Plumber.Emergency intake to invoice, in one thread.

Plumbing is one of the few trades where independence pays better than the bigger shop almost immediately. A solo journeyman with a service truck can clear $160,000 to $290,000 in their second year, against a payroll number of $85,000–$135,000 at most union and non-union shops. The math is brutal — and it's why so many good plumbers leave their employer at the five-year mark. If you're planning the jump, here's the actual ladder.

Step 1: Your license, your bond, your insurance

Every state licenses plumbers. The tier you need to operate independently is Master Plumber in most states; Journeyman in a handful. The exam is hard — average pass rate sits around 55–65% — and the experience requirement is typically 4,000–8,000 documented hours under a master. Bond and insurance: $25,000 surety bond is typical, plus general liability ($1M/$2M) and commercial auto. Budget $4,800–$8,500 a year for all insurance lines.

Step 2: The truck and the tools

A residential service plumber needs a 3/4-ton or 1-ton van with enough room for a drain machine, a press tool, a torch kit, and 800–1,200 pieces of inventory. Budget:

• Used cargo van (Ford Transit, Mercedes Sprinter) under 90K miles: $24,000–$38,000
• Shelving and bin organization: $2,800–$5,500
• Drain machine (RIDGID K-400 or K-750): $1,400–$3,800
• Press tool (Milwaukee M12 or RIDGID RP 241): $850–$1,400
• Camera (RIDGID SeeSnake): $1,800–$3,200
• Hand tools, torch kit, basin wrench, channel locks: $1,200–$2,400
• Starting inventory (PVC, copper, PEX fittings, valves, faucets, supply lines): $3,500–$6,000

Realistic all-in: $36,000 to $58,000 used, $75,000 to $100,000 new. Used wins every time in year one.

Step 3: Filling the calendar

Plumbing leads break into two groups: emergency (someone's leaking right now) and scheduled (water heater, fixture install, repipe). Emergency leads pay better and close faster but are hostage to your phone. Scheduled leads need to be booked in advance and require some web presence. The smart split for a new shop is 60/40 emergency/scheduled in year one, drifting to 30/70 by year three as your customer book grows.

Channels: Google Local Services Ads for emergency calls (work, but expensive — $80–$180 per lead). Google Business Profile with 30+ reviews for organic search (free, takes 90 days to rank). One realtor partnership for inspection-failure repairs ($40 per referral). HomeAdvisor and Angi are tempting but the lead quality has dropped sharply since 2023 — skip them in year one.

Step 4: What to charge

Diagnostic / service call: $79–$149 depending on metro and time of day. Hourly labor: $135–$215. Common job pricing: water heater replacement (50-gal gas) $1,400–$2,800; main line replacement $4,500–$12,000; kitchen faucet install $185–$385. Don't underprice — emergency premium is real and customers expect to pay it.

The 12-week launch plan

1. Weeks 1–3: LLC, master plumber license application or transfer, bond, insurance.
2. Weeks 4–6: Source the truck, build out the bin system, stock starting inventory.
3. Weeks 7–9: Set up dispatch software, build Google Business Profile, launch Local Services Ads.
4. Weeks 10–12: Soft open at 70% pricing for the first 15 jobs in exchange for reviews. Full pricing from week 13.

Our Plumber Toolkit packages the on-truck paperwork — emergency intake decision tree, hourly + parts estimate calculator, permit and inspection tracker, and recurring-customer reactivation flow — so you can launch without building any of it.

The economics of a plumbing service truck are decided by triage. Drive to the wrong call and you've burned 90 minutes and $50 of fuel for a $79 diagnostic fee. Drive to the right one and the same 90 minutes turns into an $1,800 ticket. The difference is not luck. It's the four-question script you run on every inbound call before you commit a truck.

The four-question script

1. Is water currently leaking right now? (Yes → emergency tier; No → standard scheduling)
2. Is the leak from a fixture, a wall/ceiling, or under the slab? (Wall/ceiling/slab → higher-ticket call; fixture → standard repair)
3. Is the water main shut off? (No → coach them to shut it off while we dispatch; Yes → schedule a triage window)
4. What's been done so far — any DIY repair attempted, any other plumber out? (Failed DIY → premium pricing; failed competitor → ask why and quote accordingly)

How to price each tier

True emergency (water actively flowing, no main shutoff possible): drop everything, premium rate ($299–$499 diagnostic, $245+ per hour). Urgent (water shut off, but unusable plumbing): same-day window, standard rate plus 20% urgency. Standard (working plumbing, scheduled service): standard rate, booked in normal calendar. The triage script lets you price by urgency — not by guess.

The dispatch decision tree

After the script, the dispatcher routes the call. Emergency → nearest tech, drop current low-priority job, dispatch within 60 minutes. Urgent → same day, after current scheduled job. Standard → next available slot. Most one-truck shops don't have a dispatcher — they ARE the dispatcher. The script becomes the discipline.

What this fixes in dollars

A single truck doing 6 calls a day, with a 25% mis-triaged rate, loses roughly $400–$700 a day to dispatch errors — wrong-tech-for-the-job, wrong urgency pricing, wrong sequence. That's $96,000–$170,000 a year in unrealized revenue for the same labor cost. Implementing the four-question script typically recovers 70–80% of that gap inside 60 days.

The emergency intake decision tree, the urgency-tier pricing sheet, and the dispatcher script are all in our Plumber Toolkit, formatted for the front office, the spouse who answers the phone, or the answering service that takes calls at night.

Permits are where small plumbing shops bleed time. A water heater install needs a plumbing permit pulled the same day; a rough-in for a remodel needs a permit before any work; both need an inspection sign-off before the customer's final payment clears. Drift on any of those, and you have a job sitting at 90% complete with a customer who can't move in and a final invoice you can't send. Over a year, this drift costs the typical residential plumbing shop 8 to 14 working days.

The lightweight tracker

A spreadsheet, not a software product. Columns: job ID, customer, permit-required (Y/N), permit pulled date, permit number, rough-in inspection scheduled, rough-in passed, final inspection scheduled, final passed, customer paid in full. Color-code the rows: green if all clear, yellow if one item is pending, red if two or more. Update at the end of every day. Total time investment: 10 minutes a day.

The three rules that make it work

1. Permit pulled before the truck leaves on day one. No exceptions. The drive-up cost of pulling later is always higher than the inconvenience of pulling first.
2. Rough-in inspection scheduled the day after rough-in finishes. The inspector's calendar runs 3–7 days out — book before you need it.
3. Final inspection scheduled before the final wall closes. Same logic. Inspectors hate inspecting work that's been buried.

Why software isn't worth it for under three trucks

ServiceTitan, FieldEdge, Workiz — all of them have permit tracking. They also start at $300–$600 per truck per month. For a one- or two-truck shop, the spreadsheet plus 10 minutes a day is a 95% solution at zero cost. Wait until truck three before you pay the software bill.

Our Plumber Toolkit includes the permit-and-inspection tracker spreadsheet pre-formatted with formulas, plus a one-page checklist for the truck — everything to run this discipline tomorrow.