How Many Shirts Does a Crew Actually Need? (A Simple Formula)
It's Thursday morning and one of your guys is wearing a shirt with yesterday's job on it. Not badly — just enough that you notice it in the truck and hope the customer doesn't.
That's not a discipline problem. That's an arithmetic problem, and it has one number as an answer.
The short answer
Five per man, plus one spare in the truck.
Five isn't a round number someone picked. It's the point where laundry stops being something anyone has to think about — and the whole value of a uniform is that it happens without anyone deciding to make it happen.
Why three fails and five doesn't
Work through a normal week with three shirts.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — that's the stack gone. So Wednesday night somebody has to run a load of laundry, and it has to be dry by Thursday morning. Every single week, forever, including the week his kid is sick and the week he got home at nine.
He won't. What actually happens is one of three things:
- He wears Tuesday's shirt again on Thursday
- He wears his own t-shirt
- He wears the crusty one from the truck
All three end the same way: by month two, your crew is back to looking like whatever was clean. You bought uniforms and you don't have a uniform.
At five, one wash over the weekend covers the week. Nobody plans anything. That's the entire difference, and it costs two shirts.
The formula, if your week isn't standard
Shirts per man = workdays between washes + 2
The +2 is one buffer for the week that goes sideways and one for the shirt that's in the wash when someone needs it. Five-day week, weekend laundry → 5 + 2 = 7 if you want it truly bulletproof, 5 if your guys are reliable about weekends. Most crews land on five and it works.
| Crew | Order | What that gets you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 man | 5–6 | Weekend wash covers the week |
| 2 men | 10–11 | Clears the 10-item discount tier |
| 3 men | 15–16 | Same tier, better per-shirt cost |
| 4–5 men | 20–25 | Clears the 20-item tier |
The extra one in each row is the truck shirt — most common size on the crew, sealed in a bag behind the seat. Somebody will split a seam on a fence, spill chemical down his front, or show up in something unacceptable. A $35 shirt in the truck fixes all of that before the customer sees it.
The hiring rule that nobody follows
Order the new guy's shirts before his first day, not after his first week.
The reasoning people use is sensible: see if he sticks first, don't waste $150 on someone who quits in ten days. Fair enough on the money. But it means every new hire spends two to three weeks on customers' properties in a random t-shirt — and that's exactly the period when he's least experienced and most likely to be the one a customer remembers.
You also just told him, on day one, that he isn't really part of the crew yet. Guys notice.
If the risk genuinely bothers you, order three instead of five for the first month. The point is that he shows up looking like he works there.
When to replace
Not on a schedule — on a standard. The test is one question:
Would I be comfortable if this shirt were the first thing a $2,000 customer saw?
If no, it becomes a mixing shirt or a rag, and it gets replaced. In practice a synthetic all-over-print shirt in exterior work lasts about a season of hard use; a cotton tee in the same work is done in six weeks — for reasons worth understanding before you buy the cheap option again.
Replace the whole crew's shirts at the same time, once a year, before the season starts. Replacing them one at a time means you're always half-matched, which is most of the way to not matching at all.
What about hoodies and hats
Different math, because they don't touch skin the same way and don't need washing as often.
- Hoodie or sweatshirt: one per man. Two if you work through a real winter. Most crews start before sunrise for a third of the year, and without a branded layer everyone's in a random hoodie until 9am — which is exactly when neighbors are leaving for work.
- Hats: two per man. They're cheap, they're worn constantly, and one always disappears.
What it costs
| Crew | Order | List | After bulk | Per shirt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 man | 5 tees | $174.75 | $153.78 (−12%) | $30.76 |
| 2 men | 10 tees | $349.50 | $293.58 (−16%) | $29.36 |
| 3 men | 15 tees | $524.25 | $440.37 (−16%) | $29.36 |
| 5 men | 25 tees | $873.75 | $699.00 (−20%) | $27.96 |
Discounts apply automatically at 3, 5, 10 and 20 items, and shipping is free from 5 up. Sizes 3XL and above run $2 more per shirt.
Notice the two-man row: ten shirts is the order that clears the 16% tier, and it's also exactly the right number. That's not a coincidence — buying properly and buying cheaply happen to be the same order here.
Before you order
- Count the crew, multiply by five, add one for the truck
- Get real sizes, not guesses — our size chart has measurements for every style, and five minutes now beats a reprint later
- Pick one color and write it down, so next year's order still matches
- Decide what goes on the back before you start the design — name, phone, three services
If this is your first order, start with the small crew uniform guide — it covers the whole sequence, not just the count.
Kit out the crew → — ten styles, S–6XL, no minimum order, nothing prints until you approve the mockup.