I know it is one thing when we charge a customer for our own travel time. but what about all our crew members? do you charge for and pay your crew for that?
Edited 6/18/2007 1:30 am by alrightythen
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Edited 6/18/2007 1:30 am by alrightythen
Discussion Forum
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Replies
what kind of travel time are you talking about.
doing small jobs (1 or 2 hours) and travel between jobs
going to and from work at one site
or??
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter WFR
"But when you're a kibbutzer and have no responsibility to decide the facts and apply the law, you can reach any conclusion you want because it doesn't matter." SHG
"what kind of travel time are you talking about."
any and all.
But mosty getting to the work site.
I pay my guys from when they get to the site. But my partner wants to pay them travel time to get to work in the morning. I understand his view that he wants to make our guys happy, and that it is their time and they should get paid for it. But I feel that there are other ways to maintain a happy crew. pretty much any other job people get to work on their own time.
there are also times where we might be at two sites in one day. so there may be travel time between jobs. when I worked for others, this time was always used for lunch.
I used to travel 2 hours to and from work, with the crew I worked for and always considered it just part of life. I gotta get myself to work to get paid.
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Getting to the job is on their time.
If I send them somewhere after they get on the clock it is on mine.
If I send them more than an hour from home I pay them for that.
just my way though, everyone else may do something different.
I'm the same way, more than an hour i'll pay one way. I figure thats fair since most of our work is about 1/2 hour drive at most.
I'm trying to run a contracting business not a cab company. If you want to work get yourself there.
my time start at the office every morning when I clock in, and stops when I clock out. I pick up the company truck at the office and leave it at night. My time is charge by the hour on all jobs, from portar to portar. so if I have a job 100 miles away it get charge 1 1/2 travel each way pplus two hours minimum. so it five hours to say "hello" I can have three job in the same town 100 miles away, they might be a couple miles apart but get charge from the office. so if all three jobs get rain out and I show up. That be fifthteen hours billable for that day but I might only have four hours on clock. I only get paid for whats on clock. clock and billable two different items.
Getting to where they are supposed to be first thing in the AM is the employees own job, but not out of town.
I have worked several places where out of town work was part of the deal, and they always paid at least travel one way. I would not have people to do the work on this island if I were not willing to pay travel time one way to get them here, time from when they arrive at the ferry. From home to ferry landing is same as getting to any other job
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Do your guys meet at a shop or central location and then travel to the job? Do they report to the job and start work ? What is your mileage limit for "local" work, that you you don't charge the customer for ?
Lots of question go need to be answered before that question can get a reasonable answer. Of course you have state labor laws to contend with too, so when you have to start paying your crew may also influence how you figure billable hours.
Dave
meet at site, from own home. sometimes me or my partner will pick up a guy and bring him in with us. My partners brother is working for us, his brother gets to my partners house and then my partner drives him to site usually. So he wants to pay him from when he shows up at his house.
there was a situation last week where I asked if his brother could stop at my house and drive the van in so I could drive the truck. I wasn't planning on paying for the hour travel, as he's getting a free drive to work. you got guys that get company vehicles and drive them to and from work, but they don't get paid to drive to or from work. at the end of the day when i saw he put an extra hour down I asked him about it. and he said thats when he got to my house. I told him I pay from when we get to the site , and I would pay him today for the extra time, but also that I would work it out with his brother as to what our procedure would be. View Image View Image
there was a situation last week where I asked if his brother could stop at my house and drive the van in so I could drive the truck
That particular situation may be covered by your state labor laws, since he was taking a piece of company equipment to your job site, at your request. The equipment is insured by the company, as is the employee, so your insurance company can give you some advice there also.
My experience is like many others. I have to get to work to get paid. The same applied to working out of town, but I got a per diem for days worked and either a mileage or direct gasoline cost when driving my vehicle. The travel cost did not apply when I used a company vehicle. Out of town jobs where considered anything over a two hour commute one way by one company and just an hour by another. Both companies explained the policies at the time I was hired. At one of them I drove a company truck for most of the out of town work. I stayed out all week, so it was no biggie to me. However when I started driving that same route daily and hauling two other employees with me, it got to be an issue, particularly since they where getting paid for thier ride time (they were part timers and paid considerable less than I was making). That is when I learned some of the KY and IN state labor and compensation laws. I got a hefty back pay check for my time spent hauling company people to and from the job.
KY has a wage and hour division of thier labor department that is user friendly. They would rather help a company understand and comply with thier regs than have to catch violations, levy fines and do all the legal wranglings that might net them nothing but a bankrupt small business.
