Indications from obscenely high Operator Costs in Query Plan?
JNK,

You meant something like this?

http://sankarreddy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CropperCapture2.jpg

This is an estimated execution plan that's generated based on the statistics by the client tools and note that its NOT an engine issue. If you want MSFT to fix this issue then please vote for this connect item item.

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/436184/huge-operator-cost-in-estimated-execution-plan

Since you mentioned SQL Server 2008, I would encourage you to look at the WAIT STATS information when the job is being run. Look at why the execution is NOT moving along and figure out the bottleneck.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sqlos/archive/2008/07/18/debugging-slow-response-times-in-sql-server-2008.aspx

Also, look at the sys.virtualfilestats information and see if there are significant IO lags and as well as memory usage.

HTH