Travel time ?

[lovecoldair]

How long on average does it take you to get to your first job ?

And how long does it usually take you to get home ?

[ub2slo]

varies from 10min to 1 hour

[DPSwitch]

Why do you ask?

[lovecoldair]

I maight be starting a new job and you get paid from the time you get there till you leave , and currently i get paid both ways...its going to be a union service position..

Tring to figure out if they send me all over the place is it gunna be woth it

[DPSwitch]

Ohhh I gotcha........ Yeah I been there, gotta weigh it all out I guess on worse case scenario.

Ive had that ....and Ive had it where I got paid when i rolled over to look at the pager until I stopped thinking about it .....

[lovecoldair]

yea me too.....Im hoping the union benifits are worth it or atleast keep me closer to home lol

[DPSwitch]

There ya go.... good luck.

[ptemko]

We get paid from the time the truck leaves the drivway till you finish the call. So what sucks is that last call of the day and you are 1 1/2 hours from home. Now on the other hand my first call friday was 1 1/2 hour drive to change out a blower motor that dispatch sent me and on arrival the home owner was not home. Next call was a 45 minute drive away and the next was back to the first call because the homeowner came home. Picked up one more call that day on the way home and ended up only 15 minutes from home which is not bad.

[JBM1000]

Where I'm at, you get to take your truck home, paid for going from your home, and until home again. I'm also UA Service Tech.

[gan]

I get paid from the house to halfway back to the house, I have remote punch in so I punch in via telephone then sign into my first call on handheld at the end of the day I punch out via telephone and sign out of my last call halfway home.

[lovecoldair]

How do you like the hand held?

[gan]

its pretty cool it shows the info from the last tech who worked on it model and serial and acct information. When were done we enter all the information into it including any parts used and it uploads it. Its bonded via bluetooth to our nextel.

[lovecoldair]

Wow sound very usefull but kinda complicated too lol , thanks for the reply back

[wellhung]

be careful dude. worked for a company, cal @#!, in southern california. they did not pay travel time. would send you to palm springs from la. 3 hour trip one way and expected you to be happy about it. some of these companies are scandalous about travel.

[jrbenny]

Guess that's good reason to not work there.

Personally, I think you should be paid for any travel beyond the distance between your home and your shop. The rest of us don't get paid for commuting and most of us don't have company vehicles to drive home.

[ryan_the_furnace_guy]

The rest of us don't get paid for commuting and most of us don't have company vehicles to drive home.
It's different when you are expected to make that trip anywhere between three to six times per day on a Sunday or Holiday...

When I am on-call I only wish I had to make that trip once. Usually, however, it is drive to first call, complete it, drive home, ten minutes later, drive to second and third calls, complete them, drive home, ten minutes later, drive to fourth call...and this can go on and on ad infinitum for an entire 24 hour shift.:D Somehow technicians need to be compensated for going through this. I don't care if it is billed to the customer, but nobody should have to spend ten hours of driving time in one day for FREE!

[jrbenny]

On call is a different story. Port to port for sure!

My post presumed normal work day.

[refrigerationtech]

ive worked for both and to tell ya the truth its sad for people who do work as such, called flat rating someone, so 2 things happens in this situation callbacks that they tell ya its your fault not office, two even worse ya drive like a maniace to get there the fastest either getting ticket,accident at worst and stressed out at the end of the day when ya worked a 10 hr shift and only see 4 to 6 hrs on paper. its all depended on companies ya work for and thats what the bottom line is. theres the good and the bad. its just part of this trade i guess. hopefully it works out for ya. i think in terms if ya given a vehicle then it should be a 50 split pay to go to work but not home but saying this also a far distance. In everything its a give and take, as soon as u have more on one and the other then thats when the agrevations happen. good luck

[trypro]

Glad to know I haven't been the only one getting screwed I've been through to many companies rippin' me and customers off.Fortunately I have a short fuse and have no problem skimming calls to myself.Nothing I can live off of but, feel good about doing it right and maybe build my own future.Just remember customers are that,not friends everyone expects a few beers and dinner makes things even. Don't let chumps control your own future:Chicago

[conky]

How long on average does it take you to get to your first job ?

And how long does it usually take you to get home ?

