Trades and field serviceAug 25, 20264 min read

Hurricane season and the slow-season payroll reserve

Storms bring work to Florida roofers, HVAC and restoration trades, but not every year and not on schedule. A reserve sized from fixed monthly cost, and credit arranged before the season, carry the business either way.

Drew Thomsen · Business Operations

Florida trades run on two calendars. One is the ordinary seasonal rhythm of the work: heat that drives air-conditioning calls, dry months that suit roofing, the winter population that fills restaurants and condos. The other is the storm calendar. The Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1–November 30, with its peak from mid-August to mid-October.¹

A storm season can bring a year's worth of roofing, HVAC and restoration demand into a few weeks. It can also bring nothing at all. The mistake is to plan the year around the first possibility.

Why not to bank on storms

Storm-driven work is real, but it is not a forecast you can take to the bank. NOAA's outlook for 2026 called for a below-normal season.¹ Some years a single landfall produces months of work; some years the season passes quietly and the busy months never come. A business that sets its payroll, its truck count and its borrowing on the assumption of storm work is making a bet, and the downside of losing it lands in the slow months.

The steadier planning assumption is the ordinary season. For roofing in Florida, that means a drier slow season from November–April, with Central Florida demand peaking in summer and early autumn, as one Florida trade publisher reports.² HVAC has its own shape, heavy through the hot months and lighter in winter. Whatever the trade, the pattern of your own last three years, month by month, is the best guide.

Sizing the reserve from fixed cost

The reserve that matters is the one that covers the months when revenue does not cover fixed cost. Four steps get you to a number:

List the fixed monthly cost. The core crew you will keep through a slow month, the office, truck and equipment payments, insurance, rent, software and the owner's pay. Leave out materials and the labour you would not schedule without work.
Estimate slow-month gross profit. Not revenue: what is left of revenue after materials and job labour, using the margins from the last closed year.
Take the difference, month by month, for the slow season. Where gross profit falls short of fixed cost, that shortfall is what the reserve has to fund.
Add a cushion for the months that come in below plan, and hold it somewhere you cannot spend it by accident.

With illustrative figures:

Slow-season month	Gross profit	Fixed cost	Shortfall
November	$78,000	$85,000	($7,000)
December	$61,000	$85,000	($24,000)
January	$58,000	$85,000	($27,000)
February	$66,000	$85,000	($19,000)
March	$81,000	$85,000	($4,000)
Reserve needed			($81,000)

A reserve of that size, built in the months when gross profit runs above fixed cost, carries the slow season without a scramble. If a storm season brings extra work, it replenishes the reserve faster. If it does not, the plan still holds.

Planning for the surge anyway

Storm work, when it comes, strains the business in the other direction. Three things are worth settling before June:

Staffing. Which subcontractors and temporary crews you can call, at what rates, and how overtime will be approved. Florida construction employers must carry workers' compensation from 1 employee, so every crew added in a hurry needs its coverage in order.³
Materials and supplier credit. A surge in jobs is a surge in materials bought before anyone pays you. Agree terms and limits with your suppliers while the season is quiet.
Receivables. Insurance-driven work tends to pay later than ordinary retail work, and every job needs its paperwork complete before it can be collected. A receivables aging kept by payer shows how much cash is waiting and on whom.

Arrange the credit before you need it

A line of credit is far easier to arrange in April than in September. A lender will want current, reconciled statements, a receivables aging and, increasingly, a cash forecast. The businesses that get the line on good terms are the ones that can hand those over the week they are asked.

A 13-week cash forecast, updated through the season, is the tool that ties all of this together: the reserve, the payroll, the supplier payments and the receipts you expect, week by week, with the lowest week in plain view.

How we handle it

At MTL Services, the seasonal budget and the slow-season reserve are worked out from your closed books. The 13-week cash forecast is included from Controller + Cash upward, alongside the lender pack a line of credit needs; the larger packages update it every week.

If the slow season has caught the business short before, that is a good use of a free consult: 30 minutes, no charge. No pitch. You get a one-page note on what we heard and what we would propose.