Solo Master Plumber Pay 2026:
$80,000 to $180,000 Take-Home
Updated 18 May 2026 | Sources: SBA solo trade economics | PHCC owner-operator data | industry franchise compensation disclosures
Solo master plumber running one truck is the most common business form in the trade, accounting for more than 60 percent of US plumbing businesses by count. The economics are well-understood: revenue follows tech capacity, overhead follows revenue at a roughly fixed percentage, and take-home is the residual. Below is the full unit economics breakdown.
Low Solo Gross
$220K
Typical Solo Gross
$320K
High Solo Gross
$440K
Median Take-Home
$116K
Section 01
Unit Economics: One Truck, Three Scenarios
The table below shows the full P&L for a solo master plumber operating one truck, broken into low / typical / high scenarios for an average US metro market. The take-home line at the bottom is the owner's combined W-2 salary plus S-corp distribution.
| Line | Low | Typical | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Gross Revenue | $220,000 | $320,000 | $440,000 |
| Materials and Parts (~22%) | $48,400 | $70,400 | $96,800 |
| Truck (lease + fuel + maintenance) | $18,000 | $24,000 | $32,000 |
| Insurance (GL + WC + vehicle + umbrella) | $9,500 | $14,500 | $19,500 |
| Marketing (PPC + SEO + Yelp + LSAs) | $15,000 | $28,000 | $45,000 |
| Office / Admin / Software / Phone | $8,000 | $12,000 | $18,000 |
| License + Bond + Permits + Tools | $5,000 | $8,000 | $12,000 |
| Owner Health Insurance (self-fund) | $18,000 | $22,000 | $24,000 |
| Owner SEP-IRA / Solo 401(k) | $15,000 | $25,000 | $45,000 |
| Take-Home (W-2 + S-corp distribution) | $83,100 | $116,100 | $147,700 |
Take-home is combined W-2 salary + S-corp distribution + owner-paid health insurance + owner retirement contributions. Excludes one-time capital events (truck refresh, real estate). Higher-cost coastal metros (NYC, SF Bay, Boston, DC) typically push revenue 20 to 40 percent higher than this table at the same hour intensity.
Section 02
The Billed-Hours Math
Solo plumber revenue is fundamentally driven by billable hours times billed rate. The arithmetic is straightforward; the discipline of running the business well is whether the operator can sustain a high billable-hours ratio.
A solo plumber works approximately 2,000 to 2,200 hours per year (50 weeks at 40 to 44 hours per week). Out of that, the typical operator bills 1,200 to 1,400 hours, a utilization ratio of 55 to 65 percent. The unbilled hours go to drive time (10 to 18 percent of total hours), materials runs to the supply house (3 to 6 percent), customer call-backs and warranty work (2 to 4 percent), quoting and estimating (3 to 6 percent), admin including invoicing and scheduling and marketing and taxes (8 to 12 percent), and tool/truck stocking and maintenance (2 to 4 percent).
At a billed rate of $135 per hour and 1,300 billed hours per year, gross revenue is $175,500 from labour. Add typical materials markup (parts billed to customer at 1.5x to 2x cost): if material is 22 percent of gross revenue at cost, the customer-billed material is $100,000 to $130,000 on top of labour. Combined gross revenue is approximately $275,000 to $310,000, which lines up with the "typical" column of the unit economics table on this page.
The lever the operator can pull is the billable-hours ratio. Improving from 55 percent utilization to 65 percent utilization moves billed hours from 1,210 to 1,430, adding 220 hours times $135 per hour, or $29,700 in annual gross revenue. Most of that drops to take-home because the variable overhead (parts) scales with revenue while the fixed overhead (insurance, marketing, software, license) does not. The discipline of running a tight solo operation is what separates the low scenario from the high scenario in the unit economics table.
Section 03
Service Calls vs Project Work
Solo plumbers typically pick a primary revenue stream: residential service calls (short, reactive, customer-billed), residential project work (water heater installs, repipes, bathroom remodels), commercial service (route accounts, recurring inspections), or small commercial construction (tenant fit-outs, small retrofits, multi-family service). Each stream has different unit economics and tempo.
Residential service calls produce the highest billed hourly rate ($150 to $250 per call in major metros) and the highest ticket volume per day (3 to 6 calls per day typical for a focused service operator). The trade-off is marketing intensity (customer acquisition through PPC, Yelp, Google Local Service Ads is expensive, often 10 to 14 percent of revenue) and customer-handling intensity (service customers are typically having a bad day). This stream is the highest-revenue path for a solo operator who can sustain the marketing investment.
Residential project work (water heater install at $1,800 to $3,500, bathroom rough-in at $4,000 to $9,000, repipe at $8,000 to $18,000) produces fewer transactions but higher gross per transaction. Marketing is lower (project work often comes through referrals and contractor relationships). The hours-per-job are higher, which makes utilization easier to manage. This stream is the most lifestyle-friendly path for a solo operator who values predictable schedule.
Commercial service through long-term route accounts (small office buildings, restaurants, retail stores, multi-family buildings) produces the most stable revenue and the least marketing intensity. Hourly billed rates are typically lower than residential service ($100 to $150 per hour) because the accounts are negotiated annually, but the predictability is high. This stream is the most stable path; it does not have residential service ceiling but does not have residential service variance.
Most successful solo operators do one stream primarily and pick up other-stream work opportunistically. Trying to do all four streams from one truck typically reduces utilization (more drive time, more tool changes between project types) and reduces income.
Section 04
The One-Truck Wall
The solo master plumber business is constrained by the physical capacity of one human operator. Once the operator is running at 65 percent utilization with $300K to $400K gross revenue, the only way to grow revenue meaningfully is to add a second truck and a second tech. This transition is the largest decision in the solo-plumber business arc and the reason many operators stay solo permanently.
Adding the second truck has predictable consequences. Overhead jumps: the second truck adds $20K to $30K in vehicle costs, the second tech adds $60K to $90K in burdened labour, the marketing budget needs to grow to feed two trucks of capacity ($35K to $55K combined), and the operator typically needs to add dispatch software and possibly a first part-time admin hire ($15K to $25K). Revenue from the second truck takes 6 to 18 months to ramp because the new tech needs training and the customer base has to grow.
The bridge year often sees take-home drop by $20K to $50K compared to the solo year, as the additional overhead arrives faster than the additional revenue. Operators who do not have personal financial runway to absorb the bridge year frequently abort the transition and return to solo operation, with the second tech laid off or the truck sold. The transition succeeds when the operator has 6 to 12 months of personal cash runway, a strong customer pipeline that can absorb the additional capacity, and the management skills to bring the second tech up to billable productivity quickly.
By year 3 after the second-truck addition, take-home typically exceeds the solo plateau by $15K to $50K. By year 5 with a 3-truck crew, take-home reaches the small-crew tier described on the plumbing contractor salary page. The path is real but the bridge year is the critical filter; many operators look at the math and choose to stay solo permanently with income in the $100K to $150K range and minimal management overhead.