Fuel Charges

Teetorbilt

Does anyone know of a site where you can establish radii from your place of business and print it out?

With fuel at $3.00 and $5.00 projected soon, I'm considering an additional charge for long trips. It's something that everyone can equate to without raising general pricing although everything has to go up.

State Farm is raising ins. here 121%, illegals getting hurt is raising WC, property has gone through the roof so that incoming talent has to be paid more (that means that EVERYBODY gets paid more).

I'm trying to make mandatory adjustments without being considered a rapist.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

jmic

Teetor, try Googling Maps, Radius. I tried it and Hagstrom has one for our area.

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Joe

Mike Finley

Just curious why you need to do this. Are you charging for estimates? Are you going to show the mileage charge in some sort of break out to the customer?

If the expense is a temporary thing, I guess I could see the issue of charging for it in an itemized way, of course you can just account for it like any and all of your current business expenses by just factoring it into the cost of doing business like you do now for you other expenses.

If the expense is going to be permanent then I certainly see no reason to break it out, it certainly just becomes like every other expense, just like rent or phones.

Grumpy

I could see doing this for maintenance issues. We do some work for some property managers where they just send us work orders with addresses and very vague descriptions of what the tenant's complaint is. Sometimes we have to drive 40 miles but it's easy money so we do it.

I could see adding a line item to the invoice for fuel surcharge for these long 40 mile hauls since we are charging them just time and materials anyways... or I could just add on 30 minutes to the invoice and not have to argue about fuel surcharges and crap like that. Heck I could even add 2 1/2 gallons of gas to the materials or something.

But the point is, if youa re giving a fixed bid I agree with mike. I'd just tack it onto my costs and submit it with my lump sum rather than knocking up the customer for an extra on the invoice. I am not sure if that's even what you were suggesting, but that's my $0.02.

Mike Finley

Yep, exactly.

Double-A

Teetor, save a screenshot of a map showing a scale you want to use. (Alt+PrtScr to copy just the application window to the windows clipboard).

Open paint (Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint) and use the scale on the map to create a circle that is 2, 4, or 10x the scale on the legend.

In other words, just draw it on yourself. If you have Microsoft map point, it has this feature in it. you can probably get a cheap copy off e-bay.

mdshunk

When I did HVAC and refrigeration work, we charged exactly as Teetor is proposing. They simply had laminated maps of our coverage area that someone drew circles on with a compass to make various zones. We each carried this zone map in our clipboards that we made out bills on. The zone that the shop was in was a fairly reasonable rate... around 75 bucks an hour. The furtherest zone (the dreaded "zone 6") was a little over 200 bucks an hour. When customer's called the shop for a labor rate, they were always asked what town they lived in so that the correct labor rate could be quoted. I fully intend to use this system myself, but luckily all of my work has been within 10 or 15 minutes of my shop for a couple of years now, with only a few exceptions that I'm not going to quibble about. This is a great system that more guys who do "time and material" work and service calls should contemplate.

CE1

Has anybody heard of charging for travel time? I do this if I have to travel out of my area of about 60 miles from the shop. I usally charge 2/3 of my hourly T&M time. I just went to Portland, Maine for a 3 day job a couple weeks ago. The travel time was 7 hours plus lodging and meals. All I do is tell the customer that the travel time for me will be XX hours and it will cost $XX for travel time plus lodging and meals if it is overnight.

Grumpy

CE1, it's called mobilization . First hour is $150 each additional hour is $75. That mobilization covers the travel time in most situations.

Teetorbilt

Over 70% of my work is subbing out to national co.s. I often do the same home model over and over and they keep my bids in their computer base for reference. If they see the price going up dramatically without an explanation, I'm going to get called in for some 'splainin'. I figured that I'd justify expenses in advance to stay in good graces and not waste everybodies time.

Today was Palm Beach, 107 mi. round trip, 1 hr. each way. 3 trucks @ 10-15 MPG. and 7 guys (myself included). That's 12 man hrs. (me not included) in road time + fuel + only 4 hrs. of actual work time by the time that you factor in setup, lunch and breakdown.

As previously stated, I see fuel doing nothing but going up along with everything else so I am developing a formula that they can plug in. Everything within this radius costs + $X + fuel @ $X.

__________________
You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein