Start With the Correct Question

Do not ask:

"How much does delivery cost?"

Ask:

"How much does it cost my company to pick this order up?"

Once you know that number, comparing pickup with delivery becomes much easier.

What Does a Material Pickup Actually Cost?

A contractor's pickup cost can include several expenses:

• Employee wages
• Payroll-related labor costs
• Drive time
• Truck operating cost
• Fuel
• Loading time
• Unloading time
• Time spent waiting for material
• Lost installation production

Most of these expenses do not appear on a supplier invoice, but they still affect the profitability of the project.

Example: One Employee Makes the Material Run

Let's use a hypothetical example.

A siding crew needs material from a supplier located 25 minutes from the project.

That "quick material run" consumed approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes of an employee's day.

Calculate Your Real Labor Cost

Do not calculate the trip using only the employee's hourly wage.

Contractors should consider their fully burdened labor cost, which may include wages plus employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation, benefits and other employee-related costs.

For illustration, assume that employee costs the company $40 per productive hour.

1.75 hours × $40 = $70 in labor

The company has already spent approximately $70 before accounting for the truck or lost production.

Now Add the Truck

Company vehicles have a real operating cost.

Those costs may include:

• Fuel
• Maintenance
• Tires
• Insurance
• Repairs
• Registration
• Depreciation
• Vehicle payments

The IRS business mileage rate can provide one external reference point for vehicle operating costs, although contractors should calculate their own actual fleet costs whenever possible.

Beginning July 1, 2026, the IRS business standard mileage rate is 76 cents per mile.

If our hypothetical material pickup requires a 30-mile round trip, using that rate strictly as a comparison benchmark would represent approximately $22.80 of vehicle cost.

What Happens When Two Employees Make the Trip?

This is where material pickups can become particularly expensive.

If two employees spend 1.75 hours retrieving material, the contractor has consumed:

3.5 labor hours.

Using our hypothetical $40-per-hour labor cost:

3.5 hours × $40 = $140

Add approximately $22.80 of vehicle cost from the example above and the trip has a direct estimated cost of:

$162.80

Again, that does not include the value of the installation production the company lost.

Lost Production May Matter More Than Payroll

This is the number contractors should pay close attention to.

Your installers are valuable because they turn material into completed projects.

During those 1.75 hours, could the crew have:

• Finished another wall?
• Wrapped additional windows?
• Completed the soffit?
• Installed another section of fascia?
• Finished the project that afternoon?
• Moved to the next project a day earlier?

A skilled installer's productive hour may create substantially more value than the wage paid for that hour.

When Does Delivery Clearly Make Sense?

Every contractor's numbers will be different, but jobsite delivery deserves serious consideration when:

• The supplier is a significant distance from the jobsite.
• Two employees would otherwise make the material run.
• Your crew is already onsite and producing.
• The order is large or time-consuming to load.
• Your installation schedule is full.
• The delivery fee is lower than the realistic labor and vehicle cost of pickup.
• Your truck or trailer does not efficiently accommodate the material.
• Pickup would delay project completion.
• Your highly skilled employees would be used as delivery drivers.

The busier your company becomes, the more valuable productive installation hours can become.

When Might Pickup Still Make Sense?

Jobsite delivery is not automatically the best choice for every order.

Picking up material may make sense when:

• The supplier is directly on your route to the project.
• The order is very small.
• You need an unexpected item immediately.
• An employee is already traveling near the supplier.
• Pickup does not remove productive employees from the jobsite.
• The delivery timing does not fit the project schedule.

The goal is not "always deliver." The goal is to make the decision based on cost and productivity instead of habit.

What If You Save Just Three Hours Per Week?

Small improvements become meaningful over an entire year.

Suppose better delivery planning saves your company only three labor hours each week.

Over 50 working weeks:

3 hours × 50 weeks = 150 labor hours

That is nearly four 40-hour workweeks of employee time.

What could your company produce with another 150 productive labor hours?

Delivery Can Also Reduce Double Handling

There is another benefit contractors sometimes overlook.

Consider the difference between:

1. Loading material at the supplier.
2. Driving it to your shop.
3. Unloading it.
4. Loading it again the next morning.
5. Driving it to the project.
6. Unloading it again.

versus:

Supplier → Jobsite → Installation

Reducing unnecessary material handling can save time and may also reduce opportunities for products to be damaged during repeated loading and unloading.

Delivery Requires Planning

Jobsite delivery works best when contractors communicate with the supplier before the crew needs the material.

Provide:

• Accurate project address
• Desired delivery date
• Site contact
• Material list
• Special access information
• Preferred material placement when practical
• Any unusual site conditions

Better communication between contractor and supplier makes it easier to coordinate deliveries with the production schedule.

Jobsite Delivery and Just-in-Time Material Planning

The ideal situation is not necessarily putting every piece of material on every project weeks before installation begins.

Construction logistics increasingly focuses on coordinating material availability with the actual production schedule.

When properly planned, delivering materials closer to when they will be installed can help reduce unnecessary handling, storage and interruptions while keeping crews supplied.

Your distributor becomes part of that production system.

Your Supplier's Truck May Be Cheaper Than Your Installer's Truck

Think about what each person in the system is supposed to do.

A delivery driver's job is to deliver material.

Your siding installer's job is to install siding.

When you send skilled installers to retrieve material, you are using expensive production labor to perform a logistics function.

Keeping the right people doing the right work is one of the simplest principles of productivity.

Track Material Runs for 30 Days

Want to know whether jobsite delivery would make financial sense for your company?

Do not guess.

Track every supply run for one month.

Write down:

• Who went
• Why they went
• How long they were gone
• How many miles they drove
• What they picked up
• Whether delivery could have prevented the trip
• Whether better estimating could have prevented the trip

Multiply those trips across an entire year and you may discover that material logistics is costing your business considerably more than you expected.