I am working on a job that requires two hours of travel each way. I can (and have) stayed overnight at the job reducing my travel. What is an acceptable charge for my travel time. It hardly seems fair to charge my normal hourly rate just for driving. I was thinking of using a mileage rate. The rate used by the feds is $.36 per mile. This seems a little low for my gas guzzler. Any thoughts?

I have been reimbursed by my day company at the fed. rate. It adds up pretty quick, but that was just for mileage. You will need to add some percentage (50% ?) of your standard rate for your time.

I have to travel 2-4 hours away from home quite a bit for jobs. I always charge normal hourly rate for travel time. Also charge per diem if I stay over night.

Might be worth researching if the "...rate used by the feds is $.36 per mile" applies to passenger cars, average-sized pickups or 3/4-ton trucks with tools and meterials.

We use a commercial laundry service company to repair several pieces of equipment where I work. All of these companies I've worked with charge the same way. The customer pays travel at the regular hourly rate from the last stop to your site.

So if the guy happens to be working in my town, travel is cheap. I've had him drive 4 hours before to get to me and I paid the 4 hours travel. I asked the mechanic how much time is spent in a day traveling.

He figured he billed about 5 hours for travel time and 3 hours for work time each day. But all at the same rate. So traveling was fine with him.

I think it is common practice to bill for the time it takes you to get there at full rate. The time coming home is debatable.

Spyder brings up a good point, does anyone actually eat the travel time in order to get a job. I know our guys sometimes travel 45mins to 1 hr away to a site and only bill one hour travel a day. I didn't think that this was too bad a deal for everyone concerned.

At the last Company, I charged normal Hourly Rate for Travel Time when one-way distance exceeded 30 Miles.

Fuel and PerDiem (plus other out-of pocket expenses) were reimbursed according to job number and pay period (pay check / time card).

Sometimes PerDiem allotments were issued on a check and given to the traveling person prior to out of town work (central or northern California travel). This included Motel and personal expenses (excluing fuel) anticipated for the period of travel (per day).
What was not used got reimbursed to the company, what was paid out by the employee got reimbursed by the company.
Receipts were included with time cards to verify expenses.

Since this was working very well and made too much sense, it of course had to be ended!
The key clown involved with this great idea was the same joker responsible for numerous other dumb things (like writing a book on "What NOT to do as a Prog. Mgr."!).


This became known as "Curtis' Brainchild #100".

Man I am sooooooooooo glad to be away from that bonehead!

Scott35 s.e.t.

I'm glad someone brought up this topic.

How do the rest of you charge for the time it takes to pick up materials??

I charge hourly rate and .40$ a mile to and from but my job is more service related than construction. It also helps that my customers are all oil companies