Why Hourly Carpet Cleaning Pricing Doesn't Work
New carpet cleaners almost always quote hourly. It feels safe — they know what they need to make per hour, multiply by expected hours. But carpet cleaning has a peculiar economic property that breaks hourly pricing:
The drying time is non-negotiable. Hot-water extraction leaves 4-8 hours of drying. During that window, the customer needs the area off-limits and you can't add value by being there. Hourly pricing treats your time as the constraint — drying time treats the machine as the constraint.
The right pricing structure prices the outcome (cleaned and drying carpet, ready to walk on by morning) rather than the input (hours).
