Drive time is the largest unbilled cost in a field service business and the one nobody measures.
TL;DR Cluster jobs geographically before optimising routes. Send an automatic on-the-way text, which removes most inbound calls. Measure drive time as a percentage of the working day. Tracking is for dispatch, not for surveillance.
Measure drive time first
Most operators are surprised by their own number.
Calculate it. Total driving hours divided by total working hours, per technician, over a fortnight.
Then split it
- Between jobs. The bit optimisation actually improves.
- To the first job and home from the last. Improved by area assignment, not by routing.
- Supplier and depot trips. Improved by van stock, covered separately.
Knowing which of the three dominates tells you which fix to invest in. People buy routing software when their real problem is three trips to the merchant a day.
Cluster before you optimise
Geographic clustering delivers more than clever routing does.
How it works
- Divide your area into zones.
- Assign days, or technicians, to zones.
- Book non-urgent work into the zone day.
We are in your area on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Which suits better?
Customers accept this readily. It sounds organised, which it is.
What it produces
- Much shorter hops between jobs.
- Predictable days for the team.
- Genuine capacity to absorb an emergency without wrecking the schedule.
- Better first-time fix rates, because the van stock can match the zone.
Keep emergency capacity outside the system. A rigid zone schedule with no slack breaks the first time something urgent lands.
Route optimisation software
Useful once clustering is in place, and much less useful before.
What to look for
- Time windows, not just addresses. A route that ignores appointment times is useless.
- Job duration estimates by type.
- Technician skill matching, so the right person gets the right job.
- Live re-optimisation when something overruns.
- Real traffic data.
- Return-to-base handling, if relevant.
Realistic expectation. Routing software delivers useful gains on top of good clustering. It does not rescue a badly organised schedule, and vendor case study percentages usually describe businesses starting from chaos.
The on-the-way text
The single highest-value automation in this whole area, and the cheapest.
Two messages
Night before: Sicc Heating. We are booked in tomorrow between 8 and 10am. Reply if you need to change it.
On the way: On our way, about 20 minutes. Dave is driving, he will call if he cannot find parking.
What this eliminates
- The “what time are you coming” call, which is the highest-volume inbound call in most service businesses.
- Missed appointments through nobody being home.
- The complaint about waiting in all day.
Automate both from the schedule. The night-before from the calendar, the on-the-way from the technician marking travel started in the app.
Naming the technician matters more than it should. It converts an unknown van into a person.
Live tracking
Frame it as dispatch and customer service, not monitoring.
Legitimate uses
- Deciding who takes an incoming emergency.
- Giving an accurate arrival estimate.
- Confirming attendance for a dispute.
- Safety, for lone workers.
Where it goes wrong
- Tracking outside working hours.
- Using it to challenge break times.
- Introducing it without telling the team.
Be explicit with staff about what is tracked, when, and who sees it. In many jurisdictions this is a legal requirement as well as the right thing to do. Covert tracking of employees is a serious problem, not a management technique.
Customer-facing tracking is now expected on the day of the appointment. A live map link on the on-the-way text is a genuine differentiator for smaller operators.
Reducing supplier trips
Often the biggest single drive-time saving, and it has nothing to do with routing.
- Van stock lists by job type. The twenty parts that cover most jobs.
- Weekly restock at a fixed time, not ad hoc.
- Delivery to site for large or job-specific items.
- Consolidated collection by one person for the whole team.
Track mid-job supplier trips. Each one is roughly an hour of unbilled time plus a delayed job, and the pattern in them tells you exactly what to add to the van.
Fuel and vehicle costs
- Fuel cards for data, not just payment. The reporting is the point.
- Cost per job including fuel and vehicle time, not just fuel per mile.
- Idling, which is invisible without telematics and adds up.
- Servicing on schedule. A vehicle off the road unexpectedly costs far more than the service.
Measure it
- Drive time as a percentage of working hours. The headline metric.
- Jobs completed per technician per day.
- Miles per job.
- First-time fix rate. Rises with better van stock and zoning.
- “Where are you” calls per week. Should fall to near zero with the on-the-way text.
Set up the night-before and on-the-way texts this week. Two automations, both trivial to build, and together they remove the most common inbound call in your business.
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