Travel time: what it means
DefinitionTravel time is the time a technician spends driving from one job site to the next, including parking and walking to the door. It is real working time that nobody invoices, so a schedule that ignores it promises arrivals the crew cannot make.
How it works in a service business
A calendar that stacks jobs back to back looks tidy but assumes teleportation. Honest scheduling shows the drive between stops so the dispatcher can see that a ten o'clock job in one suburb cannot be followed by an eleven o'clock job across the river. Software can estimate drive time from addresses, but traffic, school pickup and construction change it. The tradeoff is accuracy versus effort: estimates are good enough for most days, and busy corridors deserve a manual cushion. A common mistake is counting only highway miles and forgetting the ten minutes lost finding parking in a dense neighborhood. Review average drive times by area each season.
Example
The schedule shows a thirty-five minute drive between a morning pressure-wash job and the next one, so the dispatcher offers the next customer a noon start rather than eleven.
Where Apex touches this
Built
Built and working against the real database for our first business only. Early access. Status as of 2026-10-07; the badge shows the least-built feature involved.
- SC28Drive-time between jobs shown(Built)
- SC05Route optimization (daily)(Built)
Apex Flow Scheduler is in early access. See how we label status.