Revenue per truck per day: the number behind growth, and the divisor nobody tracks

Revenue per truck per day is your average ticket multiplied by the jobs each truck completes in a day. Most companies work on the ticket. The jobs-per-day side is usually the bigger lever, and it is controlled by how many minutes of each day go to driving instead of working.

If you run service trucks, this is the number that tells you whether adding a truck will make money or just make the board busier. It is also the number that drops quietly when the schedule gets sloppy, long before anything shows up on the P&L.

The formula

Revenue per truck per day = Average ticket × Jobs per truck per day

Both sides have their own definitions: see average ticket and revenue per technician. For a one-tech truck the two are the same number. For two-person crews, divide by people, not trucks, when you compare to a one-person truck.

The ticket gets the attention because it is easy to talk about: price increases, upsells, maintenance plans. Jobs per day gets less, because it feels fixed. "Our techs do about four a day." It isn't fixed. It is the output of an equation most owners never write down.

The hidden divisor

Jobs per day is how many job-plus-drive cycles fit into a working day:

Jobs per day = Productive minutes ÷ (Average time on site + Average drive between jobs)

Write it with letters. Let W be the working minutes in a day after breaks and the shop start, S the average time on site, and D the average drive between jobs.

Jobs per day = W ÷ (S + D)

D is the hidden divisor. Every minute added to the average drive sits in the denominator of every job. Nobody books "drive" as a line item, so nobody sees it shrink the day. The windshield time post shows how to measure it from a week of your own records. The jobs per day calculator runs this formula on your own inputs.

These are made-up numbers. But look at what changed: not the price, not the tech, not the hours. Twenty minutes of drive per job turned into 0.8 jobs a day. To get the same lift from the ticket side, you would need to raise the average ticket from $350 to $420, a 20% price increase.

That is the core point. A 20-minute drop in average drive did the same work as a 20% price increase. Run it on your own numbers before you decide which lever to pull.

Why drive is high in the first place

Average drive between jobs is mostly decided at booking, not on the road. Three patterns push it up:

1. Phone-order booking. Each caller gets the first open slot, wherever it is. The day zig-zags.
2. Territory too wide per truck. Every tech covers everywhere, so every day has long legs.
3. Shop-based travel estimates. If someone checks drive at all, they check it from the shop, not from the previous job.

The plan a dispatch day around drive time guide shows how to build a day from the drive outward. The short version: decide the area each truck works in before you fill its slots, and check the drive from the previous job before you offer a time.

Fitting the extra job is not automatic

Cutting drive frees minutes. It only becomes revenue if an extra job is booked into them. Two things get in the way.

Fragmented time. Saving 10 minutes between each of four jobs gives you 40 minutes, but in four pieces. A job needs one block. Saving drive works best when it is consolidated at the end of the day, where it becomes a fifth slot.

Demand. If you don't have the calls to fill the slot, saved drive becomes earlier finishes and less overtime. That is still worth money, but it is a cost saving, not revenue per truck.

This is where scheduling software either helps or doesn't. CrewLink's booking page offers only start times a qualified tech can actually make, with the drive at that hour computed from the previous job, so a saved block is offered as a real slot rather than left as a gap. CrewLink is in early access.

How to measure it this week

You don't need software to get a first read. Take last week's records:

1. Revenue per truck: sum of invoiced revenue per truck, divided by days worked.
2. Jobs per truck per day: completed jobs divided by truck-days.
3. Average ticket: revenue divided by jobs.
4. Average drive: take three representative truck-days, list the jobs in order, and estimate the drive between each pair from a map at that hour.

If average drive is more than about half of average time on site, drive is likely your biggest lever. If it's small, the ticket and the mix of work matter more.

Common questions

What is a good revenue per truck per day?

It depends heavily on trade, region, residential versus commercial mix and pricing model, so a single benchmark is misleading. Track your own number weekly and compare trucks against each other. The spread between your best and worst truck usually tells you more than an industry average.

How do I calculate revenue per technician per day?

Divide revenue by technician-days worked, not truck-days. For one-person trucks the numbers are the same. For crews, revenue per technician is the fairer comparison.

Is it better to raise prices or add jobs per day?

Run both on your own numbers. Write jobs per day as working minutes divided by time on site plus drive, then compare a realistic price increase with a realistic drive reduction. In many service fleets the drive side is larger and doesn't risk losing customers.

Should I add a truck if revenue per truck is high?

Only if demand is turning away work. If trucks are busy because the days are full of driving, fixing the schedule may give you the capacity of an extra truck without buying one.