Hi, If your a sub contractor, and you have a Set callout fee for a site, then what do you charge for Long distance callouts? Eg If the contractor wants me to drive 60 mins to a out of town site, why should I not charge my normal Hourly rate?
The fact Iam JUST driving to the site , it's not fault finding time, but surly that's irrelevant, as it is time Iam away from the workshop.
Not to mention I have another 60mins to drive back.
What do you think.??
Allan
In the past I dropped the callout fee and instead just had a charge for travel time. No-one complained about this as it is a legitimate charge. If you have to return to the same job as a follow up or on a continuous basis say over a few months, do you apply additional callout fees for each visit?
What is a callout anyway. Unless the customer can bring the job to you, you have to travel to the job.
If you insist on retaining the callout fee, then add a travel time charge to that.
Cheers.
I charge workshop-to-workshop time, with a minimum. The minimum is higher after normal business hours.
I believe it is far more equitable. Your 60-minute client would probably prefer this.
You have not taken into account vehicle operating costs and petrol cost. I would want at LEAST as much for travelling as for working on site.
MrT.
Actually it should be higher, places I worked at charged a half hour the instant you left the workshop plus travel time for a call out.
If you normally work only in your own workshop, there is also time taken in working out/packing what tools/parts/manuals etc are likely to be needed for the worst case of the prospective job being travelled to , and time spent loading/unloading same from vehicle.
Hi and Thanks for your thoughts to everyone,
It is a case that the travel time, should be charged at the same rate as on site time. SO will they pay? Lets see..
The other thing we have too, is a lot of stock that is sent back and forth, so there is more time in packing and tracking goods.
Thanks again. Allan
I for one charge the same rate for travel as on-site labour.
In the case of Ken's valid point about loading/unloading of gear, I keep a basic kit in the service vehicle. Any extra stuff I have to load/unload determines the booked start/finish times and is accounted for there.
If they don't like it, they'll probably find any competitor has a similar view of the world.
If it is general stock/warehousing overheads, I wear them as a business overhead. I haven't had to wrestle with the case of it being dedicated to one client.
I think the charge-out model I encountered some years ago should be the norm
- I don't know all the goodies involved but here is what I remembered
1/ Business class air fare from anywhere in the world to site plus of cos the return fare :) 2/ Hire car - BMW, Mercedes or similar 3/ Minimum 4-star accomodation + food 4/ Normal business hrs, thank you 5/ US$10,000 per day :) I think there was a minimum number of days one had to commit to.Yes, it was one of those industries where very large sums of money were involved and the company had several of these consultants who were kept quite busy :)
No, it was not in computer or electronic repairs :)
Yes, it sounds quite unbelievable but there you go :)
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