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Equipment Payments

How much does it cost to wrap a trailer?

Work out what wrapping your trailer comes to, from your own shop's numbers rather than a figure we made up. Put in the trailer's dimensions, how much of it you are covering, the shop's film and installation rates, the artwork fee and any old wrap that has to come off. The calculator works out your square footage, adds the job up, and the ledger shows you which lines scale with the area and which ones sit there regardless.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

The length of the box you are covering, not the tongue. The default is ours and editable, and a tape measure beats a guess here.
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This is half of the area calculation and it is the half people estimate badly, because a trailer is usually described by a number that is not its box. A 20 foot enclosed trailer is often sold as a 20, and a 24 foot one may be a 20 foot box with a 4 foot V-nose on the front, which is a different wrappable surface at a different price to fit. Measure the flat side you are actually covering, and if there is a V-nose, decide separately whether it is in the job, because it is fiddly work and a shop will quote it as its own line.
The height of the wrappable wall, measured outside, from the bottom of the skin to the top rail. Ours is a placeholder.
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Measure the skin rather than the trailer. The figure that matters is the panel the vinyl lands on, which usually stops short of the total height of the thing: the wheels, the fenders and the frame rail below the box are not getting wrapped, and the roof is not either on a job like this. Interior height is a different number again and is the one the dealer advertises, so do not borrow it. If the sides are not a clean rectangle, measure the tallest wrappable run and let the coverage box below take the difference back out.
How wide the back is, which is what sets the area of the rear doors. The default is ours and editable.
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The rear is a real part of the job and it is the part with the audience. A trailer spends its working life in front of the vehicle behind it, and that is the panel that gets read at a light, which is why shops will tell you the doors are worth doing even when the budget says sides only. It is also the panel that gets abused: door edges, hinges, latches and the handles all have to be cut around, and vinyl at a cut edge is where a wrap starts to fail, so ask how the shop finishes it.
100 covers both sides and the rear. Drop it for a partial wrap: a lower band, a logo panel, or lettering on an otherwise bare trailer.
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The lever with the widest travel on this page, and the one worth pulling before you shop the rate. A full wrap covers the panel from edge to edge, and coverage below that buys back real money, because the vinyl and the hours both fall with the area. A half wrap, a band along the bottom, or cut lettering and a logo on a painted side are all ordinary jobs that a shop will quote, and the phone number gets read at the same distance either way. This box takes the same percentage off both sides and the rear, so if you are covering one side only, work the percentage out yourself and put that in.
What the shop charges for the printed vinyl and the laminate over it, per square foot. The default is ours, a placeholder, and yours is on your quote.
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Two things to pin down before this number means anything. Cast film and calendered film are not the same product: cast is thinner, more expensive, and conforms to a curve and stays where it is put, while calendered is cheaper and happier on a flat panel, and a trailer's slab sides are a friendlier surface than a van's. And ask whether the laminate is in the rate or beside it, because it is the layer taking the UV and the pressure washer, and it is the difference between a wrap that fades on schedule and one that fades early. Some shops fold both into a single installed rate, which is fine as long as you know that is what you are looking at.
The hands and hours: cleaning, laying the panels, heating, tucking and trimming. Ours is a placeholder. Put zero if your shop quotes one combined installed rate and put the whole thing in the box above.
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This is where the job is won or lost, and it is the line worth paying for rather than shopping. The panels have to be laid clean, overlapped in the right direction so weather runs over a seam rather than into it, heated into every rivet and seam, and trimmed at every edge, and a wrap that lifts does it at an edge someone rushed. The rate also reflects what your trailer is: rivets, seams, vents, lights, a diamond plate front and a wobbly old skin all add hours that a flat new panel does not. Ask to see a trailer they wrapped two years ago, which tells you more about this number than the number does.
Drawing the thing, and setting it up to print at your trailer's exact size. Flat: it does not move with the area. Put a lower figure or zero if you are bringing print-ready artwork.
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The line the page exists to point at. It is charged once, for the artwork, and it does not care how big the trailer is, which is why it lands harder on a small one. It also does not go away just because you have a logo: a logo is not a wrap, and someone still has to lay it out at scale, set the bleed, place the copy where a door hinge will not eat it, and hand the printer a file at the right size. Two things worth asking. Does the fee include revisions and how many, since that is where design quotes drift. And do you own the finished file afterwards, because if you own it, the second trailer, the replacement panel and the shop across town all get cheaper, and if you do not, you are buying it again.
Peeling and de-gluing an existing wrap, and any panel repair before the vinyl goes on. Zero if the trailer is bare and sound, which is our default.
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Also flat, also frequently absent from the rate you were quoted, and occasionally larger than anyone expects. An old wrap that has baked on for years comes off in pieces rather than sheets, and the adhesive behind it has to be taken back to a clean surface, which is hours. Prep is the rest of it: a wash and a de-grease happen on every job, and beyond that, dents, rust, peeling paint and a soft or oxidised panel all want attention first, because vinyl is a skin and not a filler. It follows the surface underneath it faithfully, including the parts you were hoping it would hide.
Estimated cost
$3,216

Typical range $2,673 – $4,031

  • Film and laminate (area × rate)$1,019
  • Installation labour (area × rate)$1,698
  • Artwork and design, one-off$500
  • Removing an old wrap, and prep$0
  • Total$3,216
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$2,000 to $6,000 is the ordinary shape of a full wrap on a working trailer: both sides, the rear doors, artwork drawn for your dimensions, and a bare sound panel to lay it on. Compare this total against your other quotes rather than the headline rates, and use the all-in per square foot the page works out, since that is the comparison that survives two shops pricing their flat lines differently.