It takes me about 9 minutes to get to my first job of the day

It takes me about 9 minutes to get home from my last job of the day.

Call outs, are paid from the time the text message was received, till I get

back home. There is a 4 hour min. pay on all call outs.

Stay Gold,:)

Conky

[HeyBob]

Tring to figure out if they send me all over the place is it gunna be woth it



Depends, Been there, done that, I hated it, 2 hours away from home at 6 pm with 6" of snow on the road.

[BobbyBJr]

Our tech's pay starts when they arrive at their first call in the morning, unless they have been dispatched to the shop for some reason. We try to watch the scheduling and if a tech's first call is more than 30 minutes drive, we pay him the difference. We also pay if a tech has to drive more than 30 minutes home in the evening. This was the deal everyone agreed to when we offered to allow the techs to drive their trucks home everyday years ago. On call, we pay port to port regardless.

[jrbenny]

That sounds like a very fair deal for everyone involved.

[FulhamSC]

Start getting paid 30 minutes after leaving house in AM, or at the job, which ever is first. Paid to the door of your house. Portal to portal on call.

[slimwoodie]

Our tech's pay starts when they arrive at their first call in the morning, unless they have been dispatched to the shop for some reason. We try to watch the scheduling and if a tech's first call is more than 30 minutes drive, we pay him the difference. We also pay if a tech has to drive more than 30 minutes home in the evening. This was the deal everyone agreed to when we offered to allow the techs to drive their trucks home everyday years ago. On call, we pay port to port regardless.

i think that that is a very fair deal for all parties ...:)

[CommtechinVA]

I give up 30 minutes each way. Fair to me, fair to the company. Everybody's happy.:)

[Trublshter]

Our pay starts at time you arrive at first job and then it's port to port on all others of the day. Call out on call is from when you leave your drivewave to the time you pull back into your driveway. Fair to everyone I think. Rarely we get someone from downtown Boston who thinks we are ripping them off when they realize we are in New Hampshire feels we should'nt charge travel. I always tell them you don't want to spend money on travel call the companies in Boston, Idiot ! Duh

[crackertech]

Our time start's when we get to first job of the day ti'll we leave last job of the day.And driveway to and from on call.

[ptemko]

Use to be from the time we left the driveway at 8:00am till we finished the last call no pay for the drive home. Them some clown was playing games and recked it for all of us. Now we have to be at the shop for 8:00am. No pay to drive to the shop. Then on call is from the time you leave the driveway till the call is done.

[jeremy-lvhm]

I used to have it damn good at my last job doing industrial refrigeration. I would get paid from the shop that was 2 hours west of me. If I went east I got 4 extra hours a day. If I went south I usually made a little or broke even, north about the same as south, but I lost big time when I went west especially PAST the shop. The good part was that I rarely went west, so on a normal week working in NJ I would get 20 hours a week of free money!!!

The stupid part about this is that when I started all I wanted to do was get paid from my house and back but since the office women didn't like the way this affected how they were used to doing things I had to change it. I got mad at first till my coworker told me to think about it and it worked out well. There were weeks I felt I should have been wearing a mask when I got paid. Oh well.

I think any type of company that requires you to do long driving like in commercial or industrial they shouldn't make you eat more than 1/2 hour each way if any at all. Residential where you are relatively close might be a different story especially since you usually get a free truck out of it.

Of coarse if you don't have GPS there are always ways to "make up your lost time" with creative timekeeping.

:D

[cracker]

The last POS service mgr I had, would track you from when the key went In the truck, till the time It was pull out at night.
You had to give him your first hour and last, If the truck stoped for more than 5 mins, It sent a flag to his computer, and your pay roll clock stop, At the end of you week you got a mirco manage pay stub, showing the time you were not pay for, some times as much as 2.5 hours........Glad I don't work there any more!!

[The Penguin]

not getting paid for travel time particulary between jobs does not provide any incentive for the despatcher/ manager to co-ordinate yours and other techs schedules efficently.

yes they may make some effort to keep up the billable hours - but you don't say if the company charges the customer travel time (directly or indirectly)

and if they have no real incentive to keep things under control I can see they could have you at work for 12 hours to get your 8 (not inc to/from home) you get no ot cause you worked 8 but you were at work for 12 then you get to drive home