What it costs, and how we got there

The short version

Price equals work-loaded crew hours × billing rate. The hours come from counting your building — that method is set out in full here. The rate is $33–$38 an hour for 2026, and the rest of this page is where that band came from.

Why nobody can honestly publish a dealership price per square foot

We looked hard for one. Here is what actually exists in the public record.

The only real dealership cleaning contract we could find published anywhere is an advice column from March 2015: a 27,000 square foot two-building store, cleaned six nights a week, at $6,300 a month. The contractor states the bid was accepted and that they had been cleaning it for a year. That is roughly 23 cents per square foot per month — in 2015, on that building, at that frequency.

One contract. One unnamed market. Eleven years ago. We have seen that figure quoted since as though it were a market rate, and it is not one — it is a single data point, and the same column records the dealer later rejecting the same contractor's revised number as too high.

There is no APPA for dealerships. Schools have published service levels and staffing guidelines that let anyone check a bid. This industry has nothing equivalent, and the honest response is to publish the method rather than dress an estimate up as a standard.

Where our hourly rate comes from

Rather than invent one, we anchored on the only published national janitorial billing rate we could find and escalated it properly.

Step	Value
Published national average billing rate, 2015	$26.24/hr
BLS producer price index, janitorial services, nonresidential — March 2015	115.6
Same index, August 2026	158.315
Escalation factor	×1.3695
Escalated rate	$35.94/hr
Band we quote within	$33–$38/hr

The index is BLS series PCU56172056172051. We use the producer price index for the service itself, not general inflation and not a wage index, because the anchor was a selling price and that is what this index measures.

The uncomfortable part, which we will tell you anyway

Over the same period that janitorial prices rose 37%, janitorial wages rose far faster — contract-cleaning wages by around 68%, and general consumer prices by about 42%. Prices in this industry have risen slower than inflation while its main cost rose nearly twice as fast.

That has two consequences you should know about. First, margins here are genuinely thin and getting thinner, which is why a quote that undercuts everyone else is a warning rather than a win. Second, anyone escalating that 2015 figure by a wage index instead of a price index lands well above the market and loses the bid — which is a useful test of whether the person quoting you knows their own industry.

A worked example, end to end

A single-building store, 13,000 square feet in scope, four restrooms, five nights a week.

Line	Value
Night route, all zones	109.4 hrs/month
Periodics, amortised	7.7 hrs/month
Total crew hours	117.1 hrs/month
At $33/hr	$3,863/month
At $38/hr	$4,448/month
Back-calculated, as a check only	$0.297–$0.342/sq ft/month

Note the order. We arrive at dollars per square foot at the end, as a test of our own arithmetic against our history. Start from it and you have assumed the answer.

What moves your number

Factor	Effect
Restroom count	The largest single driver. Restrooms are about a third of the labour
Service bays in scope, and the spec	Swept, scrubbed and degreased are three prices
Frequency	Six nights is not 20% more than five once fixed time per visit is counted
Day porter	Priced on its own hours, at a slightly lower effective rate than a night crew
Number of buildings	Each one carries its own travel, setup and lock-up
Local wage market	Median janitorial pay runs from under $14 to near $22 depending on the state
Term	An autoscrubber has to amortise. On a bigger store, a two or three year term earns a better rate

Two tests to run on every quote you receive, including ours

Divide the price by the hours. If the proposal does not state hours, ask; if the answer is below roughly $22 an hour of revenue, the contractor cannot pay a legal loaded wage plus supplies, supervision, insurance and profit. Something in that bid is not going to happen.

Check the square feet per labour hour. A dealership build should land around 2,000–4,500. Far above it and somebody has priced your restrooms by area.