What this assumes, and where it could be wrong

Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.

A PER-SQUARE-FOOT RATE IS NOT THE RATE YOU PAY, AND IT MISSES BY MORE ON A SMALL TRAILER.
This is the page. Film and labour scale with the area, so a rate describes them honestly. Artwork and prep do not scale with anything: they are drawn once and peeled once, and they land on a 12 foot trailer exactly as hard as on a 28 foot one. So the finished bill divided by your square footage always comes out above the rate you were quoted, and it comes out further above the smaller your trailer is, because there is less area for the flat lines to spread across. On our defaults the quoted rate is $8 a square foot and the all-in rate is $9.47. Neither shop is hiding anything; the rate is simply answering a narrower question than it looks like. Compare the all-in figure and the two quotes hold still beside each other.
The artwork is bought once, which is the line worth negotiating rather than the rate.
The design fee is flat, so every trailer you put it on afterwards is cheaper than the first, and that changes what the first one is worth arguing about. If there is a second trailer coming, or a van, or a replacement panel after somebody backs into a bollard, then the file you are paying to have drawn is the asset and the vinyl is a consumable. Ask two questions in writing. How many revisions are inside the fee, since design quotes drift there rather than at the start. And do you own the finished artwork afterwards, because a fee that leaves you owning nothing has to be paid again to the next shop, and one that leaves you owning the file has just made every future job a rate conversation instead.
The area is yours to measure, and the trailer's advertised size is not it.
The calculator multiplies your dimensions and takes the coverage percentage off, so the number it draws is only as good as the tape. A trailer sold as a 24 may be a 20 foot box with a V-nose, the advertised height is usually the interior, and the wrappable wall stops above the frame rail rather than at the ground. Measure the flat panel the vinyl actually lands on, outside, and treat the V-nose as its own decision. Getting this wrong moves the two largest lines on the ledger at once, since they are both the area multiplied by a rate.

The band under the total is ours and it is a sensitivity band rather than a survey of shops. It flexes the film and labour lines by our own margin either side and leaves the artwork and prep exactly where they are, because those are the lines that do not move. It is showing you how much of your estimate is exposed to the rate you have not settled yet, which is a different thing from a claim about what trailer wraps cost in your city. We have not surveyed that, this page does not publish it, and the range would be a fabrication if we drew it any other way. When your quote arrives, put its real numbers in and the band narrows to what is genuinely still open.

What a wrap costs to buy is not what it costs to run, and this page prices the buying. A wrap is an advertisement that lives outdoors, so it fades, it meets a pressure washer at close range, it gets a corner lifted on a motorway, and it eventually comes off, which is somebody's labour too. Sun, storage and how it gets washed decide how long yours lasts far more than the film brand does, and a shop that tells you a number for that is telling you about their experience rather than about your trailer. Price the job here, ask the shop what they have seen come back, and keep the artwork file either way.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to wrap a trailer?
It depends on your square footage and on your shop's rates, which is why this page asks you for both rather than printing a figure that would fit nobody's trailer. The area is the part you can settle right now: measure both sides and the rear doors, decide whether you are covering all of it or a band, and the calculator turns that into square feet. The rates are the part the shop settles, and they land in two pieces, the printed film with its laminate and the hours to lay it on. Then there are the flat lines, the artwork and any old wrap that has to be peeled off, which do not care how big your trailer is. Put your quote's real figures in the form above and the ledger separates the lines that scale from the lines that do not.
Why is my wrap quote higher per square foot than the rate I was quoted?
Because two of the lines on it were never per square foot. The film and the labour scale with the area, so a rate describes them well. The artwork is drawn once and the old wrap is peeled once, and those are the same job whether the trailer is 12 feet or 28. When you divide the finished bill by your own square footage, those flat lines get spread across it, and the number that comes out sits above the rate you were quoted, further above on a smaller trailer. Nothing is being concealed: the rate is answering a narrower question than it appears to. This calculator does that division for you, so when you are comparing two shops you are comparing the number you will actually pay.
Is a partial wrap much cheaper than a full one?
The two lines that scale with the area come down with the coverage, and that is real money: drop from a full wrap to a band and lettering and the film and the labour fall in proportion. The two flat lines do not follow, though. Somebody still draws the artwork, and an old wrap still has to come off if there is one, so a partial wrap does not fall as fast as its coverage does, and the proportion of your bill that is flat goes up as the coverage goes down. Set the coverage box above to what you are actually covering and read the ledger: the split between the scaling lines and the flat ones is the whole answer to this question, and it is different for your trailer than for anybody else's.
What should I ask a wrap shop before I compare quotes?
Five things, and they all turn a rate into a comparable number. Is the laminate in the film rate or beside it, since that layer is what takes the sun and the pressure washer. Is it cast or calendered film, which is a different product at a different price and a real conversation on a panelled trailer. Are the rear doors in the number, because they are the panel the car behind you reads. How many revisions are inside the artwork fee, and do you own the file at the end, which decides what your second trailer costs. And what does the warranty cover, and for how long, on the print, the laminate and the installation, since those are frequently three different answers. Put each shop's real figures into the form above and compare the totals rather than the rates.

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