// SERVICE CALL FEES
What a service call fee has to cover
Also called a trip charge, a diagnostic fee, or a call-out fee outside the US. Whatever it is called, it is charging for the part of the job that happens before the work starts.
There is no reliable national average, and this page will not make one up. What it can give you is the floor: an hour of a electrician's time costs about $40.35 once payroll tax and overhead sit on the median wage. Charge under that to show up and the visit costs you money before anyone opens a toolbox.
// WHAT IT IS FOR
The work that happens before the work
Customers sometimes read the fee as being charged for nothing. It is charging for four things that are easy to miss because none of them look like the job.
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Travel
The drive there and back is time nobody bills, and it is time that cannot be spent on another job. On a wide service area it can be the largest single component.
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The vehicle
Fuel, insurance, maintenance and the stock on board. It runs whether the visit converts into work or not.
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Diagnosis
Working out what is actually wrong is skilled work and often the hardest part of the visit. A fee for it is a fee for expertise, not for turning up.
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The visits that go nowhere
Some calls end with no work booked. Without a fee, the customers who do book are quietly paying for the ones who do not.
// THE FLOOR
What an hour actually costs you
Median wage from BLS, plus employer FICA at 7.65%, plus that trade's share of overhead. This is cost, not price: there is no margin in any of these numbers, and no allowance for the hours in your week that never bill.
| Trade | Median wage | With FICA | Plus overhead | Cost per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General contractor | $55.28 | $59.51 | +$15.43 | $74.94 |
| Plumber | $30.67 | $33.02 | +$8.56 | $41.57 |
| HVAC technician | $29.33 | $31.57 | +$8.85 | $40.42 |
| Electrician | $30.38 | $32.70 | +$7.64 | $40.35 |
| Carpenter | $29.12 | $31.35 | +$7.26 | $38.61 |
| Roofer | $26.65 | $28.69 | +$8.51 | $37.20 |
| Painter | $23.75 | $25.57 | +$5.24 | $30.81 |
| Handyman | $23.84 | $25.66 | +$4.81 | $30.47 |
| Landscaper | $18.82 | $20.26 | +$5.67 | $25.93 |
| Cleaning business | $17.71 | $19.06 | +$3.17 | $22.24 |
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national. Overhead percentages are this site's starting assumptions, labeled as such, not published statistics.
Worked example, electrician
- Half an hour of travel, round trip $20.17
- First hour on site $40.35
- Cost of the visit, before margin $60.52
The half hour is an assumption for the sake of the example, not a published figure. Use your own average round trip. The point is the shape: a fee has to clear travel plus the time on site before it earns anything, and margin sits on top of that.
// HOW TO STRUCTURE IT
Four ways contractors charge it
There is no correct one. The right structure depends on how far you drive, how long a typical visit runs, and how many of your quotes convert.
Flat service call fee
A fixed charge to attend, quoted before you book. Labour is billed on top from the moment you arrive.
Fits: Emergency and breakdown work, where the customer needs someone now and the diagnosis is the job.
Trip charge plus hourly
A smaller travel charge covering the drive, with time billed separately at your hourly rate.
Fits: Wide service areas, where the drive varies enough that folding it into one number over- or under-charges half your customers.
Diagnostic fee, credited if they proceed
A fee for the assessment, taken off the invoice if the customer goes ahead with the work.
Fits: Repair work where the diagnosis has real value and most quotes convert. It reads as fair and filters out price-shoppers.
First hour included
One rate covering attendance plus the first hour on site, then hourly after that.
Fits: Jobs that are usually short. Simple to explain, and it stops the argument about when the clock started.
// STRAIGHT ANSWER
Why this page has no national average
Search for one and you will find plenty of numbers. Look at where they come from and they are almost all cost guides published by lead generation platforms, the same businesses that sell you the lead. That is marketing, not measurement, and the ranges are wide enough to be true of nearly anything.
No government dataset publishes service call fees. BLS publishes wages, which is why every figure on this page is built up from wages rather than quoted from a survey nobody can check.
The practical answer is better than an average anyway. Your fee should clear your cost of getting there and diagnosing the problem, with margin on top, and that is a number about your business rather than the country's. The table above gets you the cost. What you add to it is positioning.
// THE CUSTOMER SIDE
Four ways to stop it causing arguments
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Publish the number
Put it on your site. A fee a customer reads before they call is a condition of service; the same fee first mentioned on the doorstep is a nasty surprise. The amount is rarely the problem.
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Say what it buys
"Covers travel and up to an hour diagnosing the fault" lands very differently from "call-out fee, $95". One is a service, the other reads as a toll.
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Be explicit about crediting it
If it comes off the bill when they proceed, say so twice: on the site and on the phone. It is the single strongest reason a hesitant customer books.
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Confirm it in writing before you drive
A text with the fee and what it covers, sent when the booking is made, ends the argument before it starts and takes about ten seconds.
// SOURCES
Where the figures come from
- Median hourly wages US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national across all industries. Retrieved 2026-08-26.
- Employer FICA at 7.65% Social Security 6.2% plus Medicare 1.45%, published by the IRS.
- Overhead percentages and the travel assumption Starting assumptions from this site's charge-out model, labeled as assumptions wherever they appear. Not published statistics, and meant to be replaced with your own figures.
- Service call fee amounts Deliberately not published here. No government dataset reports them, and the commercial cost guides that do are lead-generation content rather than measurement.
// READY WHEN YOU ARE
Charging properly is half of it
The other half is enough of the right calls coming in that you can hold the line on price. That is the part we build.
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