The plumber finished 3 jones on tuesday. the first two only cost the owner the $45 trip fee because they took very little time to complete. for the third job, the plumber charges the trip fee plus 6 times his hourly rate. if the plumber received a total of $303 for the day, what is the hourly rate

This is a great example of a word problem with way too much information. You have to decipher the important info. Since you are asked to discover the hourly rate, you only need to worry about the last example (and the fact that a trip fee is $45).

Let's set it up: (Let H represent the hourly wage)

$303 = (6H) + $45 (Move both dollar amounts on the left side and leave 6H on the right)

$303 - 45 = 6H (Subtract the money on the left)

$258 = 6H (Divide 258 by 6)

$43 = H