Should you charge customers for travel time and parking?

The short answer

Yes, you can charge for travel time and parking, and most firms do in one form or another. Every hour an engineer spends driving or circling for a space is an hour you pay for and cannot sell. What customers object to is not the cost but the surprise: a 'travel' line or a parking receipt they did not expect on the final bill.

So the real decision is about presentation. Do you show travel and parking as separate items, include them in a call-out charge or hourly rate, or use zones? Each works if it is explained before the job is booked.

Three common ways to charge for travel

Many firms combine two models: travel built into the rate inside a home zone, plus parking and road charges at cost for city-centre addresses. Whatever you choose, write it down in one paragraph that the office can read out and the website can show.

What travel actually costs you

Start with wages. In 2026 the median gross hourly pay of full-time plumbers and heating installers was £19.00^[1] and of electricians £19.54^[2]. Add employer National Insurance, pension, van costs, fuel and the margin you would have earned on a job, and an hour of driving costs far more than the wage figure.

Example: a fictional heating firm based in Reading takes a job in a village 25 minutes outside its usual area. The round trip adds about 50 minutes of driving compared with a local job. At a loaded cost of, say, £45 an hour for the engineer and van, that is about £38 of cost before any parking. If the firm charges a £30 zone surcharge, it is still slightly out of pocket but keeps a customer it can serve again; if it charges nothing, the job barely covers itself.

First journey, between jobs and the drive home

Not all travel is the same, and it helps to decide which journeys you treat as the customer's cost and which as your own overhead.

• The drive from home or the yard to the first job is normally treated as overhead and covered by your call-out charge or rate, because every working day has one.
• Travel between jobs is where zone surcharges earn their keep. A diary that sends a van from one edge of the area to the other at lunchtime loses money whatever the customer pays.
• The drive home after a late emergency call is usually built into the out-of-hours rate rather than billed separately.
• Return visits for parts are a cost of your own planning, not the customer's. Charging travel for a second visit you caused is a common source of complaints.

Being clear on this internally stops engineers and the office making different promises. It also shows where the real savings are: better grouping of jobs and fewer return trips usually recover more than any surcharge.

Parking, congestion and clean air charges

Parking costs vary from nothing in most suburbs to a significant sum in city centres. In central London a van driving in during charging hours pays the congestion charge, which rose from £15 to £18 a day from 2 January 2026, or £21 if paid within three days after travel^[3]. A van that does not meet the ULEZ standard, Euro 4 for petrol or Euro 6 for diesel, also pays a £12.50 daily ULEZ charge^[4].

These are predictable costs. They belong in the price for any job inside the zone, not on a later invoice. Parking fines are different: a penalty charge notice is a cost of the way your firm parked, not of the customer's job, and passing it on rarely ends well. The guide to parking near jobs covers permits, loading rules and appeals.

• Ask about parking at booking: 'Is there off-street parking, a driveway we can use, or will we need a permit or pay-and-display?'
• If the customer can provide a visitor permit, ask them to have it ready and note it on the job.
• For jobs inside a congestion or clean air zone, add the daily charge to the quote as its own line so the customer sees why it is there.
• Keep receipts against the job reference so any parking charged at cost can be evidenced.

What consumer law expects you to tell customers

For contracts with consumers made at a distance or away from your premises, such as a booking over the phone or a quote accepted in the customer's kitchen, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 require you to give the total price including taxes before the customer is bound. Where the price cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, you must explain how it will be calculated, and you must tell the customer about any additional charges, or that such charges may be payable if you cannot work them out yet^[5].

In practice that means travel surcharges, parking and road charges should be mentioned in the quote or booking confirmation, not first appear on the invoice. A charge the customer was never told about is the easiest kind for them to dispute.

Wording that does not surprise anyone

Short, plain lines work best. The office should use the same wording on the phone, in confirmation texts and on the website.

• Booking call: 'You're just outside our usual area, so there's a fixed travel charge on top of the call-out. I'll include it in your confirmation so you can see the total.'
• City-centre job: 'As you're inside the congestion charge zone, the daily charge is added to the quote as a separate line. If we can park on your drive, there are no other parking costs.'
• Quote footnote: 'Price includes travel within our standard area. Pay-and-display or permit costs, if needed, are charged at cost with receipts.'
• Website: one short paragraph under prices or areas covered that lists your zones and how parking is handled.

Example: three ways to quote the same city job

Example: a fictional electrical firm is asked to replace a consumer unit in a flat inside the central London congestion zone, with no off-street parking. The office could quote it three ways.

1. A single all-in price with travel, parking and the congestion charge absorbed. Simple for the customer, but the firm has to remember to raise its price for every zone job, and the customer cannot see why it is higher than a quote from a firm outside London.
2. The standard price plus two lines: the daily congestion charge and pay-and-display parking at cost with receipts. Transparent, and the customer understands that the extra lines relate to where they live, not to the work.
3. The standard price plus a fixed central London surcharge covering all road and parking costs. Predictable for both sides, as long as the surcharge is published and kept up to date when charges change.

The firm chooses the second option for one-day jobs and the third for longer work, and the office script explains both in one sentence. Complaints about extras stop, because nothing on the invoice is new to the customer.

A decision checklist

1. Map where your last three months of jobs actually were, and draw your home zone around the bulk of them.
2. Work out your loaded hourly cost and the cost of a typical out-of-zone journey.
3. Decide whether travel is included, zoned or timed, and cap any timed travel for domestic work.
4. List the addresses or postcodes where parking or road charges usually apply.
5. Write one paragraph of policy and one script for the office, and put both on the job confirmation.
6. Review the zones every six months, especially if you add vans or start covering a new town.

Clear travel rules also make the diary easier to run. When the office knows which jobs carry a surcharge, it can group them on the same day and keep vans in one area, which is the approach covered in planning multi-day jobs and in van stock management.