Adam Sand shows why roofing contractors lose money pricing by square footage alone. Two 30-square roofs can require vastly different labor due to valleys, capping, and flashing, but per-square pricing treats them the same, leaving subcontractors underpaid on complex jobs.
If this is a 41230 squares and this is a 41230 squares, is it the same job? But if you ask any roofer, they're going to say no. This 30 squares and this 30 squares are not the same 30 squares. They are different. The roofers will say that labor is more for this one because this is more. You've got valley here, you got a valley here. Then you're going to have more capping to do. You're going to have a kind of wall flashing up here. This 30 squares is a lot harder to do than this 30 squares. So this is easy money. This is hard money. So if you never price in complexity, what happen happens is you only land these jobs and then your subs say, ah man, we're always working for 225 a square and we're always getting these hard crazy jobs. This sucks. But if you're just pricing per square, this is what happens is that there's a supply and demand curve. And that will come back to bite you because then your subs might say, man, all of the money we make for XYZ roofing is hard, slow money.
