Garage time

Garage time is the travel between your garage and the job that the customer never rides in, and on hourly work it is often billed. A common convention is 30 minutes on each end, so a four-hour charter is billed as five hours garage to garage.

The term matters most on charters and as-directed work, where the meter runs on the clock rather than the route. A motorcoach leaving the yard at 6:00 for an 8:00 pickup has already burned two hours of driver pay and fuel before the first passenger boards. Operators who quote hourly without garage time are quietly giving that away.

Conventions differ by market and by vehicle. Many sedan operators waive garage time inside their home metro and bill it on out-of-town runs. Many coach operators bill it on every charter and say so on the quote. The mistake is not picking a rule: a dispatcher quotes one way, the bookkeeper invoices another, and the customer disputes the difference.

How liverybook handles it

Garage time is a billing convention, not a separate field. Operators who bill it set the hourly base rate on the rate list to include it, or add it as an extra on the leg, where the leg total is base rate plus gratuity, tolls, parking, wait time charge and extras, less any discount. Rates are set per vehicle class in billing, and the resulting invoice line is built as the leg completes on the run board.

Related terms

• Dead-head
• Hourly charter
• Wait time
• Base rate