How to Charge for Drive Time (Without Losing the Job)
The short answer: You should always cost drive time, and you can charge for it three ways: a flat trip charge per visit, a travel rate billed by the hour or mile, or travel folded silently into your hourly rate. Flat trip charges work best for short service calls, hourly travel for long hauls, and folded-in rates for tight service areas. Whichever you choose, the travel hours still have to land on the job, or your margin numbers are fiction. CRMb captures the crew's punched hours against each job so travel shows up in job cost instead of vanishing.
Windshield time is the most expensive line item nobody invoices. A two-person crew that drives ninety minutes a day is burning seven and a half crew-hours a week on the road. At a $45 fully burdened labor cost, that is roughly $340 a week, $17,000 a year, spent on travel that never appears on a single quote.
The fix is not complicated. It is just a decision most owners never make on purpose.
Costing versus charging
These are two different questions and conflating them is where the money goes.
Costing drive time means the hours are recorded against the job so you know what the job really consumed. This is not optional. A job that took six hours on site and two hours on the road cost you eight hours of labor, and if your job costing only sees six, every margin figure downstream is wrong.
Charging for drive time means the customer sees travel reflected in the price, whether as a visible line or baked into the rate. This is a choice, and it depends on your market.
You can decide not to charge for travel. You cannot decide not to pay for it. Cost it either way.
The three ways to charge for travel
1. Flat trip charge
A fixed fee per visit — commonly $50 to $150 for residential trades — that covers getting the truck to the door. Sometimes credited against the work if the customer approves the job.
Best for: short service calls where travel is a large share of total time. A 45-minute repair 30 minutes away is more than half travel; a trip charge is the only thing that makes it profitable.
The trade-off: customers compare trip charges directly against competitors, so it is the most price-shopped number you publish.
2. Travel billed by the hour or mile
Travel time at your labor rate (or a discounted travel rate), or mileage at a per-mile figure that covers fuel, wear, and the driver.
Best for: long-haul work, commercial contracts, and time-and-materials jobs where the customer already expects itemized time.
The trade-off: it invites scrutiny of the route. Expect to justify why the drive took what it took.
3. Folded into the hourly rate
No visible travel line. Your hourly rate is set high enough that average travel is already covered.
Best for: tight service areas where every job carries a similar drive, and residential markets where a separate travel fee reads as nickel-and-diming.
The trade-off: it only works if travel is consistent. The moment one customer is 45 minutes out and another is five, the close job subsidizes the far one and you cannot see it happening.
Which one fits your business
| Your situation | Best approach |
|---|---|
| Short service calls, spread-out customers | Flat trip charge |
| Long-haul or commercial work | Hourly or per-mile travel |
| Tight service area, similar drives | Fold into hourly rate |
| Multi-day installs | Fold in — travel is a small share |
| Emergency and after-hours calls | Trip charge, at a premium |
| Recurring maintenance routes | Fold in and optimize the route |
Most businesses end up with a mix: folded-in rates inside the core service area, a trip charge beyond it.
How to price a trip charge
Work from cost, then decide your markup — never pick a round number because a competitor uses one.
Trip charge = (round-trip drive hours × fully burdened labor rate)
+ (round-trip miles × cost per mile)
A worked example for a one-hour round trip covering 40 miles with one tech:
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Round-trip drive time | 1.0 hour |
| Fully burdened labor rate | $45/hr |
| Labor cost of travel | $45 |
| Round-trip miles | 40 |
| Vehicle cost per mile | $0.70 |
| Vehicle cost of travel | $28 |
| Break-even trip cost | $73 |
So $73 is what the drive costs you. A trip charge below that loses money before anyone picks up a wrench. Price it at $95 to $125 and travel contributes margin instead of consuming it. If you have not calculated a fully burdened rate or an equipment cost per hour yet, do those first — every travel number depends on them.
Zone pricing: the cleanest compromise
Instead of one rate everywhere or a fee that changes per address, draw concentric zones around your shop.
- Zone 1 (0–15 miles): no trip charge, travel folded into the rate.
