Equipment Cost Per Hour Calculator

Your machine costs you money every hour it runs, even when no one is looking. The equipment cost per operating hour adds up what the machine loses in value (depreciation) plus what it burns through (fuel, lubricants, maintenance, and any loan payment), then divides by the hours you actually run it. Add this number to your labor rate so every bid recovers the true cost of the iron.

depreciation/hr = (purchasePrice − salvageValue) / lifeHours   (straight-line)
fuel/hr         = fuelBurn × fuelPrice                          ($/gal × gal/hr)
lubricant/hr    = fuel/hr × lubricantPct                        (optional; FAO 5–10%)
maintenance/hr  = annualMaintenance / annualHours
finance/hr      = (monthlyPayment × 12) / annualHours           (optional)

total/hr        = depreciation + fuel + lubricant + maintenance + finance

per week        = total/hr × weekly hours    (annualHours ÷ 50 unless set)
per year        = total/hr × annualHours

Why straight-line. Straight-line depreciation spreads the machine's loss in value evenly across its useful life in hours. It is the standard for small lawn and field-service equipment and the easiest to explain to a customer. Declining-balance (where a machine loses 40–50% of its value in the first quarter of life, per FAO) is more accurate but harder to explain — it is a documented caveat, not a mode here.

Editable defaults. Picking an equipment type pre-fills typical figures, but fuel price, life-hours, maintenance, and salvage all drift and vary widely — treat every default as a starting point and paste your own numbers. Salvage defaults to $0 (conservative); the FAO 10–20% band midpoint of 15% is offered as a one-tap quick-fill.

This is a pricing estimate, not a tax-depreciation schedule — IRS MACRS differs and is out of scope — and it stores nothing: no saved asset register, hour-meter feed, or maintenance schedule. It is a one-off worksheet built from the numbers you enter now.

Sources: FAO machine-rate manual (straight-line depreciation, salvage 10–20%, lubricants 5–10% of fuel); Sourcetable's cost-per-hour formula and $75/hr worked example; GUS equipment cost calculator (lawn-operator input set + itemized breakdown).