Driving Less and Earning More

The short version

• Drive time is paid for out of your margin unless you price it in.
• Density beats coverage. A tight area with many customers outearns a wide one.
• Cluster by day of week and let customers choose from your clusters.
• A zone based trip fee steers demand toward where you want to work.

Ask an owner how many hours they worked and they will tell you ten. Ask how many they billed and it is often six or seven. The gap is mostly windshield time, and nobody sends an invoice for it.

You cannot eliminate driving in a service business. You can cut it substantially without giving up territory.

Measure the gap before you fix it

For two weeks, note the time you leave for the first job, the time you arrive at each job, and the time you get home. Compare total hours to billable hours.

Most owners are surprised by the result, and the surprise is the useful part. Until you see the number, driving feels like something that just happens rather than a cost with a dollar figure attached.

Density beats coverage

A business with many customers in a tight area earns more per hour than one with the same number of customers spread across a county. Same revenue, far less unbilled driving, and referrals travel better because neighbors talk to neighbors.

Growing means going deeper in the area you already serve before going wider. Wider looks like growth on a map and often is not.

Cluster by day, then offer choices inside the cluster

Assign areas to days. North side on Tuesday, south on Wednesday. When a customer books, offer them the days their area is served rather than asking when suits them.

Most customers accept a choice of two options without friction. The result is a route instead of a scatter, and the difference over a week is often an hour a day.

• Assign each area a regular day
• Offer customers two windows inside their area day
• Hold true emergencies outside the pattern, deliberately
• Review the clusters quarterly as your customer map changes

Use a zone based trip fee to steer demand

A flat fee inside your core area and a higher one outside it does two things. It covers the real cost of the long drive, and it gently reduces how many long drives you get asked for.

You are not refusing distant work. You are pricing it correctly, and correctly priced distant work is fine to take.

Cut the supply run out of the day

The supply house trip is often the longest single detour in a day. Stock the parts you use most on the truck, order ahead for scheduled jobs, and pick up for tomorrow on the way home rather than mid day.

A mid day supply run costs you the drive both ways plus the counter wait, at the worst possible hour. Moving it to the end of the day recovers most of that.

Where the unbilled hours go

| Source | Typical cause | What helps | | --- | --- | --- | | Between job drives | Jobs booked without a route | Cluster areas by day of week | | Mid day supply runs | Parts not staged in advance | Stock the truck, order ahead, buy for tomorrow | | Long distance calls | No zone pricing | Zone based trip fee | | Return visits | Wrong part or incomplete scope | Better diagnosis and scope at quote time | | Waiting for access | Customer not confirmed | Confirm the day before and the morning of |

Do this before your next job

Measure the gap for two weeks before you change anything.

1. Log total hours against billable hours for ten working days.
2. Assign each part of your service area a regular day of the week.
3. Offer customers two windows inside their area day rather than asking what suits them.
4. Set a zone based trip fee so distant work pays for the drive it costs.
5. Move supply runs to the end of the day and stock the parts you use most.

Common questions

Will turning down distant work hurt my growth?

You are not turning it down. You are pricing it. Distant work at the right price is profitable, and at the wrong price it crowds out work that is.

How do I get more customers in a tight area?

Ask for referrals from the customers you already have there, and let the neighbors see the van. Density compounds because service businesses spread by proximity.

What about traffic that changes by hour?

Build it into the windows you offer. If a route is painful at a particular hour, do not sell appointments that require driving it then.

Should I pay employees for drive time?

Wage and hour rules on travel time vary and are not optional. Confirm what applies where you operate before you set a policy.

Keep reading

• How to Schedule a Full Day of Jobs
• What to Charge for a Service Call
• Invoicerus for pest control companies
• Invoicerus for cleaning companies

Try it on your next job

Open the job price calculator and run one real job through it. No account, no card, nothing to install. If it saves you time, the free invoice generator is the next one to try.

Invoicerus does the same work on autopilot once your services and prices are set up. Start free and bring one week of jobs with you.