Truck roll

Definition

One dispatched visit: the van, the technician and the hour it costs.

Why It Matters

Every trade that sends somebody out sells its work by the visit and pays for it by the trip, and the two are not the same count. A first visit that fixes the problem is one truck roll billed once. A second trip for the part that was not on the van is a truck roll nobody pays for, and it costs the same fuel, the same hour and the same slot another customer wanted. That is why first-visit completion is the number these businesses run on: it converts an operations statistic into the P&L. A buyer will not find the cost on a profit and loss, because a return visit is filed under the same labor and vehicle lines as the job that earned money. It is in the dispatch software, which counts callbacks, second trips and the parts that went out wrong, and a seller who cannot produce that report is telling you something about the business.

In numbers: A shop running 8 calls a day at 70% first-visit completion sends a van back on about 2 of them, so roughly a fifth of its dispatches earn nothing and its true cost per completed job is a fifth higher than the schedule shows.