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What is extra drive time costing your shop?

Enter your own numbers to see the truck-hours and dollars that bookings with a longer-than-needed drive add up to. Free, no sign-up.

Example numbers are filled in. Change them to yours.

Count each truck or crew you schedule.
Bookings that sent a tech across town when a nearer time or tech would have worked. Check last week to get a real number.
The drive there and back to the next stop, minus what the nearer option would have taken.
Your billable rate, or wages plus truck costs. Add fuel here if you want it counted.
Lower it for seasonal work.
This isn't a promised saving. It puts a number on the extra driving you describe, using only your inputs. Navigrate flags a booking whose estimated drive runs past your limit before you book, so you can pick another time or tech. You still decide, and some long drives are worth making.

How to count your long-drive bookings

  1. Pull up last week's schedule and go day by day, one truck at a time.
  2. Mark each booking where the tech drove across town and a nearer time or a nearer tech was open that day.
  3. Estimate the extra minutes each one added: the drive there and on to the next stop, minus what the nearer option would have taken. Drive times from a map app are fine.
  4. Divide the marked bookings by trucks and days to get a per-truck, per-day number.

How it's calculated

Extra minutes a week = trucks × working days × long-drive bookings per truck per day × extra minutes each.

Truck-hours a week = those minutes ÷ 60. Dollars a week = truck-hours × what an hour is worth. A year = a week × working weeks.

It doesn't count fuel or wear unless you add them to the hourly value, and it doesn't count lost jobs, overtime or late arrivals.

Ways to bring the number down

One way to bring it down is to check the drive before you commit to a time. How to cut drive time between jobs has seven ways to do that, with or without software. Still on a whiteboard? Whiteboard vs dispatch board covers when that's fine and when it isn't.

See Navigrate in 90 seconds

Every screen is from the real app and website: the long-drive flag, shorter-drive open times, 12-hour bookings and pricing.

Common questions

Is this how much Navigrate would save me?
No. It estimates what the extra driving you describe is worth, using only your numbers. Navigrate flags a booking whose estimated drive runs past your limit before you book, so you can pick a different time or tech, but you still make the call, and some long drives are worth it.
What hourly value should I use?
Whatever an hour of a truck and tech is worth to you. Some owners use their billable rate, because a driving hour is an hour not on a job. Others use wages plus truck costs. Try both and see the range.
How do I know how many bookings had a longer drive than needed?
Go through last week's schedule one truck and one day at a time, and mark each job that sent a tech across town when a nearer time or tech was open. That count is more useful than a guess.
What happens to the numbers I type?
You don't need an account, and the calculator doesn't ask for a name or email. This site uses PostHog analytics (see our Privacy Policy): when you leave the page after changing the numbers, it records that the calculator was used and the numbers you ended with. If you copy or open a link with numbers in it, the page address, numbers included, is recorded with the page view. If you've signed in to Navigrate in this browser, that activity can be linked to your account ID.
Can I share my result?
Yes. The page address updates as you type, so copying it shares the same numbers.

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