Plumbing Contractor Salary 2026:
$80,000 to $250,000+ Take-Home
Updated 18 May 2026 | Sources: PHCC contractor surveys | SBA small business benchmarks | IBISWorld plumbing industry data
Plumbing contractor take-home is not a single number. It scales with crew size on a curve that flattens then re-steepens as the business clears each operational threshold. The honest answer to "what does a plumbing contractor make?" is "what crew size, what specialty, and how disciplined is the operator." Below is the breakdown.
Solo Take-Home
$80K to $145K
Small Crew (3)
$110K to $190K
Mid Crew (8)
$140K to $260K
Large Crew (20+)
$220K to $550K
Section 01
Take-Home by Crew Size
Owner take-home is not linear with crew size; there are operational plateaus where adding people hurts before it helps. The plateaus typically sit at: solo to 2 trucks (adding the second tech doubles labour overhead before adding equal revenue), 3 to 5 trucks (needs first dedicated dispatcher), 8 to 10 trucks (owner must come off the truck), and 15 to 20 trucks (needs first general manager). Below are the operating plateaus as steady-state economics.
| Crew Tier | Annual Revenue | Total Overhead | Owner Take-Home | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo (1 truck) | $240,000 to $420,000 | $130,000 to $215,000 | $80,000 to $145,000 | Owner-operator runs the truck full time; minimal office overhead |
| Small Crew (3 trucks) | $720,000 to $1.3M | $520,000 to $890,000 | $110,000 to $190,000 | Owner splits truck time with admin; first dedicated office hire |
| Mid Crew (8 trucks) | $2.0M to $3.6M | $1.6M to $2.7M | $140,000 to $260,000 | Owner moves off the truck; service manager + dispatcher + bookkeeper |
| Large Crew (20+ trucks) | $5.5M to $12M | $4.5M to $9.5M | $220,000 to $550,000 | Owner runs the business as a business; full management team |
Take-home includes owner W-2 salary plus S-corp distributions. Excludes the owner's own retirement plan contributions (typically maxed out at the SEP IRA or solo 401(k) limit). Excludes one-time capital events (sale of business, equipment refresh, real estate).
Section 02
Where the Money Leaks
The owner take-home is what is left after all the cost lines. Below is the typical cost breakdown for a small-to-mid plumbing contractor as a percentage of gross revenue. Numbers vary by specialty (residential service is high-marketing, commercial new is low-marketing high-labour) but the rank order of cost lines is stable.
| Cost Line | % of Revenue | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Labor (technicians + benefits) | 30 to 38% | Burdened cost including payroll tax, workers comp, benefits |
| Vehicle (lease + fuel + maintenance) | 5 to 9% | Each truck loaded with parts inventory and tools is $40K to $80K capex |
| Parts and Materials (cost) | 20 to 28% | Higher on install-heavy work, lower on service-heavy |
| Insurance (GL, workers comp, vehicle, umbrella) | 3 to 6% | Workers comp is the dominant line at scale; high-loss trade |
| Marketing and Lead Gen | 6 to 14% | PPC, SEO, Yelp, Google Local Service Ads; high for residential service |
| Office and Admin (rent, software, dispatch) | 3 to 7% | Lower for solo; rises with crew size |
| Owner Compensation (W-2 + distributions) | 8 to 18% | What this page is about; range is wide because everything else flexes |
Cost percentages sum to roughly 100 percent because they are expressed against the same revenue base. Owner take-home is the residual after the other lines. PHCC's biennial contractor benchmark survey provides comparable data for member firms.
Section 03
The 5 to 10 Year Arc to Contractor
The plumber-to-contractor career arc has a fairly stable structure across the trade. Years 1 to 5 are apprenticeship, building base craft. Years 5 to 7 are journeyman work in a specialty (service, new commercial, repipe, etc) where the future contractor builds the technical depth that will let them estimate and bid work as a business owner. Year 8 to 10 is the master plumber exam, then either the contractor exam in the same window or shortly after.
The actual business launch typically happens after another 1 to 2 years of W-2 master work, during which the future contractor saves startup capital (typically $30,000 to $80,000), builds a personal customer book (the existing employer's customers are off-limits but adjacent referrals are not), and selects a specialty. Most successful contractors launch with a clear specialty rather than as a general contractor: residential service, commercial new construction, multi-family repipe, backflow specialty, or hospital / institutional service.
Year-one solo contractor income is typically lower than the W-2 master plumber salary the contractor left. The trade-off is the equity build: every truck, tool, customer relationship, and brand investment is owned by the contractor and contributes to enterprise value on eventual sale. Year-two and year-three solo contractor income typically catches up with or exceeds the W-2 master salary, with significant additional upside from S-corp distributions.
The transition from solo to crew (adding the second truck) is the largest single decision in the contractor career arc. Adding a second tech doubles labour overhead but does not double revenue immediately (the second tech needs ramp-up time and dispatch infrastructure). The bridge year typically sees lower owner take-home than solo year. By year three after the hire, if the business is well-run, take-home recovers and starts to exceed the solo plateau. By the time the business is at 5 to 8 trucks, the owner is typically off the truck full-time and running the business as a business rather than as a tradesperson with help.
Section 04
The Specialty Decision
Plumbing contractor economics vary meaningfully by specialty, and most successful operators pick one and stick to it. The four most common specialties: residential service, commercial new construction, multi-family residential service plus repipe, and institutional service (hospitals, universities, government).
Residential service is the highest-marketing-cost, highest-billing-rate specialty. Customer acquisition is expensive (typically 8 to 14 percent of revenue going to PPC, SEO, Yelp, and Google Local Service Ads) but the billing rates are the highest in the trade ($300 to $700+ per call average with emergency upcharges). The crew structure leans toward many techs in many trucks, with commission or hybrid compensation pulling top techs into upselling. Top-tier residential service contractors hit revenue of $250K to $350K per truck per year, with owner take-home of $180K to $400K at 5+ truck scale.
Commercial new construction is the lowest-marketing-cost specialty. The work comes through general contractors who maintain bidder lists; once established on a few GC's lists, the contractor flows from job to job through bid-and-award without consumer-side marketing. Billing rates are competitively bid (often through bid-day reverse auctions), so per-hour gross margins are lower than residential service. The trade-off is project scale: a single commercial project can be $200K to $5M of revenue, and the per-truck revenue is higher because the techs are on bigger jobs with less drive time. Owner take-home at scale is comparable to residential service but the path to scale runs differently.
Multi-family residential is a hybrid: GCs award the new-construction work, but the contractor often retains ongoing service contracts on the buildings post-handover. Repipe specialty (the polybutylene repipe market in the South, the cast-iron drain replacement market in the Midwest) carries the highest per-job margins of the residential-adjacent specialties.
Institutional service (hospitals, universities, government) is the lowest-marketing-cost, lowest-billing-rate, highest-stability specialty. The work comes through long-term service contracts with predictable billing. Margins are tight but the bidding process is rigorous and the customer relationships, once won, last decades. Owner take-home in institutional specialty plumbing typically tops out lower than residential service at peak crew size but is more recession-resistant.