Drive Time vs. Wrench Time for Electricians: The Numbers That Determine Job Profitability
A 10-person electrical crew where each tech drives 60 untracked minutes per day is burning through $187,500 in unrecovered labor costs annually at a $75/hr loaded rate. That is the wrench time problem in one sentence.
If you cannot see where your crew's hours are going -- drive time, setup, wrench-on-wire -- you cannot price jobs right, and you cannot fix what's broken. The split between drive time and wrench time is one of the most financially significant numbers in your business, and most contractors never measure it.
What Is Wrench Time for Electricians?
Wrench time is the percentage of a shift an electrician spends on direct installation -- hands on tools, work getting done. Industry averages run 40-45% of total shift hours.According to Jamie Sullivan, president of Milwaukee-based Staff Electric, electricians typically spend only 40-45% of their day on actual installation work. The remaining 55-60% goes to everything else: travel, material runs, waiting on inspectors, tool staging, and administrative tasks.
That 40-45% is your wrench time ratio. For a crew billing at $85/hr, a ratio below 50% means less than half your labor cost is generating direct install output -- the rest gets absorbed into overhead or quietly erodes your T&M margins.
Wrench time is a job-level metric, not just an employee-level one. A foreman might show 65% wrench time on a commercial panel job but 35% on a scattered residential service route. Both numbers matter for bidding accuracy and crew scheduling decisions.
Tracking it consistently -- by job type, by crew, by time of year -- is the foundation of accurate cost estimating and real labor productivity benchmarks that hold up across your portfolio.
What Counts as Drive Time on Electrical Jobs?
Drive time is any period when a crew member is in transit between the shop, job sites, or supply runs -- moving between locations, not generating installation output.Drive time typically includes shop-to-first-job travel, between-site movement on multi-location days, mid-job supply runs when materials were not pre-staged, and trips to permit offices or inspection queues.
It does not include on-site movement between work areas, loading and unloading at the job site, or time spent staging materials at the truck. Those fall under setup or installation depending on your classification system.
The distinction matters beyond payroll. Drive time is the most predictable and reducible non-wrench category. Inspector wait times, change order delays, and weather shutdowns are harder to control. Drive time is a scheduling problem -- which means it is solvable with the right route planning and crew assignment decisions.
Most electrical contractors undercount drive time because they only track hours at the job site. Shop departure and return times go unrecorded. That gap accumulates fast across a 250-day work year.
How Much Drive Time Are Electrical Crews Losing Per Day?
The typical range is 45-90 minutes of drive time per electrician per day, depending on territory size and route sequencing. Even 60 minutes per tech adds up to $187,500 per year for a 10-person crew.Here is what untracked drive time costs at different crew sizes:
| Crew Size | Drive Time/Day | Loaded Rate | Daily Cost | Annual Cost |
| 5 techs | 60 min/tech | $75/hr | $375 | $93,750 |
| 10 techs | 60 min/tech | $75/hr | $750 | $187,500 |
| 15 techs | 45 min/tech | $75/hr | $844 | $210,937 |
That cost does not disappear. It gets buried in overhead, absorbed by jobs that appeared profitable on paper, or contributes to bids that consistently underprice similar work in future estimates.
Should Electricians Bill Customers for Drive Time?
Yes for T&M service work when contracts allow it. No for fixed-price project bids -- but you should still track drive time internally to improve future estimates.The right approach depends on your contract structure:
T&M service calls: Bill drive time at a reduced rate (50-75% of your labor rate) or as a flat trip charge. Customers on service contracts expect it. Hiding it means you are absorbing the cost, not eliminating it. Fixed-price commercial projects: Do not itemize drive time to the customer, but track it rigorously. If actual drive hours exceed your bid assumptions by 20%, your next similar bid needs to price that in. Historical drive data by job type is some of the most valuable estimating intelligence you can collect. Multi-site days for the same GC: When a crew moves between two project sites owned by the same customer or GC, that transit time is typically billable. Get it in the contract explicitly before mobilization.Unresolved drive time billing is a top cause of T&M job margin erosion. If your crew starts the clock at the shop and you only bill from when tools hit the job site, you have already conceded 30-45 minutes of labor cost per tech per visit before anyone turns a screw.
How Do You Track Drive Time vs Wrench Time?
Two time entries per job stop: one for travel (clock in leaving shop, out at arrival), one for on-site work (clock in at site, out at departure). One extra tap per tech per stop.The simplest method that works in the field:
- Travel entry: Clock in when leaving the shop or previous site, clock out when arriving at the job site
- Work entry: Clock in when starting on-site work, clock out when leaving
The time breakdown per job looks like this:
- Travel: 0.75 hrs
- Setup: 0.25 hrs
- Install: 5.5 hrs
- Load-out: 0.5 hrs
How Does Drive Time Data Feed Into QuickBooks Job Costing?
Each time entry syncs to QuickBooks as a separate TimeActivity record under the same job. Drive and wrench time appear as distinct cost lines, giving you split labor costing automatically.When techs log separate travel and on-site entries, QuickBooks receives two cost records per job visit: one for drive labor, one for installation labor. Your job cost P&L shows the split -- so when a job runs 25% over on labor, you can tell whether it was travel-heavy or install-heavy.
That distinction changes your response entirely. Travel overruns are a scheduling fix. Install overruns mean the scope was wrong or the crew hit field conditions that need to be priced into the next bid.
FieldTimesheet syncs time entries directly to QuickBooks TimeActivity records with full job and employee attribution. No manual re-entry, no spreadsheet reconciliation. The job costing workflow pulls drive and wrench time into project-level reports alongside materials and subcontractor costs.
For contractors running T&M billing, that split also makes it easier to support invoices. A customer questioning a labor line can see installation time versus travel time as separate, timestamped, GPS-verified entries.
What Is a Good Wrench Time Ratio for an Electrical Crew?
Target 60-70% wrench time for service crews and 70-80% for project crews. Below 50% consistently points to a scheduling, routing, or materials staging problem.Industry benchmarks from NECA and ELECTRI International show top-performing electrical contractors achieving wrench time ratios of 65-75%. The industry average sits closer to 45-55%.
Staff Electric increased per-technician annual revenue from $250,000-$270,000 to $350,000-$370,000 after implementing structured productivity tracking over six years -- a 37% improvement driven largely by reducing non-wrench time.
Practical targets by work type:
- Residential service: 55-65% wrench time (more drive, more scattered stops)
- Commercial project: 70-80% wrench time (crew stays on-site, less travel overhead)
- Industrial: 75-85% wrench time (large single-site projects, material pre-staged)
Once you have accurate wrench time data by job type, you can build bid templates that reflect actual field performance rather than optimistic assumptions.