How much to charge for a service call: trip charge calculator

Charge at least what one truck roll costs you, then add your margin on top.

Break-even fee = tech time + truck + office time + other cost per call

Service call fee = break-even fee ÷ (1 − target margin)

Price ranges from other companies tell you what the market pays. Only your own costs tell you where you start losing money.

Example: a tech earns 30 dollars an hour with a 35% labor burden, so an hour costs 40.50 dollars. A call takes 35 minutes of driving and 30 on site, 43.88 dollars of tech time. Add 18 miles of truck (13.68 dollars), 12 minutes of office time at 28 dollars an hour (5.60 dollars) and 15 dollars of marketing and software. The break-even fee is 78.16 dollars, and 130.26 dollars keeps a 40% margin.

Add the cost of the tech’s drive time to the cost of running the truck for that drive.

Trip charge = (drive minutes ÷ 60 x tech cost per hour) + (miles x truck cost per mile)

The IRS business standard mileage rate is 76 cents a mile for driving on or after July 1, 2026 (Announcement 2026-11). The IRS bases it on a yearly study of the fixed and variable costs of running a car, so a loaded service van can cost more. Switch to cost by the hour if you know your truck’s monthly cost.

To get the drive minutes and miles from real calls, paste a job list in step 3 and use the averages. Times like 0:35 or 1:05 read as hours and minutes.

Start from the trade’s sample in step 1, then replace each figure with your own wage, burden, drive time and truck cost.

The trades differ in wages, workers comp, drive distance and how long a diagnosis takes. Those inputs move the fee more than the trade name does.

Your labor burden comes from payroll taxes, insurance and benefits. The labor burden calculator works it out per tech. For a truck that runs long routes, the trucking cost per mile calculator gives a cost per mile to put in step 1.

Credit it only if your repair prices already carry the cost of the trip.

Fees credited back a month = calls charged x close rate x fee

Example: with 120 calls a month, 12 waived and 60% of the rest turning into repairs, 64.8 calls get the 130.26 dollar fee back. That is 8,441 dollars a month. The fees you keep cover 5,627 dollars of the 9,379 dollars of truck rolls, so the repairs must carry the other 3,751 dollars, about 57.89 dollars per repair.

Each waived call costs you the full truck roll, with no fee coming in to cover it.

Monthly cost of waived fees = waived calls x break-even fee

Example: waiving 12 of 120 calls at a 78.16 dollar cost per truck roll costs 938 dollars a month in tech, truck and office time. At a 130.26 dollar fee, the fees not collected come to 1,563 dollars. Count free-call coupons, member visits and goodwill calls in the waived share in step 1.