A company drive time policy for contractors: the decisions to make

What decisions does a drive time policy have to make?

A policy has to settle eight things, and the law has already settled two of them. Time spent traveling as part of the principal activity, such as from job site to job site, is hours worked (29 CFR 785.38). Normal travel from home to work is not, whether the worker goes to a fixed location or to different job sites (29 CFR 785.35). The rest is yours to decide and to write down.

How do you decide where the paid day starts?

Decide, crew by crew, whether workers must report to the shop or yard first, and write it into the dispatch rather than leaving it to habit. If workers are required to report to a meeting place for tools, instructions or a truck, the drive from there is work time, and 785.38 applies even where a contract, custom or usual practice says otherwise.

• Require the shop only when you need it. Every required stop at the shop adds a paid drive. If a crew can pick up tools the day before and go direct, say so.
• Do not run an informal expectation. A foreman who tells people to swing by the yard when they can has made a requirement. The policy and the practice have to match.
• Put the reporting point on the schedule. A dispatch line that says where each worker starts is the cheapest record you will ever keep.
• Handle exceptions in writing. A one-time early meeting at the shop on a Monday is still a reporting point for that day.

Do you ever pay for the commute?

You do not have to, and the federal rule is that ordinary home-to-work travel is not work time (29 CFR 785.35). Some contractors pay for a long drive to a far site anyway, to fill a crew. If you do, label it as what it is, keep it out of the regular hours total and ask counsel how your state and any union agreement treat it before you rely on that label.

A policy that mixes a courtesy payment into the hours column is the version that causes disputes later, because nobody can tell from the sheet what the number means. Keep commute payments on their own line and give the line a name.

What rate should drive time earn?

Either the worker's normal rate, which is simple, or a separate travel rate, which saves money on paper and complicates overtime. When a worker earns two different rates in one workweek, the regular rate for that week is the weighted average of the rates (29 CFR 778.115), so a lower travel rate pulls the overtime rate down only part of the way and creates a calculation payroll has to do correctly every week.

Before you adopt a travel rate, add up what it actually saves across a year of drives, then weigh that against the cost of explaining a second rate to every worker and of an error in the weighted average. If the saving is small, the simple rate is the cheaper policy to run.

Which job should carry the cost of a drive?

Pick one of four rules and apply it the same way to every drive: the destination job, the job the crew left, a split of the two, or an overhead code. The law does not decide this. It is a job costing choice, separate from whether the drive is paid.

How should supply runs, load-out and return trips be treated?

Treat them as paid travel in the day's work and decide only which job or code they are charged to. A supply house run in the middle of the day is travel between two points of work, and a required return to the shop to drop a truck or tools is part of the day. Record each as its own line, so the minutes are visible and nobody argues about them later.

What should the policy say about vehicles and mileage?

It should say who drives which vehicle, whether any vehicle goes home at night and how mileage is reimbursed, and it should keep all of that apart from the hours. Mileage is an expense question, and hours are a wage question. The rules for vehicle expense differ by state, so ask counsel or your accountant before you copy another company's wording.

• Take-home company vehicles. Name who may take one home and the written agreement that covers it. The legal guide notes the federal rule for this.
• Personal vehicles used for work. Decide how work miles are reimbursed and where the worker records them.
• Passengers. Within the workday, everyone in the truck is traveling as part of the day's work. Write one rule, not one for drivers and another for riders.
• Mileage is not hours. A reimbursement is never a substitute for paying the minutes.

Who may correct a recorded drive?

A named reviewer may correct a drive, with a written reason, and the original entry stays on file. A drive is the entry most likely to be disputed, because it is the part of the day nobody wrote down on paper. A correction with no reason attached is an argument waiting to happen.

1. The worker or foreman flags the drive and says what is wrong.
2. The office reviewer checks it against the record and either accepts it, edits it or declines it.
3. The edit shows who made it, when and why, next to the figure it replaced.
4. A change after the week was approved creates a new version and does not overwrite the old one.

How do you know the policy is clear enough?

Give two people the draft and three real days, and ask each to work out the paid minutes without talking to the other. If the answers differ, the policy is not finished. This test costs an hour and finds the wording that would otherwise surface as a pay dispute.

• Day 1: required shop start, two jobsites, truck back to the shop.
• Day 2: sent straight from home to a site, with a supply run in the middle.
• Day 3: a one-day job in another city, with a drive of more than an hour each way.
• Both readers get the same paid minutes, the same overtime and the same job charges for every day.
• The policy names an owner, an effective date and the date it will next be reviewed.
• Workers were told in writing before it took effect, and any union or prevailing wage terms were checked first.

For clause wording you can adapt, see the drive time policy template.

How ZeroBadge handles this

ZeroBadge records the drive and leaves the policy to you. Every minute of a shift is classified on site, in transit or other and allocated to a jobsite, the shop or a supplier stop, and a move between sites stays one shift. Transit shows as its own line by worker and day, so your rate and job charging rules can apply to it, and a manager sees it with the exceptions before approving the week. ZeroBadge records time in transit, not miles, and does not decide what is compensable. See drive time tracking.