The windshield time problem
"Windshield time" — hours spent driving between jobs — is the single biggest source of unbillable cost in field service. A tech who drives 2.5 hours a day is losing nearly a third of a billable shift to the road.
Where the time leaks
- Crisscrossing the service area. Two jobs on the same street scheduled four hours apart.
- Trips back to the shop for parts that should have been on the truck.
- No zone discipline — techs assigned wherever the next call lands, not where they already are.
How to optimize routes
- Zone your service area. Divide the territory into 4–8 zones and bias each tech toward a home zone. Familiarity also speeds the work itself.
- Cluster by geography first, then time. Build the day as a loop, not a list. Minimize total miles, not just the next hop.
- Stock the truck. Analyze your top 50 parts by frequency and keep them on the van. A shop trip is 45 minutes of pure waste.
- Re-optimize live. When an emergency drops in, the routing should resequence the remaining jobs automatically.
The math that matters
If you cut average daily drive time from 2.5 hours to 1.5 hours across a 10-tech crew, that's 10 reclaimed hours a day — effectively a free technician and a half, every single day.
Don't over-optimize
A perfectly packed route with zero slack breaks the moment one job runs long. Build in 15–20% buffer. The goal is fewer miles, not a brittle schedule.