Just tell them straight,

"I told my employees that I would not be paying them for travel time, and now none of them will do your job"

Well theres a lot of truth to that, but the lesson I learned is to just roll travel time into the labor.

Some Plumbing company in our area advertises on the radio..."And we NEVER charge travel time"... Maybe they heard that ad, and started thinking.... hmmmmmm...

That being said in this economy there are probably other subs working on this project who are probably not claiming travel, but hiding it elsewhere in their bids.

The lesson I've learned... Don't bring up travel time! Actually I didn't my project manager did which turned into a can of worms.

Question. In the future, when you do a service call and the guys spend 3 hours travel and 1 hour on the job site You will be for 4 hours. Will the client bring up that "you guys were only here for an hour, how come I got charged for 4?"

If they can find a way to get you TO the ferry without it requiring time for the trip, let them. Until that time, they need to pay your expenses for the travel.

Instead of working on another job, you/they would be working on this one and you bill by the hour, right? They chose the location that makes the ferry trip necessary, right? They pay- end of story.

I would also bring up the fact that your work day revovles around the ferry. when a job is far away its understood that I will work 3 long day instead of 5 regular days. with the ferry your guys cant start till first ferry and have to leave by last ferry.

What about the guys staying on the island overnight? if you want them to pay your hourly rate for 4 hours per day per guy thats around $800 a day . if a hotel is $200 a night than that might sound alot better to the client. then the guys can work longer days also.

All good ideas listed here.

We spec in (build into the labor) our normal hourly rate to and from, if the project is more than 30 minutes away.

If the job is out of town the normal hourly rate begins when our suitcases leave the front door, continues on while sitting at the airport, flying on the plane, waiting in line at car rental, etc. etc. You get the point. I just got back from a walk-thru in MT...I was on site for a total of 4 hours and am billing an additional 12.5 hours relating to travel and I am completely fine doing so; someone has to pay for my time whether I'm sitting in Vegas or taking 2 planes and a 1.5 hour car ride to a job site.

Thanks guys!

I spoke with a CI friend and he has two different charges for travel...

1. If rifding on a boat or plane (not driving), the installers rate covers their costs i.e. $55 per hour.
2. If rolling the van... $70 per hour

(Based on $95 per hour labor).

I like it, it's simple and the client is not getting gouged.

That's all well and good but, assuming a fully booked installer, if he was working in his local market he'd be generating 95 dollars of install revenue per hour. Why should it be discounted if he's traveling to remote sites either by plane, boat or van?

Here's another way I justify this: this client is bringing your company in (presumably instead of the local "talent") for a reason and that reason is likely superior service, installation skills, programming, existing relationship, whatever. Why should the install revenue be discounted during the travel time to the remote location?

To each his own; I just feel that if someone wants us to work out of town then the lost labor or billable hours from not being in our local market should be accounted for at the same rate PLUS all costs associated with travel.

Good point, and we ususally don't run into conflicts on travel time, but this one client is being a little challenging.


In this case the "Travel Time" ahas become kind of the Tipping Point so to speak.
We are only looing at two hours x 2 ferry travel time each visit... There wil be about 20 to 30 hours travel time involved in this project.



I think we erred on TMI... we should have just rolled the travel time into the overal labor... (imo)

IMO your installer labor hour should be the same whether the installer is carrying amps on his back thru muddy crawl spaces or sitting in traffic. The boss doesn't get to adjust what he pays his employees per hour based on what they are doing. Why should customers expect to pay less?

When the job is 15 minutes away none of this matters but when its 2 hours away (4 hours of travel) your boss is eating something on a half days labor X however many employees are being sent. IMO 2 hours and a ferry ride = hotel & per diem.

Once in my life i did a 2 hour each way commute. Never again. I would quit my job if it happened again. We had 2 large projects...one after another. I drove for 4 hours each day for about 7 months total. When i would drive home i would have brief thoughts about how easy it would be to drive the car off a bridge or into the other lane so i wouldn't have to drive anymore. Hopefully your project doesn't last that long.

True. Im doing a balancing act between not trying to lose the sale-and be empathetic to the client's concerns, and to look out for our companies' best intere$t$... In this economy some people get the hairs on the necks up, when they see "travel time"... Best to roll it into the project overall labor next time!

Do you normally charge for travel time? If so explain that is how you do business and if you didn’t charge for travel time then your hourly install rate would be more so it works out the same for them. If you don’t regularly charge for travel time then charge them from when your guys get to the dock. That extra time is specific to their job and the fact that they live on an island. Any reasonable person will understand that. If you don’t set this up now then every service call or upgrade in the future you will loose money on. They have to run into this with every trade and service provider.