost of the customer and leave it at that. It's just that simple and that basic, and it's something that you have to account for in your pool service. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swingpoollearning.com, and click on the banner there. There'll be a podcast menu of over 1800 podcasts. And if you're in the coaching program, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your day and God bless.