Travel Pay - Hourly Employees

[Robb B]

This has been a very touchy subject at my workplace for awhile, so I'm curious what your companies do for pay hourly guys?

Travel to customer? Do they get paid full regular pay when driving/flying to cusotmer? My time starts from when I get to the shop. Time spent driving to customers location is charged at full rate, if it is beyond town limits, mileage is added.

How do employees clock-in/clock-out? We write up time slips for each job detailing what we did and for which customers and for how long.

What about layovers or delayed flights? I don't know about flying, but I would expect any time spent doing anything related to work including waiting for a plane, would be billable, and thus, payable to employee.

Responses written to each question.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

We paid the the equivalent hourly rate for people that traveled. Except for me.
I got screwed but I could take comp time.
In the end the customer ended up paying for the travel expenses. It was worth while to buy a slightly more expensive ticket with few connections rather than go for the cheapest fair because travel time accumulated while waiting at an air port. Also, our techs would get to the site better rested.

One time one of our techs spent 10 hours getting to the site. He fixed the problem in a few minutes. The customer did question why he was getting billed for all the hours, hotel room that night and meals etc for fixing the problem in a just a few minutes of at the site work.

Most things we can handle over the internet for free if there is just some one trained on the other end.

 

[mike3475]

my last job is paid for $65 per diem plus $4 laundry for everyday in traveling, company paid hotel/rent car, if i work over time, i got over time pay. fly back i got 75% per diet (for example: you finished all job at Thursday, At Friday you travel to home).

 

[mobil1syn]

if i was reporting to the office time started when i got to the office. if i was going to a customer/site, time started when i left my house and ended when i got home. time sheets were just a spreadsheet.

long distance travel (driving or flying) was always paid under the standard pay scale. made a lot of money over the years traveling.

as for per diem - never did it. there was an unwritten rule that food was $45 (assumption was a hotel breakfast) a day on the company card and i just always stayed in holiday inn expresses. the only time i had management complain was when my room when from $110 to $350 in the same stay. they didnt realize i was near an event and that rates jumped during that time. told them to shop around and let me know, never heard back.

a lot of our policies were established by our boss who was a field guy in his younger years, he always took care of us. rip MW

 

[RVaughan]

Last company I worked at, travel to a customer site was time and mileage door to door, minus your regular commute to the office. Travel time was straight pay and did not contribute to overtime hours. I think there was a maximum travel time per day. (Current company has a maximum driving time per day).

I never liked per diem, and I always paid my guys for actual travel and living expenses. Per diem is rarely enough to cover actual expenses, and I've seen people scrimp to live on the cheap to make it work. It leads to hard feelings and even impacts performance.

Used to be I could go to the grocery store and feed myself (decently) on $3-5 per day, if the hotel price included breakfast. The rest of the per diem money went in my pocket tax free. Seemed rather foolish to me to eat at restaurants and throw away hundreds of dollars per week. I'll take the per diem, please!
Once in a while I would see some smart folks at a hotel grilling out of the back of their work pickup.

Current company sets a daily limit on their credit card. My incentive, therefore, is to eat where I earn rewards points and use those to feed the family for free when we take road trips.

 

[JTCat]

Kind of a different pay structure but it goes like this.

You are paid straight time hours up to 40 hours while at the jobsite. 1.5x after 40, or all hours worked beyond 8. But the first 8 of every day are always straight time.
While not at the jobsite you are paid 1.5x minimum wage from the time you leave your house until the time you get back home.

If we have a field tech out for 72 hours, and he works 30 hours during those 72, he would be paid (assume $40 / hr)

24 hours x 40
6 hours OT x 60
42 hours x (state / federal minimum wave) X 1.5, whichever is higher. (For the sake of keeping it simple we will call it $12x1.5 = 42x18.

Technician makes gross $2,076 for being away from home for 3 days.
There is no dedicated away team, but we don't suffer from lack of volunteers.

Employees are constantly on the clock if they have to travel. One exception - If employee has alcoholic beverage with dinner then they are not paid for the next six hours. HR cover-thy-*** policy so we don't have inebriated people on the clock.