Guide
Steel, copper, and aluminum prices have been moving fast in 2026. Here's how to quote without eating the difference.
If you've quoted a job in the last few months and then watched your supplier's price sheet change before you even bought the materials, you're not imagining it. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper pushed input costs up sharply heading into 2026, and several trade press outlets reported construction material prices rising at the fastest pace in years. For contractors, that means the gap between "what I quoted" and "what it actually costs me" has gotten wider and less predictable.
This isn't a tax or legal question, so nothing here is that kind of advice — it's about how you structure a quote so a supplier price jump doesn't turn a profitable job into a loss.
Prices always drift a little year over year, and most contractors build a small cushion into their markup for that. What's different now is the speed and size of the moves on specific materials — copper wire, steel fittings and studs, aluminum flashing, ductwork and siding have all seen price swings that can run well into double digits over a matter of months, not years. A 5% cushion built for normal inflation doesn't cover a 15-20% jump on a material-heavy line item.
The trades most exposed right now are the ones with steel, copper, or aluminum as a large share of the job cost: electrical (copper wire and conduit), HVAC (ductwork, refrigerant lines, condensers), and any remodeling or fencing work with steel or aluminum framing. If your jobs are mostly labor with cheap consumables, this matters less to you — but it's worth checking your own numbers rather than assuming.
The single biggest fix is to stop bundling materials and labor into one number. When they're combined, any material cost swing forces you to either eat it or renegotiate the whole job. When they're separate, you can hold your labor rate firm and let only the material line move.
Example: a $4,200 quote for an electrical panel upgrade might break down as $1,600 labor + $2,600 materials. If copper costs jump 12% between quoting and buying, that's about $310 extra on materials — manageable and easy to explain — instead of a vague "the job cost more than we thought."
Run your own numbers through a markup vs. margin calculator before you finalize a price, so you know exactly what cushion you're actually carrying on the materials line versus the labor line. Most contractors are surprised how thin the material margin really is once they separate it out.
An escalation clause just says: if your supplier's price on a named material moves more than X% between the quote date and the purchase date, you'll adjust that line item accordingly, with receipts to back it up. It doesn't need to be complicated or read like a legal contract — a few plain sentences work fine for most residential and small commercial jobs. For anything with unusual dollar amounts or a commercial client with their own procurement process, it's worth having your standard wording checked by a local attorney once, then reusing it.
Typical wording: "Prices for [materials] are based on current supplier pricing as of [date]. If supplier cost increases more than 5% before materials are purchased, we will notify you and adjust the materials line accordingly, with documentation."
Set the trigger threshold based on what you're actually seeing from your suppliers — 5% is a reasonable starting point for steel and aluminum right now, but check your last two or three invoices on the specific material before picking a number. If a customer pushes back, most people accept this more easily than a flat price increase after the fact, because it's tied to something outside your control and documented with receipts.
A 30-day quote validity window made sense when prices moved slowly. On volatile materials, that's now enough time for a supplier price change to happen mid-quote. Many contractors are shortening validity to 10-15 days on jobs where copper, steel, or aluminum make up a meaningful share of cost, and keeping 30 days only for labor-heavy jobs with cheap materials.
Print the expiration date directly on the quote. It's a small thing, but it gives you a clean, non-confrontational reason to re-quote if a customer sits on a proposal for three weeks and then wants to sign it at the old price.
Before you send a quote on a material-heavy job, run it through a job profitability calculator with your current supplier pricing, not last quarter's. It takes a few minutes and catches the jobs where your normal markup percentage isn't actually covering the dollar risk on materials. A 20% markup on a $500 material line is very different from a 20% markup on a $5,000 line when that material can move 15% before you buy it.
If keeping price sheets and escalation language updated across every quote feels like one more thing eating your evenings, that kind of repetitive quoting admin is exactly what we help contractors offload — see what we handle for busy trades businesses. And if you want ready-made price list and quote templates to start from, the Operations Kit ($19) has editable versions you can adapt.
Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper pushed those raw material costs up sharply through early 2026, and construction input prices overall rose at their fastest pace in several years. Copper wire, steel fittings, aluminum flashing and ductwork, and anything with those metals in it has gotten less predictable to price, sometimes changing between when you quote a job and when you buy the materials for it.
Yes, especially on jobs with a lot of copper, steel, or aluminum, or any job where more than a few weeks pass between quoting and buying materials. A simple clause that lets you re-price materials if your supplier cost moves more than a set percentage protects your margin without scaring off most customers, as long as you explain it plainly.
Many contractors are shortening quote validity from 30 days to 10 to 15 days on jobs with volatile materials, or pricing materials separately from labor so only the material line needs updating if costs move before the job starts. Check your own supplier's recent price movement before setting a number — it varies a lot by trade and material.