How far is worth going — price the trip, then set the radius
A working radius is not a fixed number of miles. The same 30-mile drive is trivial on a two-day job and ruinous on a two-hour one. This guide costs the journey in two parts: the van, and the hour you cannot sell. It then shows three ways to carry that cost. The radius then scales with the job and does not rest on a guess.
A journey’s cost is not the distance alone. It is the distance measured against the size of the job. Two costs matter. The van costs a set amount per mile for fuel, tyres, servicing, insurance, and depreciation. The hour is drive time you cannot sell, and it costs your target rate. Add both to work out how far a job is worth going. Then carry the cost with a rate, a travel line, or a call-out fee.
Every guide on this site prices the work. This one prices the drive to it. See how to price a job so the number holds up for the rate. See how long will it take for the hours. Neither one costs the miles in between. This guide does.
Why the drive is the cost that never reaches the quote
A quote usually names the work, the materials, and the hours on site. It rarely names the drive. That does not make the drive free. It hides the cost. You pay for it out of the margin on every other job. The job that needed it never carries it.
Two separate costs sit inside every trip. Most owners merge them into one vague feeling. It is "too far" or "not too far." The van costs money to run, mile after mile. A client may never see that number. The hour you spend driving is an hour you cannot sell to anyone else. Split them, and a real decision replaces the feeling.
Work out what your van costs per mile
People guess at fuel. It is rarely the biggest cost. Tyres, servicing, insurance, road tax, and depreciation all build up in the background. They do so whether the van sits on the drive or covers a hundred miles a week.
Add up a full year of running the van. Include fuel, servicing, tyres, insurance, road tax, and a fair estimate of depreciation. Divide that total by the miles the van covers in a year. The answer is your cost per mile. It is usually two to three times the fuel-only figure most owners guess at. Fuel is the only part of the bill that feels like a running cost.
Do this once a year, not once a job. The travel radius calculator below has a small panel that runs the same sum for you.
The second cost: the hour you cannot sell
The van cost is not the whole story. Every minute you spend driving is a minute you are not on a job earning your rate. That time still costs you, at your own hourly rate and not at the van's running cost. No client ever sees a bill for it.
Owners who count only fuel underprice every job with a longer drive. Owners who count only the van's running cost make the same mistake from the other side. They miss the hour of non-billable time that the drive takes. A journey costs both. Charge for both, or absorb both. Count both first.
Why a fixed radius is the wrong rule
"I don't go more than 20 miles" sounds like a sensible rule. It is the wrong rule. It ignores the one thing that decides if a drive is worth it. That is the size of the job at the other end.
A 30-mile drive for a two-day job barely registers against the price. The same 30-mile drive for a two-hour job can cost more than the job pays. The distance did not change. The job did. A working radius must scale with the job in front of you. It must not sit at one fixed number of miles for every job you get offered.
The travel radius calculator solves this. It does not give a price. It gives the maximum journey a specific job can carry, given its own price and its own hours on site.
Three ways to carry the cost
Once you know what a trip costs, the cost has to land somewhere. First, fold it into the hourly rate. Every job then carries an average travel cost, whether it drove far or not. Second, add a separate travel line. The client then sees what the distance cost on this job. Third, set a call-out fee that covers a stated radius. Then nobody negotiates the drive on the day.
Minimum job price and travel-time already covers this ground for the smallest jobs, including the wording for a call-out fee. Read its FAQ for the detail. This guide only names the three options and does not repeat them.
Two jobs in one trip — the only way the cost halves
One move cuts the cost of a trip without changing the trip: put a second job on it. The van cost and the drive time are the same whether the trip carries one job or two. Split between two jobs, both costs halve on paper, even though the odometer did not move any less.
That is the real case for batching jobs by area or day. It is not about a tidy schedule. It is about a fixed cost that shrinks each time another job shares the ride.
Say the area you cover, before someone asks
A stated area heads off the question. Nobody drives an hour to hear "sorry, that's out of range." It helps both sides. Say it plainly on your site or your listing. Name the towns or postcodes you cover. Say what happens past that line, whether that is a flat travel charge or simply no.
It is not rude to decline an enquiry from well outside that area. It is a normal result of stating a real boundary. The polite decline in the turning work down templates covers exactly that message. Saying no to the distance still leaves the door open for the next job that fits.
Work out your own cost per mile. Then run a real job through the travel radius calculator. The number that comes back is the radius that job can afford. It is not a guess, and it is not a fixed line on a map.
Want a travel line ready before you quote?
BizBinder does not track mileage or log trips. That stays your own record. You can add a travel or call-out line to the job or the invoice. You can also mark drive time on a job as billable or not. Then the cost of the trip does not vanish into unpaid time.
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