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Debate: Should we charge a trip fee or roll it into the labor rate?
I was at a regional appliance repair meetup in Cleveland last month. Two old timers got into it about this. One guy said he charges a flat $45 trip fee no matter what. The other guy said he just bumps his hourly rate up by $15 to cover travel and never mentions a trip fee. I see pros and cons to both. The trip fee is honest but customers hate it. Hiding it in labor feels sneaky but keeps the call volume up. Which side are you on?
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patricianguyen5mo ago
The guy bumping his hourly rate by $15 to cover travel, that's clever but does it really work out? Say you're doing a 30 minute fix, that extra $7.50 barely covers gas if you're driving 20 miles each way. Idk, maybe it's just me but I'd be curious how he handles longer drives where the math gets sketchy.
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oscarmurray5mo ago
Have you tried just baking the travel cost into your base rate instead of adding it as a separate bump? I used to do the same thing with a flat per-mile fee, but clients got weird about it on short jobs. What worked better for me was raising my hourly by $20 across the board and then just telling people up front that my rate includes travel (which saved a ton of headaches, honestly). @patricianguyen the math gets way simpler when you don't have to explain it job by job, you know?
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