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Job costing

14 articles on job costing.

Warehouse shelving full of white paint pails, with bundles of steel sign posts and orange traffic cones on the floor

Running the business

Your Real Margin on Sold Materials: Paint, Posts and Cones When Prices Change

How to read the margin on materials a traffic control company sells outright: cost of goods sold, what happens to margin when purchase prices change, margin versus markup with a worked example, and why a line with no cost on file shows a fake 100% margin.

Nov 10, 2026 · 7 min read

Traffic OS — traffic control equipment yard with staged arrow boards and barricades

Running the business

Equipment Theft and Vandalism in Traffic Control: Reducing a Cost Nobody Budgets

What actually walks off a yard and a live job site, the deterrents that are worth the money, and the paperwork that decides whether you recover anything or just absorb it.

Aug 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Traffic OS — GPS time clock for traffic control crews

Choosing software

GPS Time Clock for Traffic Control Crews: What to Know Before You Roll One Out

Why time tracking is unusually hard in traffic control, what geofencing does and does not prove, how clock data feeds job costing and payroll, and how to introduce it without losing your crews.

Aug 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Traffic OS — uniformed officer and marked patrol unit staged on a work zone approach

Compliance and work-zone safety

Law Enforcement in Work Zones: When It Helps and How It Gets Paid For

What a uniformed officer and marked patrol car actually change in a work zone, when an agency requires one versus when you elect one, and how the hours get procured, scheduled, and billed.

Aug 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Traffic OS — traffic control crew loading cones at the end of a long shift

Running the business

Overtime and FLSA Basics for Traffic Control Crews

Why night work, standby, and travel make overtime unusually easy to get wrong in this trade — the 40-hour rule, what the regular rate includes, and the federal contract layer on top.

Aug 23, 2026 · 12 min read

Traffic OS — Owner KPIs and reporting for traffic control companies

Choosing software

The Numbers a Traffic Control Owner Should Actually Watch

A short, defensible KPI set for a traffic control company — what each number tells you, how each one gets gamed, where the data has to come from, and which popular metrics are noise.

Aug 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Traffic OS — traffic control crew on standby at a staged job site

Running the business

Pricing Standby, Show-Up Time, and Cancellations on Traffic Control Jobs

The three situations that eat unbilled hours — cancelled on arrival, held on site, released early — and how to put minimums, show-up pay, and cancellation windows in the rate sheet before the argument starts.

Aug 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Running the business

Job Costing for Traffic Control Companies

How to build a job cost that actually reflects a traffic control job — the four cost buckets, why equipment-days are the one most companies get wrong, how to allocate the overhead that does not attach to any job, and the reports worth running weekly.

Jul 26, 2026 · 11 min read

Running the business

Per Diem and Travel Pay for Traffic Control Crews

How per diem and travel pay actually work for out-of-area traffic control work — the IRS substantiation methods and current rates, why travel time and per diem are separate questions, and how to price and record both without creating a payroll problem.

Jul 26, 2026 · 6 min read

Traffic control crew waiting beside a parked work truck on a highway shoulder with staged cones

Running the business

Crew Utilization: The Metric Most Traffic Control Companies Don't Track

Wage rates are known to the penny and utilization not at all — which is backwards, because utilization moves the economics harder and management can actually change it.

Jul 25, 2026 · 5 min read

Two flaggers controlling a one-lane work zone on a country road at sunrise

Running the business

What an Hour of Flagger Time Actually Costs: Building a Loaded Labor Rate

Base wage is the smallest part. Here is how to build a defensible loaded hourly cost for field labor — burden, non-productive time, utilization, prevailing wage, and the admin tail nobody prices.

Jul 25, 2026 · 11 min read

Rows of drums, cones and barricades in a rental yard as a forklift moves a pallet of drums at sunrise

Running the business

How to Price Traffic Control Device Rental Rates

Device rental pricing is an asset-return problem, not a market-matching exercise. Here is how to build a rate from replacement cost, utilization, and loss — and why most published rates are unusable.

Jul 25, 2026 · 5 min read

Bookkeeper working at a laptop beside a stack of invoices in a small contractor office

Choosing software

QuickBooks and Traffic Control Software: What to Get Right

Most traffic control companies keep the books in QuickBooks and run operations somewhere else. Here is where that seam leaks — and the four questions to ask before you connect anything.

Jul 25, 2026 · 5 min read

Estimator's desk with a laptop, calculator, hard hat and rolled drawings, a road work site through the window

Running the business

Bidding Traffic Control Jobs: What Estimates Usually Miss

How traffic control estimates go wrong — the costs that hide outside the device count, why mobilization and standby are underpriced, and how job costing turns bidding into something you can improve.

Jul 21, 2026 · 5 min read

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