A service radius is the maximum distance a field service company will travel from a starting point to take a job. It works best measured in drive minutes from where the truck will be, not in straight-line miles from the shop.
Why miles mislead
A 25-mile radius draws a neat circle on the map. Your trucks don't drive circles. They drive roads, across rivers with two bridges, through a downtown that takes 15 minutes to cross at 8:00 a.m. and 40 at 5:00 p.m. Two addresses both 20 miles from the shop can be 25 minutes and 70 minutes away.
A radius in minutes fixes that. "We go anywhere within 45 minutes of the shop" describes the cost of the trip, which is what the radius is supposed to control. A map drawn that way is an isochrone: the line of every point you can reach in a given drive time.
The formula
Drive cost per job = Round-trip drive hours × Loaded hourly cost + Round-trip miles × Vehicle cost per mile
Maximum one-way minutes (M) is the drive at which Drive cost per job = Job margin you are willing to spend on travel
Set M by job type. A $2,000 install can carry a long drive. A $150 service call can't.
These are invented numbers. Run your own, and use a trip charge for jobs past the line rather than refusing them outright.
The radius moves with the truck
The shop is where the day starts, not where every job starts. A tech finishing a job 30 minutes north of the shop at 1:00 p.m. has a radius centered on that job. An address 50 minutes from the shop might be 20 minutes from where the truck actually is.
That is the difference between a service area, which is the boundary you advertise, and the radius that matters at booking time, which is the drive from the previous job. Checking the second one when a time is offered is how you take an edge job that fits and decline one that doesn't. The drive-time dispatch guide walks through that day by day. CrewLink's booking page works this way: it offers only times a qualified tech can make from the previous job, and an address outside every tech's area becomes an out-of-area request for the office.
Radius, area and territory
- Service radius: how far from a point you will drive.
- Service area: the whole boundary you take work in, often a union of radii, ZIP codes or counties.
- Service territory: a piece of the service area assigned to one tech, crew or branch.
What to take away
- Set your service radius in drive minutes, not miles.
- Pick the maximum by job type from what each job can afford to spend on travel.
- The radius that matters at booking is measured from the truck's previous job.
- Use a trip charge past the line instead of a hard no.
Common questions
How far should a technician travel for a service call?
Far enough that the round-trip drive cost stays inside the margin you set aside for travel on that job type. For a low-ticket call that is often 20 to 30 minutes each way; for installs it can be much more. Run the formula on your own costs.
Should a service radius be measured in miles or minutes?
Minutes. Miles ignore roads, bridges and traffic, and the same mileage can take very different times depending on the hour.
What happens to jobs outside the service radius?
Common options are a trip charge, booking them only on days a truck is already nearby, or referring them out. Saying no is the last option, not the first.