How Far Do You Travel For Work?

Putty Truck

A few weeks ago, during that sloooow time, I bid on a maintence contract in the big city. The contract is juicy and represents good bucks for this country plumber. I do some work for this company up here, so I need to be cool about my decision.

I also would never be able to get work down there without this opening.

The big city is 160 miles round trip, so about a total of three hours travel. I can bunch the calls to have a "big city" day and hopefully knock out 2-4 calls a day to make the trip pay. Of course, one big job trumps many little ones.

Any experience with this type of work/mile range?

Triminator

Currently I'm traveling about 65 miles to work.

It is pretty much all interstate highway and takes right at an hour.

KillerToiletSpider

Is the contract gonna be lucrative enough to cover travel time?

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wizendwizard

My service area covers close to 100 miles semi circle from my office. This encompasses around 150 small towns and 4 major cities.

Putty Truck

Hit and miss. I get a discounted service charge even if there is nothing much to do.

I run a honest shop, so sometimes the days could be a break-even deal.

threaderman

I have many good customers in the city I just left in June.It is also 80 miles away.They all pay at least 1/2 my gas[split the diff.],and they know I won't come down for less than 4 hrs. work.They are top notch and when they call they already know the deal.They tell me get to me when you have other work here .That's awesome.At times there are emergencys and they know there is a min. to show up.I charge 20. an hour more than they can get locally as well,but they chose me because they respect me.In my new location I can get anywhere in Okla.city metro within 30 miles or 45 min.,which is still more than I like to travel but a price I am willing to pay to live on these 2 acres.

concretemasonry

That is quite a distance if you will depend on the work. You are probably being considered because you are cheaper and being used against the many locals that can be efficient because of the local knowledge and time savings.

If you are successful, you may have to move to keep the work.

320 miles is about $160-$200 in real vehicle cost (not just gas) plus 5 or 6 hours of your day.

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Dick

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Chris Johnson

I tend to travel throughout the northern part of the state, my jobs have enough 'juice' to justify it. If one way drive time exceeds 2 hours I figure that it's about time to consider a hotel and about break even with the continuing travel to the job. I'm not service oriented so my jobs are usually for a few weeks at a time.

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KentWhitten

I am going to cheat on this because travel is my job right now. 1500 miles a week. Mostly to Vermont. Thursday I will be about as far NW in VT as you can get. Almost to Canada eh?

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Brickie

A total of three hours of travel a day? Unfortunately, I deal with that on regular basis here in the Chicagoland & NW Indiana area. It pays to know lots of "shortcuts" around the area.

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marc

We travel as far as 140 miles in any direction. Of course I just sit in the office and visit local jobs. I set the appointments, a salesman will go there and sell the job and a subcontractor will go there and produce the job. We have a production manager that will go to the job once or twice a week to make sure the project is running well and maybe pick up a check. Most of our jobs last under 2 weeks and a lot of them are under 3 days. We do vinyl siding, replacement windows and sunrooms.

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savant

Wow. As a renovation contractor, I resist taking jobs that are more than 1 hour from our shop. We require so many tools, and properties are usually less than 5 acres, not to mention that due to undulating terrain and existing landscaping, there are few places to put intermodal containers. Usually dumpsters are a tight squeeze as it is.

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Floordude

30 mile radius. anything more is seat time, + fuel charge.

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randomkiller

We travel long distances on a regular basis but, we have a charge worked out with the accounts ahead of time on service contracts. Some places get a 2 hour minimum before work begins, others pay a flat rate trip charge. Then we have some installs that guys stay in hotels Monday-Thursday and go home weekends. It has to make you money or whats the sense?

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GAK

I rarely travel more than 6 miles to get to the job. This is all residential roofing and I am in the middle of 3 towns of 25,000 people and some surrounding county land. My goal when I started out was to shrink my travel time from 1-1/2 hours one way. I'm happy now.

BreyerConstruct

We travel as little as possible... meaning, if we've got work within 20 minutes of home, we take it. If we don't, we extend our service area.

It's not perfect, but it (mostly) works for us.

~Matt

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KillerToiletSpider

If the number of break even days is under the number of days that aren't, then you have to ask yourself how important it is to keep guys working. If things are slow enough that you are giving guys days off, I would take it. I have taken jobs for little profit when things were slow just to keep my guys working, if we give them to many days off we lose them.

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rservices

I work in several different markets (all restaurants) and I live in the middle of them. I have to drive about an hour to get to one of these areas. but once I'm there I have a bunch of places to work.

I charge every one 1 hours labor travel time regardless if I'm leaving my house or crossing the street. Some of these chains want me to work father 200+ miles they pay full travel cost and hotel, on top of that I have a minimum labor charge of 1500.00 and I don't do estimates, they want me out there they need to send me pictures

Leo G

2 miles to the shop. I try to keep the travel to about 45 minutes, so 30-40 miles is a good travel.

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deckman22

I had to move between San Antonio & Austin cause my wife got transfered there & my work was in Austin. I did that for 2 years & it sucked. I moved back to central Austin so I can get to any part of the city easliy in less than 30 minutes. I like it much better. All that driving gets old quick.

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