Yes — in some form. Driving is time you cannot sell to anybody else. The only real question is which of the four methods suits your work, and whether you say so before the job or after it.
Most people who don't charge for travel have never added it up. Do it once:
That's not a rounding error, it's most of a truck payment. And it's before fuel, wear, and insurance — those are separate costs that also come out of the same pocket.
You don't have to bill all of it. But you should know what you're giving away, and choose to, rather than drift into it.
Bill travel at a lower hourly rate than labour — half is common. Fair, easy to explain, and scales naturally with distance.
Suits: service work with variable distances.
Watch for: clients querying it if they didn't know in advance. Say it at quote time and it never comes up again.
One fixed fee covers getting there, regardless of distance within your normal area. Everything beyond a set radius adds a per-kilometre or per-mile charge.
Suits: emergency and repair work, tight service areas.
Watch for: setting the radius too wide and quietly eating the long ones.
Bands by distance: no charge inside 20 km, $40 to 50 km, $80 beyond. Publish it. Clients can check it themselves before they call.
Suits: rural work, wide territories.
Watch for: nothing much — this is the least disputed method, because it's visibly not personal.
No travel line at all. Your rate is simply higher, and travel is priced in across every job.
Suits: tightly clustered local work, repeat clients.
Watch for: the long jobs subsidise the short ones. If your radius is growing, this method quietly stops working and you won't notice for a year.
The method matters far less than the timing. Travel charges cause disputes almost exclusively when they appear for the first time on the invoice.
One line at quote time is enough:
"Travel is billed at $45/hr, one way. From my shop to you is about 35 minutes."
Nobody argues with that. They argue with a $68 line item they've never seen before, attached to a job that's already finished.
Most trades charge one way, or use a single call-out fee covering the round trip. Full rate in both directions is unusual for local work and invites pushback unless it was agreed up front.
That's working time. Fetching materials for a specific job is part of that job, and it belongs on the invoice — as travel, or as labour, but not as free.
Yes, if you're charging it. A visible line is easier to defend than a total that's mysteriously higher than expected. Transparency costs you nothing and prevents the conversation.
Set a travel rate once, per client.
Stack Billing keeps a separate travel rate alongside each client's labour rate, so it lands on the invoice without you doing arithmetic in a truck. Free while we're in beta.
Try Stack Billing