A written policy that is in compliance with your state laws is a place to start. Making money is you and your partners job. If his brother wants to buy in fine, but otherwise he needs to button up. If the partner wants to share with his brother, that is his business, as long as it doesn't have any impact on your share of the business.
Dave
The answer to that would depend on whether you want to make money or lose money, wouldn't it?
What am I missing in that question?
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we are a young and small business. I told my partner that I get the feeling like he wants to act like a big company, but we quite simply can't afford to or we won't be able to stay in business.
there are other ways to keep our guys happy - pay them a fair rate. be good guys to work for - teach them to work hard and do a good job, and find other ways to reward them. getting to yourself to work is part of making a living. View Image View Image
Now that I've read more, I see it is a family problem. Your partner wants to pad his brothers pocket with what is half your money. But I would be paying the guy to have him drive my stuff.It has been common to have a common meeting place, usually at the shop, where the overall supervisor sees who has showed up and gets reports what is finished and what materials are needed and what went wrong and how to fix it and what the weather looks like .......then to shuffle manpower to each crew as needed and send them out. Common was to show up ten before seven for chit chat and time started at seven. Some trucks rolled out at 7:02 and some had to load or unload and then go out as late as 8AM.Time ended when the cords rolled and everyone left the jobsite, or some places when we parked the trucks at the shop again.
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For local jobs, you define local, pay from onsite to off site.I don't believe the Feds allow you to call travel time between jobs "lunch.""we are a young and small business. I told my partner that I get the feeling like he wants to act like a big company, but we quite simply can't afford to or we won't be able to stay in business."Now there, I gotta disagree with you and your partner. You can't afford not to act like a successful (ie "big") business if you want to be successful. That's how they get successful.And a successful business does not pay for nonproductive time unless required by law. A successful business make every dollar earn three or your times its' value back.It sounds to me like your partner wants to give his brother a bonus, half of which, you have to pay. That annual bonus would be ~200, (work days,) times 1 1/2, (OT,) times the Bro's hourly wage. Straight from the profit column. Can you say "All the net profit from $60K sales!"?I strongly suggest that you do a search in the Business folder for PILAO by Jerrald Hayes and download it. It's free and at the same time a very valuable and eye opening tool for any for-profit company.SamT
Praise the Corporation, for the Corporations' highest concern is the well being of the public.
Thanks Sam T for the thoughts and link..I will check it out. It tough call...there are some things a big company can do that small guys just can not. I don't think you have to be big to be successful - but what do I know - I'm still a baby at this business side of things. So I'm glad for any feed back you and others have. View Image View Image
we are a young and small business. I told my partner that I get the feeling like he wants to act like a big company, but we quite simply can't afford to or we won't be able to stay in business.
When I first started a small contracting business I was fortunate to have the services of a carpenter/cabinetmaker who had a lot more all around experience than I did.
I busted my butt on the first job, making very little for myself while paying a fair wage to everyone, including Charlie*. I ended up learning a lot on that old farm house but earning less than minimum wage. The homeowners were real estate agents so the promised referrals were solid although not too numerous.
I decided to offer Charlie a half share partnership, to make sure that I would have the level of experience needed to take on any homeowner project. I had some skills that fit with his so we made a good team. I was also an experienced salesman so I had no trouble getting contracts signed and collecting money.
We worked together quite happily for several months, doing a succesion of small jobs for better than average pay. Charlie was very content and he began to get philosophical about growing our little partnership into a trade cooperative, where profit sharing would be the order of the day.
I begged to differ, knowing how much effort went into selling our services, writing up legal agreements and getting us paid on time. I also knew how many months I'd worked on the first old house, for nearly nothing, while those I'd hired made good wages. So I was determined to make a profit on anyone I put to work in the future.
I told Charlie that I wanted no part of profit sharing or anything like that, not until we were very well established and had good reason to make that kind of change in the usual method of paying employees. I also told him that I didn't want him to tell other tradesmen anything about the business end of our work. He didn't understand the importance of playing it close to the vest in that rural area's uncertain economy.
One day when I returned to the job we were doing, painting the interior of a historic home, from a trip to the paint store, I found a mutual friend of ours at work with a brush.
Jerry was a guy anyone would like to have as an employee but we hadn't talked about hiring anyone to help us so I wasn't real happy about this development. I'd negotiated a very nice T&M deal for us on that old house, top wages, and I was planning on being there for a couple more weeks of what had been a nasty winter.
On the drive home together Charlie told me that he'd talked with Jerry about the job we were doing, how much we making and how well we'd been doing. Jerry and his wife were potters, craftspeople who were not yet well established and needed some outside income to make ends meet. Jerry usually cut firewood but was looking for anything easier to do during that cold winter. Charlie's sympathetic nature took over and he offered Jerry a few days work on our job, without running it by me first.
