Travel Time Pay: Commutes, Job Sites and Out-of-Town Trips Under the FLSA

Travel time is paid under the FLSA when it is part of the job, but an ordinary commute from home to the regular workplace is not. Driving between job sites during the workday, traveling on a same-day assignment to another city, and travel that overlaps normal working hours on an out-of-town trip are generally hours worked. Getting the line wrong is a common reason for unpaid overtime.

Below you will find the main rules, a dollar example showing how travel time affects overtime, and a checklist for recording it. State laws can be stricter, so confirm local requirements with counsel or your state labor department.

The commute is not paid

The Portal-to-Portal Act excludes ordinary home-to-work travel from compensable time. Driving from your house to the regular workplace, and back, is a normal commute even if it is long or you carry a phone, as 29 CFR 785.35 explains. It makes no difference whether the employee works at a fixed site or reports to a different one each day, as long as the travel is a normal commute.

The Employee Commuting Flexibility Act also says that using an employer vehicle for the commute, within an agreement or policy, does not by itself make the commute paid time, as long as the use is incidental to the commute. Required work during the drive, such as picking up tools or customers, changes the answer.

Travel during the workday is paid

Once the employee has started the day, travel from one job site to another is part of the work. The employee is not commuting, they are performing the job. The same is true for a return trip to the office to pick up materials or to deliver paperwork.

This matters most for field service, home care, delivery and construction crews. A technician who works 8 hours on site and drives 90 minutes between three customers has worked 9.5 hours. For more on those teams see field service and mobile crews.

Special one-day assignments

If the employer sends an employee from the regular workplace to another city on a one-day assignment and the employee returns home the same day, the travel time is generally work time, minus the normal commute. For example, if the commute is normally 30 minutes each way and the trip adds 3 hours each way, the employer counts the extra time beyond the normal commute.

Consider a salesperson whose usual commute is 25 minutes each way. Her employer sends her to a client 2 hours away for a single day. The round trip takes 4 hours, and the normal commute of 50 minutes is subtracted, so about 3 hours and 10 minutes is payable travel time in addition to the meeting itself.

Waiting at the airport, delays and required stops are also work when the employee is traveling for the employer's benefit. A bona fide meal break during the trip can be unpaid if the employee is fully relieved of duties.

Overnight trips and corresponding hours

Under 29 CFR 785.39, travel away from home is work time when it cuts across the employee's normal workday. The rule also covers days off: the hours that correspond to the employee's normal working hours count even on a Saturday or Sunday. Travel as a passenger outside those hours, such as a late evening flight, is generally not paid.

Driving is different from riding. If the employee must drive or perform work during the trip, such as handling a client call or transporting equipment, the time is hours worked even outside normal hours.

Example: how travel time creates overtime

An employee earns $20.00 per hour and works Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., or 40 hours. On Sunday the employer sends him to an out-of-town training event and he rides as a passenger from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Those 4 hours fall inside his normal 9 to 5 hours, so they count.

His week is 40 + 4 = 44 hours. Regular pay is 40 x $20.00 = $800.00. The 4 overtime hours are paid at $20.00 x 1.5 = $30.00, so 4 x $30.00 = $120.00. The total is $800.00 + $120.00 = $920.00. If the same trip had happened from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. as a passenger, it would fall outside the normal hours and would generally not count.

A second case: a crew member works 40 hours at job sites and also drives 3 hours between sites during the week. The 3 extra hours are overtime, so he earns 40 x $20.00 = $800.00 plus 3 x $30.00 = $90.00, or $890.00. Learn the overtime basics in federal overtime rules.

Paying different rates for travel

Employers may agree to pay a different rate for travel time than for productive work, but only if the arrangement is established in advance and the lower rate is not below the minimum wage. When the week includes overtime, the regular rate is the weighted average of all rates paid, which is covered in how to calculate the regular rate of pay and overtime.

Keep one more point in mind about mixed duties. If an employee drives a company truck to a job site with a crew and is required to carry tools or supervise the others during the ride, the drive is work from the first minute. A separate ride share arranged by the employees themselves, with no duties attached, is typically not.

Remember also that many states require pay for all time under the employer's control, including required travel in company vehicles. Where a state rule is more generous than the FLSA, the state rule governs.

Recording travel time accurately

Travel is where records most often fall apart, because it is not an obvious clock-in event. Employees forget to log the drive, managers assume it is a commute, and the time disappears. A few habits fix most of the problem:

- Define travel categories in your policy: commute, job-site to job-site, same-day out-of-town and overnight.

- Require a start and stop for paid travel, with the origin and destination in a note.

- Review the week for gaps between the last punch at one site and the first punch at the next.

How SimpleWorkshift Helps Track Travel Time

With SimpleWorkshift, employees clock in and out from the iOS or Android app or the web, and each time entry captures a GPS location. That gives managers a timeline of where the day started and ended, which makes gaps between sites easier to question and explain.

Schedules per employee, real-time views of entries and exceptions, and automatic overtime calculations help you see how travel hours affect the 40-hour mark before payroll closes. Custom reports show hours by employee and week for your records. Start a 30-day free trial, with no contracts and cancel anytime, at simpleworkshift.com.