How Much Revenue Should a Service Truck Bring In per Day?

Where a technician’s paid day goes between calls

A tech paid for 9 hours does not spend 9 hours on paying work, and a field-service app with a time clock already records where the rest went. ServiceTitan’s help center splits a timesheet into job hours (dispatch to arrival, plus time working the job), non-job events such as training, a parts run or the drive home, each coded paid or unpaid, and idle time, the hours between jobs and non-job events. Other platforms use other words; job statuses and the time clock give the same split.

For one ordinary week, sort every paid hour of every tech into these buckets:

• Start of day: loading the truck, picking up parts, the morning meeting.
• Drive: to the first call and between calls, from dispatch to arrival.
• On site, paying: the job produced an invoice above zero. This is the billable part of the day.
• On site, not paying: callbacks, warranty visits, membership visits and other jobs that closed at $0.
• Parts runs to the supply house in the middle of the day.
• Waiting: the customer is not home, the approval has not come back, or the next call has not been dispatched.
• Unassigned: clocked in with no call on the board.
• End of day: paperwork, restocking, the drive back to the shop.

Illustrative example: a hypothetical tech’s 9 paid hours are half an hour loading at the shop, 2 hours of driving across four legs, 4.5 hours at paying jobs, 45 minutes on a callback, half an hour at the supply house and 45 minutes idle waiting for dispatch. Half of the paid day produced revenue. Some of the rest is simply the cost of running trucks; the sort shows which part.

Drive time and waiting generally count as paid hours

Under federal wage rules, the drive between calls and waiting on the job generally count as hours worked for a tech who is not exempt from overtime, hourly or flat-rate, which is why they belong in the break-even. 29 CFR §785.38 says travel “from job site to job site during the workday, must be counted as hours worked,” and so is travel from a place where the employee must report “to pick up and to carry tools.” Waiting counts too: 29 CFR §785.15 says a repair man “is working while he waits for his employer’s customer to get the premises in readiness.”

The trip from home differs. 29 CFR §785.35 says “Normal travel from home to work is not worktime,” and 29 U.S.C. §254(a) says commuting in an employer’s vehicle is not a principal activity if it stays “within the normal commuting area” and is “subject to an agreement” between employer and employee. That is the federal text behind take-home trucks.

This is a plain reading, not legal advice; state law can add rules, and ServiceTitan’s own idle-time page notes that paid idle time laws vary by region. Take the pay plan to an employment attorney or the payroll provider before changing how drive or idle time is paid. Either way these hours cost money; the question is how many reach an invoice.

How many billable hours a tech should bill, and how to count them

This guide found no primary source that sets a standard number of billable hours for HVAC, plumbing or electrical techs. The number a company needs is its own: break-even revenue per truck-day divided by revenue per billable hour. In the example, a truck that must bring in $900 needs $200 per billable hour at 4.5 billable hours. Had the callback and the idle 45 minutes been paying work, 6 billable hours would need $150 each. Every hour moved into the paying bucket lowers what each billable hour has to carry.

The auto repair guide to technician efficiency vs. productivity builds the same kind of count for a shop with bays; a service truck adds the drive. Per tech, per week, from the timesheet report and the completed jobs:

• Paid hours, from the time clock or the payroll report.
• Job hours, split into drive (dispatch to arrival) and on-site time (arrival to completion).
• Billable hours: on-site time on jobs with an invoice above zero. Hours on $0 jobs go on their own line, by cause.
• Idle and non-job hours, paid and unpaid.
• Revenue from completed invoices, and the truck-days worked.

Three figures per tech go on one sheet: billable hours as a share of paid hours, revenue per billable hour, and revenue per truck-day against break-even. The office manager pulls the exports on Friday; the service manager reviews the sheet with each tech the next week. Keep the definitions fixed so the company’s own trend is the benchmark, and recompute break-even each quarter or when a truck, a tech or a large overhead line is added.

Why revenue per truck differs for HVAC, plumbing and electrical

Federal industry statistics do not even separate the first two trades: BLS counts “Plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors” as one industry, which in 2025 held 68 percent of HVAC mechanic and installer jobs and 65 percent of plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter jobs. National median wages in May 2025 were close: $29.33 an hour for HVAC mechanics and installers, $30.67 for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, and $30.38 for electricians. What moves revenue per truck is the work mix and the calendar:

• Season. BLS says HVAC technicians “sometimes work overtime or irregular schedules during peak heating and cooling seasons.” Compare each month with the same month last year, not with the peak.
• Emergencies. BLS says plumbers are “often on call to handle emergencies.” After-hours calls carry their own price and paid hours, so they go on their own line.
• Diagnosis. BLS notes that installing electrical systems in new buildings is often less complicated than maintaining equipment in existing ones. Service electrical work leans on troubleshooting, so whether diagnostic time is billed as its own line shows up directly in revenue per billable hour.
• Replacement work. A condenser, water heater or panel upgrade sold on a service call may be installed by another crew or credited to a sales role. Decide in writing whose revenue it is, or truck figures drift for reasons unrelated to the work.
• Materials. A water heater day and a drain-cleaning day have different materials shares; use each department’s own share in the formula.
• Crew size. A truck with a tech and an apprentice carries two wages and a higher break-even.

In a multi-trade company, that means one break-even per department, not one blended figure; a blended figure lets a department below break-even hide behind a busier one until year-end.

What raises revenue per truck besides price

Revenue per truck-day is paying calls per day times the average paying invoice, and price works only on the second number. Illustrative example: at an average paying invoice of $360, the example truck needs 2.5 paying calls a day to clear $900. The other levers, in roughly the order a day runs:

• The phone. A call that goes to voicemail, or is answered and never booked, leaves a slot empty, and an unassigned hour costs the same as a paying one. The CSR booking rate, counted from the company’s own call log, shows how many slots were asked for and lost.
• Capacity. Unassigned hours by day of the week show where the board carries more techs than booked work. That is a scheduling decision before it is a marketing one.
• The drive. Drive hours per paying call, by tech and zone, show where routing or the service area adds unpaid time.
• Callbacks. Every return visit uses a slot and paid hours with no new revenue; tie each one to the first job.
• Zero-dollar tickets. Warranty, membership and diagnostic-only visits are sometimes designed and sometimes leaks; sorting by cause tells which.
• Ticket size. Whether every option was presented and a maintenance plan offered moves the average invoice without changing a single price; that is the service manager’s question.
• Work not billed. Truck stock used on a job and missing from the invoice is revenue earned and never collected.
• Parts on the truck. Each mid-day supply-house run is paid time; a stock list built from last quarter’s jobs cuts the runs.

Price still matters, and it is the owner’s call. A price increase raises every paying hour; it does nothing for the hours that pay nothing.

When this number is not the problem, and where the Review fits

If every truck clears break-even and cash is still short, the next place to look is after the work: invoices waiting, slow payers. In a one- or two-truck company where the owner runs calls, last year’s profit and loss statement and the arithmetic above are the whole job. For install or new-construction crews, job costing per project is the right measure, not revenue per truck.

For a company running several trucks or trades, the Revenue Review counts this under the Payment → Margin hand-off. From read-only exports of the field-service platform, payroll and the books, it works out break-even per truck-day by department and puts a monthly dollar figure on paid hours that reached no invoice, where the records support one. It sets no prices or pay plans and gives no legal advice. It takes two weeks, and the report is the company’s to keep.

If the margin questions turn out to be the gap, the next step is a free 20-minute call, where we say whether the weekly count above, done in-house, covers it, which may well be the honest answer.