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‘She’ll be right’ is going to cost you everything
Why rising costs are hitting harder than most tradies realise.
Let’s look at some real numbers. Diesel at the pump: $1.88 per litre in January 2026 vs $3.51 per litre in April 2026. That’s $130 more every fill. On an 80-litre tank, with only one fill a week, that’s $6,780 a year extra. Just in diesel. Just one vehicle.
You either recover that cost, or you eat it. And most tradies right now are eating it. Not because they don’t know costs are up, but because they’ve bumped their mileage rate a little, felt like they’ve dealt with it, and then just gone back to swinging the hammer.
Increasing what you charge for mileage isn’t the full fix. It’s just one hole in a bucket that’s leaking everywhere. I’ve been coaching tradies across NZ for 15 years. And right now, pricing is the single biggest issue I’m seeing.
Most tradies are undercharging, and it’s getting worse
Most tradies were already undercharging before any of this started. For example, one of my clients back-costed an ongoing service contract (200 sites) and found they were losing money, and that’s before the latest cost spikes hit. They had a conversation with the customer to increase the price and got agreement.
The hard part wasn’t the conversation. It was realising how long they’d been in the dark. Here’s what most tradies haven’t fully clocked yet. The worst of this hasn’t hit yet, and by the time most feel it, it’ll be too late to react.
We see fuel prices going up. What’s not visible yet is how much it’s going to push up manufacturing costs, freight, and the price of materials sitting on your supplier’s shelves.
Those increases are already working their way through to your quotes, whether you can see them or not. We’re not going back to January prices, or even last month’s. The question is whether your pricing reflects the world you’re operating in today or the one from a month ago.
Old quotes are bleeding you dry
Bumping your mileage rate is one thing. But if your quote terms haven’t changed, that extra mileage charge won’t save you.
Here’s the scary thing: You could quote a job today, the client sits on it for 3 weeks, comes back and says yes. Now you’re locked into a price based on material costs that no longer exist. Not good. It’s not bad luck. It’s a problem with how most tradies are quoting right now.
The fix isn’t complicated, but it needs to happen this week. Shorten your quote acceptance time to 7 days or less. Add a clause stating quotes are subject to material cost increases (your clients are seeing this everywhere, they won’t be surprised).
Check live supplier pricing before every quote, not from memory, not last month’s invoice. Five minutes of checking can save you thousands.
And yes, get deposits. When a client commits with a deposit, you can lock in your supply costs immediately. It also gets rid of tyre-kickers before they chew up your time.
And if you’re a subbie with work already booked that was priced before the recent spikes, have the conversation with your builder now and renegotiate. Show them your numbers. The tradies I work with who have put their prices up? They were very surprised by how little pushback they got.
Know when to walk away
Not all work is good work right now. A full calendar feels like safety. It isn’t. If the margin isn’t there, the travel is too far, or the client is known to be slow to pay, that job is costing you a better one.
One of my builder clients walked away from a house build last month. On paper, it looked fine. But it was an hour’s drive. When we costed the travel properly, it didn’t stack up. He committed to closer work instead and protected his margin.
Being selective isn’t turning work away. It’s how you stay profitable while others quietly go backwards.
Think about your job mix, too. Go after work that’s always available, regardless of what the economy does, like essential services, emergency work, and the high-end clients that always have money to pay for the quality you provide.
The other stuff that’s quietly working against you
Pricing is the most urgent fix. But the tradies who come out ahead will have tightened up across the board.
Small inefficiencies now cost real money
An extra run to the supplier, a job not fully loaded before leaving the yard, poor trip planning, these used to be annoying. Now they come straight off your bottom line. Cluster your jobs by area. Use systems and checklists for your team. Consolidate supplier orders. Run lean.
Cash flow is about to get harder
As the cost of living rises, clients will be slower to pay. Invoice as soon as you possibly can. Watch overdue payments closely and follow up immediately.
Remember, you can be making money on paper and still go under... we’ve all seen it happen. Your cash can disappear fast, we’ve all been there: it’s sitting in bad debts, tied up in late payers who know you’ll wait, you didn’t take deposits or progress payments you should have, maybe took too much in drawings or purchased a Ute you couldn’t really afford.
But get too far behind with suppliers and they put you on stop credit. Run out of cash mid-job and you can’t buy materials to finish it, can’t pay your team, can’t pay your debts. The job was profitable. Didn’t matter.
Look at your cashflow forecast weekly; this is vital. Build a cash buffer so that when a rough month comes along (as they always do), you’ve got room to breathe.
Know your break-even
What does a week of work need to look like before you start actually making money; after wages, direct costs, and overheads? If you can’t answer that quickly, you’re in the dark on the most important number in your business. This is the number that tells you whether you’re getting ahead or just plodding along.
If you don’t know your margin on the last 3 jobs (actual margin, not roughly), then you’re not tracking your numbers enough. You’re hoping it works out. And hope doesn’t pay wages on Tuesday.
Back-cost your jobs
It isn’t sexy, no one’s going to argue with you there. But you can’t fix what you can’t see. And most tradies don’t definitively know which jobs are actually making them money and which ones went south.
Don’t rely on one source of work
The tradies who are out there consistently visible, building their reputation, not just waiting for the phone to ring, will have options when things tighten. Word of mouth is great. But it’s one source.
If that dries up, or that big job you’re counting on doesn’t go ahead, or that big client stops giving you work, there’s nothing in the pipeline. Start building other sources now, while there’s still time. Some areas are already reporting that things are getting quiet.
The ones who act now will be the ones who win
This isn’t something to ride out. Costs are rising, the market is shifting, and the tradies running on feel and habit without systems, without knowing their numbers, without being able to see where they’re winning and losing, are the ones who’ll feel it hardest.
The good news is there’s still time to get in front of it. The tradies who step back and invest a few hours in good strategy, get the right structure and systems in place, and start keeping proper tabs on the numbers are the ones who’ll look back on this period and say that’s when things really changed for the better.
That move is one most tradies know they need to make. The ones who make it now, in this market, will be well ahead of the ones who wait until the pressure forces them to. The decisions you make in the next 90 days will determine which side of that you’re on.
If you’re running a tradie business between $500k and $5 million, and you’re not fully confident in your pricing, your margins and that your cash flow can handle what’s coming? That’s exactly who I work with.
Let’s have a conversation before the gap between where you are and where you need to be gets any wider.
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Written by Daniel Fitzpatrick
Business Coach, Next Level Tradie
Published in WIRED issue 81/June 2026 by Fencing Contractors Association NZ
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