Question

Are you aware of whether many catering companies pay for ‘travel time’ from home to the first job / from last job? We have historically paid 1 ½ which doesn’t seem realistic or sustainable so any thoughts / feedback from other catering companies would be appreciated.

Replies

1. We do at Time and a half as long as they have completed 8 hours normal time.
2. We charge from our Works back to our Works even if the Engineer goes straight from home and unless a customer is on a Contract Rate. It is charged on the hourly labour rate with no additional mileage.
3. Our company has always paid for travel time.
4. Yes we come across this with some of the sub contractors we use.
5. We pay from home to home although I don’t agree.
6. No we don’t we charge one call out to site and that is it no matter where the engineer is, like wise RTF (return to fit) we charge a half call out RTf no matter where we come from and then standard labour when we hit site. There are some customers who pay a fuel surcharge over a certain distance but they are the multi site customers and we go from a contract set point so for example there is a set point in Newport and one in west wales and if we go over 50 miles from that point we can charge the distance less 50 miles , for example 78 miles would become a 28 mile diesel charge @ 50ppp
7. My guys are salaried so this forms part of their working day.
8. This has been a bone of contention for some time, and based on our research it is generally an industry norm.
   We pay from home to first job and last job to home minus 30 minutes from each way. This 30 minutes is an average amount of time that it would take to get to their place of work and back home (Head office) if they were generally local.
9. Our engineers have travelling included in costs due to time/distance element on our projects.
10. This is always a bone of contention. I personally find it greedy to a degree and the analogy I use is that the office staff have to get to work on time and the average travel time is 30mins and I don’t pay them so why would I pay the engineer. My rule of thumb is if they start at 07.30 and set off at 06.30 I pay the 1 hour at the overtime rate. I do understand that with me saying I wont pay the first half hour they will always set off the hour before so they do get paid. It is a very difficult one to know what to do for the best. Unfortunately because good engineers are hard to come by they do have us by the short and curly’s unfortunately.
11. My local engineers get paid from the office in the morning until they arrive home at night while the outside guys, who work from home, are paid from door to door.
12. We had this issue with an engineer, we paid both it is tricky I would recommend you negotiate all travel time no matter what the time is flat rate.
13. From experience, engineers pay is always door to door.
14. We don’t pay for the first 20 mins travel at the start and end of the day. If I remember correctly this was on the advice of our accountant or our engineers use of the vehicle to travel to work would be classed as a perk and therefore declarable to HMRC.
15. We pay engineers from company premises – if they go straight to a job near home then they have the advantage of a later start – if they go straight to a job further afield then we have the advantage of saving the travel time. We pay for 40 hours per week and retain a degree of flexibility.
16. Most companies I have dealt with will pay travel time, in particular the last call at the end of the day, as the geographical area covered can take the engineers out with the region their main office is located.