What is Your Travel Distance Limit?

[Frank EU]

Steve:
The problem is: YOU do NOT set prices.
They already HAVE been set. Or should I say: dictated.

What we all SHOULD charge depends on many variables, I am not going to name all the variables here.
Your price may be lower, or higher, than what another vendor needs to charge.
But the fact remains: $50 is, in general, unreasonable low.
Especially when too many people start to believe silly stories that networks are a good thing.
They add no value, all they do is steal your money. Others steal jobs by steering to their own shops. Period.

[t4k]

Your rate for a repair depends on what the market will bare in your area. Different parts of the States and Europe have different amounts you can charge. Someone in New York City can charge more than someone in Podunk Mississippi. You will need to learn your area and go with that. You can price yourself right of the market if you are not careful.

[Ricersux]

Back on topic...I will travel within a 1 county radius from my home base. I am more than happy to travel farther but it will require additional fees.

Btw the insurance networks are the devil in this industry imho.

[t4k]

Back on topic...I will travel within a 1 county radius from my home base. I am more than happy to travel farther but it will require additional fees.

Btw the insurance networks are the devil in this industry imho.

Depending on your area that could be a considerable drive. We have some counties in our area that are 125 miles wide.

Here again pricing, driving distance or anything else pertaining to business in general differs with the demographics in your area. Study your area to determine what will work and what won't.

[Brent Deines]

How many of you are charging a service call fee or extra mileage fee? I find most don't in this industry, but in every other industry they do. If I want someone to fix my refrigerator I know it is going to cost me a minimum of $50 just to get someone to come and look, and if I live 30 miles away it is going to cost me $75-$100. The actual fee to repair the refrigerator is added at the rate of $65/hour and often they have to go get parts and make a 2nd trip. Same with plumbers, electricians, computer geeks, etc. In our industry technicians don't charge enough to begin with, and then don't charge a minimum for service calls or drive time.

In this day and age nearly everyone has a cell phone with a camera so I recommend that you ask customers to send you a photo of the damage. That will cut down on wasted trips. I also think that rather than turn down jobs that are over a certain number of miles from your location you might want to tell the customer that there is an extra charge for drive time in their area. The insurance company may or may not cover that extra expense depending on whether or not there are other techs in the area that do not charge for drive time, but you can always tell the customer that they are responsible for the portion of your fee that the insurance company does not cover.

Of course if you are busy enough that it makes more sense to limit your service to a smaller geographic area you don't need to worry about mileage fees, but if the only reason you are not taking the job is because you are not getting paid enough, you don't really have anything to lose but giving your customers the option of paying a service or mileage fee.

Like some of the others have mentioned, if you do have to drive for an extended period of time to get to a job, try to schedule multiple jobs in that area and/or make sales calls on the way there and back. I used to service fleet accounts that were up to 70 miles away, and would sometimes take single jobs that far out just so I could pay for my gas to call on potential fleet customers all along the way. I'm not saying this is for everyone, depending on all of the other variables that have been mentioned previously, it can pay off.

Keep in mind we are not getting much more for our repairs than we were 25 years ago, and while that may be partially the fault of insurance companies, most of the blame can be laid on those who's only marketing strategy is to offer a lower price. Unless you are Wal-Mart that is a poor way to build a business and has really hurt our entire industry. It's pretty hard to blame the insurance companies for only paying $60 if you are only charging $30 for cash jobs. Adding minimum service and mileage fees is a very reasonable practice in my opinion.

[SGT]

Good point. Service call fee's certainly seem fair enough considering most other industries have them. Personally we do not charge those types of fee's and not becuase we do not want to. It is kind of like airlines trying to raise fares. They raise fares but eventually one by one they lower the fare to try to capture more market share and your right back at the begining. So for WSR if every shop in your arera is not doing it, the customer is not always going to care that you do the prettiest repairs. Instead they care that it is FREE through there insurance and there are no extra charges. So shop ABC decides they are tried of loosing jobs due to the well warrented service fee and drop it to gain customers back. Right back at the begining!

Great concept if you get everyone doing it. I think that Licensed plumbers electrician etc.. can demand a service fee due to the license they hold and I think people are able to process that more easily than the service we provide. I am not saying we do not provide a valuble service, just that customers may view it differently.

[GLASSTIME]

There are so many different opinons on this subject, However we do charge a travel fee if the customer is outside of our maximum coverage area. It is by miles. We also include a service fee to all invoices produced.

We typically like to keep our coverage area at aminimum of 30 miles and a max of 50!

[screenman]

The point of my reply was to try and get across the idea of saturating your area before expanding it. Repairing time is money making, driving time is money losing.

[SeeClearly]

.......and we wonder why our insurance rates are so crazily high. It is sad that so many people get their pockets lined on other peoples hard work. How sad. I just received three faxes today that rates have gone up on repairs for three different insurance companies. Very interesteing. Anyone else get these notices?

[Brent Deines]

Good for you Chad. Someone has to get the ball rolling and if we all wait for someone else to make the first move nothing every changes.

Obviously screenman's point is well taken, but then again things are different when your entire country is the size of a back yard in Texas.

I tried to keep things close to home, but some of my largest fleet accounts were 50+ miles out and my competitors would not drive that far to serve them. So my options were to stay in town where all the low-ballers fight for the same customers, or take a little drive to hit fleets who did not mind paying a bit more because there was no competition. If I checked a fleet of 100 vehicles I could almost always get a few jobs and sometimes a lot of jobs. Once in awhile I would get skunked but on those days I would just find more fleets to call on in the same area. I can't say it always paid off, but it did pay off enough to make it worth my while. If my weekly runs were not producing enough I would switch them to bi-weekly or monthly.

I think one of the reasons we did so well in outlying areas was due to the abundance or gravel roads, and the more adverse weather conditions. If you drive an hour from Eugene in any direction but North the elevation changes significantly, the towns get smaller, and the gravel roads get more plentiful. There are a lot of logging companies, Forest Service facilities, BLM facilities, trucking companies, sand and gravel companies, etc., and they all either have to pay someone to come to them or they have to take their vehicles to someone in a larger town. Most are grateful to find someone who will come to them and don't mind paying a premium for the extra service.

Now there are places in Oregon where you drive 50 miles and don't see another town, but on my route there were 3-6 little towns between stops so there was generally some business to be had along the way. I also learned that it often pays to take an alternate route home to increase the potential for more jobs along the way.