The real clinker came when I asked Charlie how much money he'd promised Jerry. He said that we were paying him the same as what we were getting because it wasn't fair for us to profit from someone else's misfortune.
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or yell at him. I let it go, overnight, just to be sure that my initial reaction was really valid. Then, the next morning on the way to work I told him that I'd be going it alone after that job. I'd lined up a big remodel for us but I could see that we just weren't on the same page, philosophically, so I took it on by myself, hiring other tradespeople as needed. I felt one heck of a lot better, running that job according to my own appreciation of small business in our society.
there are other ways to keep our guys happy - pay them a fair rate. be good guys to work for - teach them to work hard and do a good job, and find other ways to reward them. getting to yourself to work is part of making a living.
I think that if it's a long drive I might throw in enough, on a weekly basis, to cover the extra gas but I wouldn't equate it with driving time. Let the guys figure out how to carpool, save some money that way. I had many jobs which were over an hour each way. I never blamed that on my employer or the GC. We all have to go where the work is. That's like rule number one, isn't it?
*name changed
Edited 6/22/2007 12:34 pm ET by Hudson Valley Carpenter
Hudson, I really enjoyed reading your response and take a lot of value from it.
I appreciate all the time and thought all of you guys have put into all your responses, and really appreciate the feed back.
Thanks guys View Image View Image
I'd say anything within a certain distance of the shop, (30, 50 or even 100 miles depending on how urban/rural your area is) is free. Even union contracts are that way. The crew gets to, and from, the work assignment on their time. Unless the site is a further than normal for the area.
On the union and prevailing rate jobs I've done, they paid a set dollar amount for the distance from the "rally point", in bands. For example if it was more than 50-miles, $30. More than 100-miles, then $60. The rally point is a set point; the shop, union hall, flag pole at the post office, or a given street / highway intersection.
If we are doing a job that is outside of our usual area (four contiguous towns), we charge our customers for the travel time. This usually involves paying for the drive to the job (and starting actual work a little later) and quitting at the usual time. The drive home is not paid for. The customer pays for the drive to the job. They understand this before the job begins and if they want us to do the work, that is part of the deal.
All regular jobs begin and end at the site, unless the worker has to pick up something on the way.
Like some of the others here, I think that you have more of a partner problem than anything else. You and your partners can have any policy you want but you either need to be able to talk about it or accept each other's decisions without too much reservation. It is fine to occasionally differ (In fact it can be a strength of your partnership), but you have to be able to feel good about it. Do you?
Yeah we get along and agree on most issues. and things that have come up we are able to talk about. We did talk about this issue, but need to decide how we want to handle it. we like working together, and realize that we will go through some growing pains.
we are set up in somewhat of an unusual way. we each have our own business and have our own guys. we attract our own work, but co- ordinate everything. working on each others jobs we simply bill each other. I think this is a great set up as there is no partnership on paper, we simply act like partners and co-ordinate our efforts together. Should we ever decide to part ways, it will be simple as there is nothing to separate. View Image View Image
When I was an hourly carpenter working on remote jobs with long commutes sometimes we would be paid for travel both ways (normally cost plus or T&M jobs I'm guessing), sometimes it would only be one way (bid job).
Since it was 45 min. out of our day each direction, and that was time we could be doing something else valuable (side jobs, working for someone who actually paid both ways, walking the dog, etc.), the more experienced carps simply reminded the boss when it came up that we are away from our homes for X hrs. a day and get $X. By not paying travel it's just like a cut in pay over contractors working closer to home.
Now that I'm in the city it takes 45 minutes to drive 10 miles in heavy traffic. With the price of gas and a 10 mpg work truck it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how much money is going down the tube by working across town.
Beer was created so carpenters wouldn't rule the world.
This business side of things is ten times harder than forming monster house foundations in a month of straight rain. View Image View Image
I agree.
This topic came up at work the other day, not with respect to employees, but when I'm hired as a solo carpenter sub for other contractors. There is roughly one day a week set aside for side jobs, punch list, maintenance, personal time, or whatever. I've been having a good time helping out other GC's, which also helps to get caught up on the latest gossip.
Each job is priced differently depending on what's common for the other GC. If they don't pay travel my rate is a little higher, same for material runs and getting tooled up. If 100% of my time is paid it doesn't make any difference if I'm at our normal project or a small one. However, as we all know the small jobs can be marginally profitable if all the running around is overhead and not accounted for.
In the big picture that's the same type of decision making that employees use. For most, it probably doesn't matter whatsoever if travel is paid or not, but rather it's the overall package.
Beer was created so carpenters wouldn't rule the world.