All those big ticket items you mentioned are meant to provide shock and awe but when you break them down to their parts: 1 day of their license fee, 1 hour to drive to my residence, 1 day of vehicle cost/insurance, 1 hour driving to a supply house, 1 day of a equipment lease, they might amount to a couple thousand at most to the job itself. There's also a lot of efficiency they can find in them. For example, they stop at the supply shop on the way to the job site and bring the equipment with them on a trailer (3 birds one stone kind of thing). A lot of these things are also just included in the 2 day timeframe I've observed as being sufficient. There's going to be a part of the day where they are sitting in their truck while the lines charge or something like that.
- Trade licensing fees
- Liability insurance
- Medical insurance
- A vehicle to move equipment around
- Vehicle insurance
- Tools to complete the job
- The time taken to drive to your residence
- The time taken for the quote itself
- The expertise required to correctly spec/quote equipment
- The tradesperson driving to the city office
- The tradesperson applying AND paying for a city permit to do the work
- The tradesperson driving to a supply house
- Purchasing the equipment on credit
- Transporting the equipment back to your house
- Ripping out and disposing the old equipment (if applicable)
- The time and expertise to install the equipment correctly
- The time vacuum out the lineset
- The time charge the equipment properly with refrigerant
- The time commission the system and make sure it's running properly
- The tradesperson driving BACK to the customer house to be present for a city inspection