Trip Charge
What is Trip Charge?
A trip charge is a fixed fee that covers the cost of sending a technician to a customer's location — the drive, the fuel, and the vehicle and labor time spent getting there and back — separate from the price of the repair itself. It is often presented as a service-call or dispatch fee and may be credited toward the job if the customer approves the work. The purpose is to recover the real cost of showing up, so that diagnostic visits, no-go quotes, and short jobs do not lose money on windshield time alone. It protects the economics of dispatch independent of what the visit ultimately bills.
Getting to the job is not free, but it is easy to price as if it were. The drive out, the fuel, the wear on the truck, and the technician’s time on the road are all real costs incurred before a single billable minute of work happens. A trip charge recovers them with a fixed fee for the visit itself, so the operation does not lose money every time a tech rolls out for a small or no-go job.
Operators handle the fee in different ways. Some charge it flat and keep it regardless; others credit it toward the work if the customer proceeds, so it functions as a commitment fee that disappears into the job. Either approach protects the same thing: the cost of dispatch, independent of whether the visit turns into a large repair or a quick look.
The trip charge is closely tied to route density and the effective rate — the more driving a stop requires, the more it has to cover. Size yours with the trip-charge and service-call calculator.