What a trip to a job costs you, and the smallest job worth taking
Before any work is done, a trip has already cost you: everyone in the truck for the drive there and back, the loading, and the miles. In the example below that is $93.92, and the short job at the end of that drive costs you $150.97 once the trip is in it.
Work out what a trip costs you
The way you would say it: 25 minutes out. The drive back is counted for you.
Hitching the trailer, loading at the shop, unloading when you are back. Leave it empty if there is none.
Fuel, tires, repairs, insurance and the value the truck loses. It starts at $0.76, a rate from the IRS, so there is something to show. Put in your own.
The smallest job you would take
A short job still pays for the whole trip. Type how short, and see what it costs you.
Half an hour is 0.5. Everyone in the truck is counted for it.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your minutes or your miles. The answer shows here.
One trip, step by step
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say a job is 25 minutes and 18 miles from your shop, and loading and unloading take 20 minutes. There and back, that is 50 minutes of driving, and 70 minutes in all. Say an hour costs you $57.05: the time is $66.56. The 36 miles, at $0.76 a mile, are $27.36. The trip costs you $93.92 before you pick up a tool.
The smallest job worth taking
A trip costs the same whether the job at the end of it takes fifteen minutes or all day. On a long job it disappears into the price. On a short one it is most of what the job costs you.
In the same example, say the job is 60 minutes on site. The work itself costs you $57.05. With the trip, the job costs you $150.97 before materials, and $62 of every $100 of that is the trip.
Any price under $150.97 loses money on that job, however small it looked. Say the least you charge today is $125: you lose $25.97 every time you take one.
What each price leaves on that job
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $168 | $17.03 | $10 |
| $189 | $38.03 | $20 |
| $216 | $65.03 | $30 |
| $252 | $101.03 | $40 |
| $302 | $151.03 | $50 |
Two honest ways to put it on a quote
A line of its own
The quote has a line for travel beside the lines for the work, with its own amount. Your customer sees what the drive costs, and the work keeps the price its size gives it.
Built into a minimum
There is no line for travel. You set a least price for any job, worked out from a short job with the trip in it, and quote that when the work would come to less. Your customer sees one price.
Neither is the right one, and this page does not choose for you. What matters is that the trip is in the price once: not left out, and not counted twice.
A trip charge is not the price of the work
Whether you call it a trip charge, a travel fee or a service call fee, it starts from the same number: what the trip costs you.
Price the work by something that grows with the job: an hour, a yard, a foot, an acre. The trip is a cost the job carries besides, and it does not grow with the job. It grows with the distance.
So one flat figure for showing up cannot stand in for the price of the work, and one flat figure for every address is not what any one trip costs you. This page gives no figure for either. It shows you what this trip costs, so you can decide where in your price it goes.
What a mile costs
The box for a mile starts at $0.76: the standard mileage rate the IRS has set for a car driven for business, the one in force when this page was last checked. The IRS lists its mileage rates here. It is a rate for working out a tax deduction. In its Publication 463, the IRS calls it the rate "for the cost of operating your car for business use", and says that a car, for this, "includes a van, pickup, or panel truck".
The same publication says what the rate takes the place of. A business that uses it cannot also deduct "depreciation, lease payments, maintenance and repairs, gasoline (including gasoline taxes), oil, insurance, or vehicle registration fees".
It is a figure for taxes, not a measure of your truck, and your truck may cost you more. For your own figure, add up a year of what the truck cost you (fuel, insurance, repairs, tires and the value it lost) and divide by the miles it drove that year. This page does not say how to deduct anything: ask whoever does your taxes.
Count the drive once
There are two places the drive can live, and it has to be in one of them.
In your hour. On the hour calculator, the hours you can bill are fewer than the hours you pay for, and driving is one reason why. If your driving is in that gap, every hour you bill already carries a share of it, the same share for the job next door as for the job an hour away.
On the job. You charge the trip to the job it belongs to, as a line or inside a minimum. Then driving is time you are paid for, so on the hour calculator it belongs with the hours you can bill, not with the ones you cannot, and your hour comes out lower for it.
The same goes for the truck. If its payment, its insurance and its fuel are in your overhead, your hour is already paying for the miles: set the mile box to nothing, or take the truck out of overhead and let the miles carry it.
Either way works. Doing both counts the drive twice, and doing neither gives it away.
How it is worked out
- Minutes of driving one way, times two, plus the minutes of loading and unloading: that is how long the trip takes.
- That time, for everyone in the truck, at what an hour costs you, is the cost of the time.
- Miles one way, times two, at what a mile costs you, is the cost of the driving.
- The two added up are what the trip costs you. Add the hours on site, at what an hour costs you, and you have what the smallest job costs you before materials.
- Each price on the ladder is rounded up, to the whole dollar or to the cent when the amount is small, so what you keep is never short of its step.
In TailGateBid
TailGateBid is an app for trade businesses: quotes, scheduling and invoices from your phone. It does not work a trip out for you. The figures on this page are ones you type.
A quote is made of lines, and travel can be one of them: you name the line and type its price. A line can also carry what it costs you, and the quote then shows what the job leaves. Your customer does not see that part.
The hour this page asks for comes from what an hour costs you. If the job needs a machine, work out what an hour of the machine costs you as well. For a whole job, with its materials, use the job price calculator and put the trip in the box for anything else. What to charge for a job you sell by its size starts from the same sums.
Hauling a machine to a job is a trip like any other, with a trailer behind it. What to charge for skid steer and excavation work puts that haul beside the hours on the machine.
Some jobs have the trip in them twice: a fence, when the posts go in one day and the rails the next, and Christmas lights, which go up and come down.
The mileage rate on this page is for the United States.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- The box for what a mile costs you starts at 76 cents. That is the standard mileage rate the IRS set for a car, a van or a pickup driven for business from July 1 through December 31, 2026. It is a rate for a tax deduction, not a measure of your truck, and starting the box there is our choice. Your own truck may cost you more than that. Put in your own figure if you know it. Internal Revenue Service, Standard mileage rates, . (our choice, change it)
On a TailGateBid quote, travel can be a line of its own, with what it costs you beside its price. Your customer never sees the cost.
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Sources
Related
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- What a machine costs an hourIn the example, a machine that works 500 hours a year costs $26.60 for each of them, before anyone is paid to run it.
- Job price16 hours of work and $600 of materials cost you $1,320. See what five prices would leave you.
- What to chargeOne method for pricing a job from your own costs, worked through one kind of job at a time.
- QuotesOptions, add-ons and a signature on your customer's own phone.
By TailGateBid. .
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.