How to calculate a callout fee for mobile repair

The formula, written out

A callout fee has three parts and they get added together. First the miles: round trip distance multiplied by what a mile costs your van. Second the time: round trip driving time in hours multiplied by the hourly rate that time is worth to you. Third the fixed cost of the visit itself, which is the phone call, the diary slot, the parking and the share of visits that turn into nothing at all.

Add those three and you have what the trip costs you before a single bolt is turned. That is a cost, not a price. What you charge is a decision you make on top of it, but you cannot make that decision sensibly until the cost is in front of you.

The driving time costs more than the fuel does

This is the part almost everyone gets wrong, and the example on this page shows it plainly. The miles come to $16.80. The driving time, at the same hourly rate the job itself is sold at, comes to $60.00. The time is worth several times the fuel, and it is the part people forget to count.

The reason is simple enough. Fuel is money you can see leaving, so it feels like the cost of driving. The hour is money you never see, because it is an hour you could have sold to somebody else and did not. A shop technician does not have this problem, because the customer brings the car in and does the travelling instead. A mobile mechanic sells a smaller number of hours a day precisely because of it.

If you take one thing off this page: price the drive at what an hour of your labor is worth, not at what a gallon of fuel costs.

Charging it, waiving it, or crediting it back

Knowing the cost leaves you three ordinary choices, and all three are defensible as long as you make them on purpose.

Charge it and keep it, which is what a diagnostic visit usually deserves, because the diagnosis is the product. Charge it and credit it against the repair if the customer goes ahead, which converts better and means the repair has to carry the cost instead. Or fold it into your labor rate and never mention it, which reads simplest to a customer and only works when your jobs are big enough and close enough together that the average comes out right.

The one option that is not on the list is quoting a flat callout figure you picked because it sounded reasonable, then driving forty miles for it. That is where the money goes on a mobile round: not on the jobs that lose money loudly, but on the drives that were never counted.

About the defaults on this page

Every field opens on a placeholder so the page shows a real result before you type. They are not industry figures. The cost per mile default of $0.70 is a round number standing in for fuel, tyres, servicing and depreciation, and your own records will give you a better one within an evening of looking. If you use a standard mileage rate for tax instead, take the current figure from the tax authority itself rather than from a page like this one, because it changes and a page that quotes it goes stale quietly.

The hourly rate field should be whatever your own labor rate works out at. The fixed cost per visit is the field people leave at zero, and it is the one that quietly covers the visits that come to nothing.