Scheduling & Route Density: the windshield-time leak

Every minute a technician spends in the truck is a minute they aren't billing. On most trades boards it's the single largest recoverable leak — and it hides in plain sight because nobody tracks it.

What it is

Windshield time is every paid minute a tech spends not turning a wrench: driving to the first call, long routes between jobs, a last call that finishes early, and techs sitting in the truck waiting for the next dispatch. Labour is your most expensive input, and drive time converts it straight into overhead. A shop can be "busy" all day and still bill six hours out of ten.

How to spot it

Techs bill fewer than 6 hours in an 8-hour day
Drive time exceeds 15% of paid hours
The shop sits outside the service area, so first-call travel is long and the last call ends by 3pm
Dispatch texts the next address mid-job — no clustering
The same neighbourhoods get hit on different days of the week

How to measure it

Billable utilisationbillable hours ÷ paid hoursTarget: 70–75%

Drive-time %drive hours ÷ total work hoursTarget: under 15%

Route densityjobs within a 5-mile radius per dayTarget: 3+

First-call starttime first tech is on-siteTarget: on-site by 8:00am

Typical impact

$30,000–$50,000per year for a 3-truck shop

A 3-truck shop running 60% billable utilisation instead of 75% is losing roughly 1.2 billable hours per truck per day. Across 220 working days at $120/hour, the high end reaches about $95,000 a year — most shops recover $30,000–$50,000 once they tighten routing. None of it requires more trucks, more techs, or a dollar of marketing.

How to fix it

Optimise dispatch and routing. Use dispatch software with route optimisation, and assign each tech a geographic zone for the day instead of scattered calls.
Cluster first and last calls. Book the first job near the shop and the last job near the tech's home so the day starts and ends with minimal drive time.
Set a minimum drive window. If the next job is more than 20 minutes away, dispatch reassigns it so no tech burns half an hour between calls.
Stack same-neighbourhood work. Batch every call in one subdivision or corridor into the same day rather than hitting the same area on different days.
Front-load the day. Load out trucks the night before and get the first tech on-site by 8:00am, not 9:30am after coffee.

The IronMargin angle: a dispatch-and-routing review is usually the first fix we tackle together, including getting more out of the dispatch software you already pay for (IronMargin is independent and has no software partnerships). Recovering even five points of utilisation here usually pays for the coaching several times over.