I once overheard my lovely bride responding to this question with – if you make the building large enough, short enough, take off the walls, doors, and roof insulation – it is almost free!
While it doesn’t quite work this simply, she does have a point. Pole buildings come with an inherent economy of scale. Up to a certain point the more square footage a building covers, the less costly it is per square foot.
The majority of pole barns are constructed in areas where roof snow loads are fairly moderate, 30 pounds per square foot or less. With a given set of features, the price per square foot will decrease up to about a 60’ wide clearspan. With length, until a building length approaches three times the width, pole barn prices will decrease as well.
Consider what I will term the basic cost of “mobilization” – or getting things started. Regardless of size, every building requires the same paperwork. Every building requires the drafting department to draft a set of plans. Whether your new pole building has ten boards or ten thousand, it takes no more effort to place orders. Any time a key gets close to the ignition of a truck, the dollar signs start to turn and the truck really could care less about whether it has one board, or is loaded to its maximum capacity.
Adding to the building height as well as adding features will also increase the price per square foot. When doing a comparison between two companies, the same size building, can have drastic differences in costs: does it have only a single sliding door and no other features, or does it have multiple insulated overhead doors with electric openers, commercial steel entry doors with glass, windows, enclosed vented overhangs…the list of options (with costs) goes on and on!
There is nothing more frustrating to me than when a client says, “your building is thousands more than XYZ company’s exact same building.” Invariably, I find out the buildings are NOT “exactly the same”. In over ten years of providing pole buildings through the internet, I have yet to compare two buildings which were even close to the same size and features. Far too often, when I ask for the competitor’s quote, to do a side by side comparison, my client suddenly can’t find the quote or he disappears altogether.
And when I do get the competitor’s quote, I like to do an objective analysis. After all, I do want to be sure I am pricing my buildings fairly, or I won’t be selling too many of them if they are truly “overpriced”. I am quick to point out what things we provide which are a higher grade or size, but I also fairly list the things the competitor offers which are “better” or of a greater value. I give clients the same cost comparison I’d like to have if I were buying a pole building. My Grandpa was a McDowell, so the Scotch blood comes out when I am shopping, both for myself and my clients.
Due to the inaccuracy of square foot pricing, every Hansen Building is priced using our “state of the art” proprietary computer program. Every piece needed for assembly is structurally verified for size, grade, and spacing. These results are then “real time” priced, with today’s actual material costs. You pay for exactly what it takes to construct your pole building, nothing more, nothing less, at today’s market prices. Bring me your competitor’s quote and I will do a cost comparison with a same size/features building – for free. Only then will you be able to make a choice based on knowing exactly what you are buying, and for a fair price.
