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Trade Playbook
Nobody warns new GCs that the building is the easy part. The threads that blow up on r/Contractor aren't about framing — they're about a customer who won't pay the final draw, a sub who didn't show, and a "quick" reno that grew 40%. General contracting is a business that happens to involve construction, and it's won or lost on clients, cash flow, and getting paid.
Where it starts
Trade wages
Trade / labourer background
Where it tops out
$150k–400k+
Established GC (crews, multiple jobs)
Ontario figures for general contracting, from the first day on site to the top of the trade. Approximate, and worth checking against current collective agreement rates and job postings in your region.
| Stage | Pay | What is going on at this stage |
|---|---|---|
| Trade / labourer background | Trade wages | Almost every GC came up through the tools or the site first. |
| Site supervisor / PM (employed) | $70k–110k | Running other people's projects — the apprenticeship for ownership. |
| Small GC owner (you + subs) | $80k–150k | Volatile: a busy year and a bad year look nothing alike, and you eat the risk. |
| Established GC (crews, multiple jobs) | $150k–400k+ | Now you run a company. The income is profit, not salary. |
Every figure above is what general contractors get paid. It is not what you charge once you run a general contracting business. Your rate has to carry the hours you are not on the tools, the truck, the tools themselves, WSIB, insurance, the quote you wrote and lost, and the holdback sitting in someone else's account for 60 days. Contractors who set their rate off their old hourly wage are the ones who work every weekend and still cannot say whether the year was profitable.
The step from paid by the hour to paid by the jobThe endgame is one of three: scale (build a company that runs without you swinging a hammer), develop (stop building for others and become the developer/landowner), or sell. A GC with systems, a backlog, a brand, and a team is a sellable asset; a GC who IS the business has a job, not an asset — the difference is whether it runs when you're not there.
Wage data, union rate sheets, and the places general contractors talk about money openly.
The rates above are the market. The live feed is the market this week: which builders and contractors just pulled a permit or won a contract in Ontario, what they are about to need, and who to call.
Carpenter Jobs in Ontario: Who Is Hiring Right NowAEC Stack handles incorporation, WSIB, insurance certificates, quoting, invoicing, and chasing the money, so a general contracting business runs like one with an office behind it.
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