Say you charge $89 for a service call. Your tech shows up, spends 30 minutes diagnosing the problem, and drives off. That sounds like decent money for half an hour of work.
It might not be. Once you count what it costs to put a tech and a truck on the road, the profit left over on that call can run close to $4.60 an hour, a number ACCA's trade blog worked through using figures from a 2025 industry conference. A trip charge picked because it sounds fair, instead of built from your own cost, can leave you working calls for almost nothing.
A trip charge, also called a service call fee or dispatch fee, is what you bill for sending a tech and a truck to an address, separate from whatever repair the tech finds once there. This guide covers what it should cover, why guessing at the number is expensive, and a method for setting your own.
What a trip charge covers
Most shops price a trip charge to cover two things: getting the truck and tech to the door, and a set amount of diagnostic time once they arrive. What happens after that split varies by shop. Some fold the trip charge into the repair price if the customer approves the work, so the fee only stands alone when they decline. Others charge it regardless of what happens next, since the truck still rolled and the tech's time still got spent. Neither approach is more standard than the other. Pick one, write it down, and quote it the same way every time.
Why guessing at the number is expensive
Jim Fultz of Copeland put a number on the cost of sending a truck out, in a session at ACCA's 2025 conference reported by ACCA's trade blog: the average cost to roll a truck runs about $84.40 an hour. That's one presenter's figure, not a government or trade association statistic, so treat it as a reference point rather than your own number.
That's where the $89 call at the top of this guide comes from. Run the math on a 30-minute visit at that cost, and the profit left over is about $4.60 an hour. It's a hypothetical, but the arithmetic behind it is the same arithmetic that applies to a real fee you set without checking it against your own cost.
Steve Howard, founder of ACT Group Inc., makes a related point in a separate ACCA piece on 2026 pricing pressure: a pricing-for-profit process lets you know when and how much to adjust pricing as costs change, and he recommends reviewing gross margin after every job rather than setting a number once and leaving it. A trip charge set by feel, then never revisited, tends to fall behind the cost of running the truck.
A method for setting your own number
- Start with the burdened cost of your tech's time for the visit, not the wage. The guide to calculating a burdened labor rate walks through payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits, and vehicle cost, and the flat-rate price calculator turns those inputs into an hourly figure.
- Decide how much time the fee covers. Some shops cover diagnosis only. Others cover the first 15 or 30 minutes of repair time as well. Either works, as long as every tech and every customer hears the same answer.
- Add the vehicle's per-trip cost: fuel, insurance, and maintenance divided across the trips a truck runs in a month.
- Decide what happens if the customer declines the repair. Charging the fee regardless covers the truck cost either way. Waiving or crediting it toward the repair earns goodwill but only pencils out if enough customers go ahead with the work to cover the visits that don't.
- Write the final number down, along with what it covers and when it's waived, so a dispatcher quoting it over the phone says the same thing a tech says at the door.
How to explain the fee to customers
Most pushback on a trip charge comes from customers who don't know what it buys. Quote the fee before the truck leaves, whether on the phone or through online booking, and you remove the surprise. Name what it covers, the visit and a set amount of diagnostic time, and you give the customer a reason for the number instead of a flat charge for showing up.
Being direct about the waiver policy matters as much as the number itself. If the fee applies only when the customer declines the repair, say so up front. If it applies either way, say that too. A customer who hears the policy before the truck arrives is far less likely to argue about it after.
Keep the number current
A trip charge set two years ago is priced against fuel, insurance, and wage costs from two years ago. Revisit it on the same schedule as the rest of your price book: at least once a year, and any time a wage, insurance premium, or vehicle cost changes enough to move your burdened rate behind it. SpanCrew charges $99 a month flat for the whole crew, with no per-tech pricing, currently in early access.