- Zone 2 (15–30 miles): $75 trip charge.
- Zone 3 (30–50 miles): $150 trip charge, or a minimum job size.
- Beyond Zone 3: quoted individually, or declined.
Zone pricing is easy to explain, easy to quote consistently, and it makes the far-flung job carry its own cost without punishing your neighbors. Write the zones into your quote template so every estimator applies them the same way.
Paying for drive time is a separate question
Whether you bill a customer for travel and whether you must pay an employee for it are unrelated. Travel between job sites during the workday is generally compensable working time in most jurisdictions, while an employee's ordinary commute from home to the first site generally is not — but the rules differ by country, state, and province, and there are real exceptions. Check your local wage-and-hour rules or ask an employment attorney; do not infer your payroll obligation from your pricing model.
The practical takeaway: paid travel hours are labor cost whether or not a customer ever sees them, which is exactly why costing drive time matters more than charging for it.
Making travel visible in your numbers
The reason drive time stays invisible is that it usually is not recorded anywhere. The crew punches in when they arrive and out when they leave, and the hour on the road exists only in someone's memory.
Two habits fix it:
Punch in at the shop, not the customer's driveway. If the workday starts when the truck rolls, the travel hour lands in labor cost automatically. With CRMb, crew hours captured in the Punch time clock flow straight into each job's labor cost, so a job that took two hours of driving shows eight hours of labor, not six.
Review margin on real hours, not estimated ones. Reports in CRMb calculate job margin from punched hours and average-cost materials. When the travel hours are in there, the far-away customer stops looking as profitable as the one down the street — which is the entire point. Run a post-job profitability review on your three most distant jobs and you will usually find the case for a trip charge already written for you.
Once travel is visible, the pricing decision makes itself. You are no longer guessing whether Zone 3 is worth it; you can see it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I charge customers for drive time?
Charge for it when travel is a meaningful share of the job — short service calls, long hauls, anything outside your core area. Fold it into your hourly rate when drives are short and consistent. Either way, record the travel hours against the job so your costing is accurate, because a job priced without its travel hours will always look more profitable than it was.
How much should a trip charge be?
Calculate your break-even first: round-trip drive hours times your fully burdened labor rate, plus round-trip miles times your vehicle cost per mile. For a one-hour, 40-mile round trip that is often $70 to $80 in cost, so a $95 to $150 trip charge is typical for residential trades. Pricing below break-even means you lose money on the drive before the work even starts.
Is drive time billable?
It is billable if your agreement says it is. Time and materials contracts commonly bill travel at the labor rate or a discounted travel rate; flat-rate and fixed-price work usually has travel priced into the number instead. What matters is that the customer agreed to the treatment in writing before the truck left, so the invoice holds no surprises.
Do I have to pay employees for drive time?
Travel between job sites during the workday is generally paid working time in most jurisdictions; a normal home-to-first-site commute generally is not. The rules vary by country, state, and province and carry real exceptions, so confirm yours with local wage-and-hour guidance or an employment attorney rather than assuming.
How do I track drive time on a job?
Have the crew punch in when they leave the shop rather than when they arrive on site, and punch against the job they are traveling to. That puts the travel hours into the job's labor cost automatically. Reviewing actual punched hours per job against your estimate is what tells you whether your travel pricing is holding up.
What is a good cost per mile for a service vehicle?
Most service vehicles land somewhere around $0.60 to $0.90 per mile once fuel, insurance, maintenance, tires, and depreciation are included, with heavier trucks running higher. Calculate your own from last year's actual vehicle expenses divided by miles driven — a borrowed average is fine to start with, but your real number is what should sit in your trip charge.
Getting started with CRMb
Pick one thing this week: have the crew punch in when the truck leaves the shop instead of when it arrives. One month of that data will tell you what travel is actually costing you, and the pricing decision stops being a debate.
CRMb brings your CRM, crew scheduling, average-cost inventory, quotes and invoices, and job costing on real punched hours into one app — on Mac, iPad, and the web, sharing one backend with Punch. Start your 14-day free trial and find out which of your jobs the drive is quietly eating.