Is Travel Time Killing Your Profit? How to Calculate and Fix It

Here's a question most service business owners can't answer: what percentage of your work day is spent driving?

If you're like most operators, the answer is 25-40%. That's a quarter to nearly half of your day spent behind the wheel — earning nothing.

The Travel Math

Take a typical day with three jobs:

• Job 1: 25-minute drive, 90-minute wash — $275
• Job 2: 35-minute drive, 60-minute wash — $200
• Job 3: 40-minute drive, 120-minute wash — $425

Total revenue: $900. Total work time: 4.5 hours. Looks like $200/hr, right?

But add travel: 100 minutes each way = 200 minutes = 3.3 hours of driving. Now your effective rate is $900 / 7.8 hours = $115/hr. You just lost 42% of your perceived hourly rate to windshield time.

Travel Share: The Metric That Matters

"Travel share" is the percentage of total job time spent traveling. For a healthy business, you want this below 25%.

• Under 15%: Excellent. Your route density is strong.
• 15-25%: Normal. Room to improve but sustainable.
• 25-35%: Problematic. You're giving away too much time.
• Over 35%: Unsustainable. You need to restructure your service area.

Three Ways to Fix It

1. Charge a travel fee. A flat $25-75 fee on jobs more than 20 minutes away. Many customers won't blink — they expect it.

2. Tighten your service area. Say no to jobs outside a 20-minute radius unless the price justifies the drive. One $500 job close to home beats two $300 jobs across town.

3. Route your days geographically. Instead of zigzagging across your city, cluster jobs by neighborhood. Monday is north side, Tuesday is south side. Less driving, more washing.