Billing for travel time.

[Devine Plumbing]

A good customer of mine wanted me to do some work at his lake house today. All of my billing with him is T & M. Normally, the initial service call would cover my travel time but this was over 150 miles each way. How do you guys bill in circumstances like these?

[Service Guy]

Simple: I DON'T work 150 miles away. Ever.

[Service Guy]

Alright, maybe for $400 (In addition to the regular service charge.)

[Devine Plumbing]

Alright, maybe for $400 (In addition to the regular service charge.)

I think I will just bill him regular time for driving + fuel costs. Just wanted to get some ideas as I usually don't work 2 1/2 hours away.

[PLUMBER RICK]

anything more than 10 miles away, i will bill a travel charge. at 6mpg, it gets too expensive to drive for free.

i've driven 120+ miles each way before, but i don't like to. it was an all day jetting camera job and they were willing to pay me for the trip.

rick.

[Devine Plumbing]

anything more than 10 miles away, i will bill a travel charge. at 6mpg, it gets too expensive to drive for free.

i've driven 120+ miles each way before, but i don't like to. it was an all day jetting camera job and they were willing to pay me for the trip.

rick.

At 2 1/2 hours each way this quickly turned a two hour job into an all day job.

[Service Guy]

anything more than 10 miles away, i will bill a travel charge. at 6mpg, it gets too expensive to drive for free.

i've driven 120+ miles each way before, but i don't like to. it was an all day jetting camera job and they were willing to pay me for the trip.

rick.

Good point....did I say $400, make it $600 to cover all that fuel.

I'm pretty sure they could find a closer plumber for less money. So it would never happen unless they needed special equipment like in Rick's jetter example.

[Devine Plumbing]

I drove my little SUV (20 MPG Hwy) so it only ate up about $65 in fuel. I will probably just end up billing him normal time. I thought about charging him less due to the fact that I was only driving. However, if I was not doing that, I could have been doing something else.

[ToUtahNow]

My current fee schedule is portal to portal so I am on the clock the entire time. However, when I still had my shop we would charge at a 50% rate and only go out of the area for real good clients. It paid for the plumbers time, fuel and wear and tear on the truck. Most of our out of area work was as second opinions for Insurance Companies.

Mark

[Nevada plumber]

There are three small towns that are each about an hour drive from my town. Every once in a while someone would call and ask if I could do work in one of the towns. I always told them a trip charge price that would cover the drive there and the drive back at my normal rate, plus a fuel charge. My hourly rate started when I knocked on the front door.

Some people thought that sounded like a high price. I told them those are the terms or call someone else. I get my normal rate all day long in my town, so why should I spend two hours on the road, and not get my full rate for it.

If you are not making money on a job, you are better off staying at home.