The Honest Math Behind Event Delivery Costs
A producer asked me last week why our delivery line couldn’t just be lower. Fair question. Most companies would dodge it or bury it deeper in the budget. I’d rather do the opposite and show you exactly where every dollar goes.
To our fellow producers, coordinators, and promoters: I’ve always believed in being 100% transparent with you. When you’re building out an event budget, every single line item matters. You need to know exactly where your money is going, which is why I want to pull back the curtain.
If we could snap our fingers and teleport our gear straight to your stage, we’d do it in a heartbeat. The wormhole’s utility bill would probably sting, but it’d still beat running a commercial fleet right now. So here is an honest look at what it actually costs to get our gear into your room.
+30% Capital: The Post-COVID Capital Expense
Let’s start with the trucks themselves. Before COVID, when we were pricing out a standard box truck for our lineup, we were getting quoted in the mid-$60,000s. Today that exact same truck runs in the low $80,000s.
That’s a 30% jump just to get wheels underneath our gear. Truck and parts pricing never came back down, so the baseline cost of simply owning a fleet has permanently shifted.
$5.97 Per Gallon: The Fuel Reality
We all feel it at the pump, but fueling a commercial truck for a heavy haul-in is a different animal. Our trucks run gas, and right now it’s sitting near $5.97 a gallon (which is down from the near $7 a gallon reality a few weeks ago!).
Now picture that truck loaded down with a full kit, pulling single-digit mileage across a job. The price per gallon is only half the story. It’s the price per gallon times a truck that drinks it. That’s the number that actually hits the trip cost.
+200% Premium:The Insurance & COI Hurdle
As producers, you know you can’t load into a reputable venue without a solid Certificate of Insurance. Recently, our long-time commercial carrier made a corporate decision to pull out of the California market entirely. We weren’t shopping around. We were forced to.
When we went looking for new coverage in a brutally tight market, the quotes came back with a 200% premium increase. There was no negotiating it down. To keep our trucks legally on the road, our team protected, and to keep issuing the high-limit COIs your venues require, we had to absorb that fixed cost. It’s the kind of overhead you never see on the invoice but is baked into every show.
+1 hr Buffer: The Time Tax
You know better than anyone that “on time” for a show means early. The gear has to be staged before your crew even walks in. If it’s not there, your whole production schedule slips, and you’re the one explaining the delay to your client.
So here’s the logic we run on every load-in. If the map says 30 minutes, we leave an hour early, minimum. Not because we can’t drive, but because a real load-in never plays fair with trucks. Tight docks, staging rules, street closures, a loading zone that’s blocked when we arrive. Downtown venues and high-end properties are the worst for it. Any one of those eats your cushion fast.
That hour of buffer isn’t padding. It’s insurance on your call time. We’d rather have a driver sitting curbside ready to roll than gambling with your show. And that extra time on the clock, navigating some of the toughest places in the country to move gear through, is time our drivers earn every minute of.
Our Commitment to You
I’m not sharing this to complain. I’m sharing it because you deserve the honest truth behind our pricing. We’re actively absorbing as much of these increases as we can, because we value your business. We refuse to cut corners on safety, on proper coverage, or on the quality of the crew delivering your show.
When you see a delivery line on our estimate, know that it’s a real number, not a padded one. Every dollar of it is doing a job. That’s the trust we’re trying to earn with you.
You’re answering to stakeholders and clients just like we are, and we want to give you the context to do that with confidence. Thank you for your trust and for continuing to collaborate with us to make incredible events happen. See how we produce events, AV, and broadcast.
Let’s crush the next show,
Argus HD · Events / AV · Broadcast