charge for travel time trades
How to Charge for Travel Time Without Making Clients Angry
You drive an hour each way to a job, sit in traffic, burn the diesel, and that's two hours of your day gone before you've turned a screw. Should the customer pay for it? Often, yes, but get the wording wrong and you'll spook them. The trick is to charge for travel honestly and visibly, as a clear line item, not to sneak it in or spring it on them. Hidden costs make customers angry. A fair, upfront travel fee almost never does.
Let's sort out when to charge, how much, and how to say it so nobody kicks off.
When charging for travel is fair
Not every job warrants it. Charge for travel when the distance genuinely costs you money or billable time.
- Jobs outside your normal patch (say, beyond 15-20 miles)
- Long round trips that knock out a chunk of your billable day
- Multiple short visits to a far-off site
- Anywhere parking, tolls or congestion charges apply
When to swallow it
Local jobs five minutes down the road? Build a bit of travel into your day rate and don't itemise it. Charging £8 travel on a job round the corner looks petty and costs you goodwill. Save the line item for trips that actually hurt.
How much to charge
Two clean options. Either a flat call-out fee that covers travel within a zone, or a per-mile rate for anything beyond. Whichever you pick, base it on your real costs, fuel plus your hourly rate for the driving time, not a number you fancy.
Travel fee wording you can copy
Don't say 'travel time' on its own, it sounds like you're billing them to commute. Frame it around mileage and distance. Drop one of these straight onto your quote.
Travel / mileage (outside standard service area): - Round trip approx. 60 miles @ £0.45/mile = £27.00 - Covers fuel and vehicle costs for visits to your location Or, as a flat fee: Call-out & travel charge: £35.00 - Covers travel to and from site within [area] - Included free for jobs within 10 miles of [your town]
Where new tradies get this wrong
Travel charges go wrong in predictable ways. Dodge these.
- Hiding it in the labour total. The customer can't see it, so when they compare quotes yours looks dearer for no reason. Show it as its own line and it reads as transparent, not expensive.
- Charging travel on local jobs. Nickel-and-diming a five-minute drive makes you look mean. Build local travel into your rate and only itemise the real trips.
- Never charging at all. Driving an hour each way for free is unpaid work, plain and simple. If the distance costs you a billable hour, that hour has to be paid for somewhere.
Add it cleanly, every time
The reason travel fees cause friction is usually presentation, not the charge itself. In Quotato you add a travel fee as its own line item, with a clear description and amount, sat right there in the quote next to labour and materials. Nothing hidden, nothing tagged on later.
Save it as a reusable line and it's one tap on every out-of-area quote, worded the same professional way each time. The customer sees exactly what they're paying for and why, which is the whole reason fair charges don't cause arguments.
Charge for your time on the road. Just charge for it in the open.
Add travel as a clean line item and stop eating your diesel costs.
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