Can You Pay a Different Rate for Travel Time?

You can pay windshield time at a different rate than tool time. Federal law allows it as long as the travel rate clears minimum wage and everyone knows the deal in advance. The catch is the overtime math: hours at two rates make the overtime rate a weighted average. Here's the worked example, the rules, and how to run multi-rate pay without a calculator on Friday.

JULY 18, 2026 · BY THE CLOX TEAM

Worth knowing

Standard caveat: general information, not legal advice. States can restrict this more than federal law does, so confirm your setup with your state labor agency or attorney before you change anyone's pay.

The three requirements

The floor. The travel rate must be at least the minimum wage that applies to you, and that means the highest of federal, state, or local minimum wage. A $12 travel rate is fine federally but illegal in a state with a $16 minimum.

The agreement. The two-rate arrangement has to be established before the work is performed, communicated clearly, and applied consistently. Put it in writing, in the same policy that defines when travel is paid at all. Springing a lower rate on hours already worked is how you convert a payroll decision into a claim. California's travel-time rules are broader than the federal ones, but a different travel rate is still allowed there with notice.

The overtime math. Every travel hour still counts toward the 40-hour overtime threshold, at full weight. Paying travel at a lower rate never makes those hours disappear from overtime. What changes is the overtime rate itself, which becomes a weighted average, and that's worth seeing with real numbers.

The worked example

Say Marcus is $30 an hour on the tools and you set an $18 travel rate. One busy week he logs 38 site hours and 6 travel hours: 44 hours total, so 4 of them are overtime.

Step one, straight-time pay for all hours at their own rates:

Hours	Rate	Pay
38 site	$30.00	$1,140.00
6 travel	$18.00	$108.00
44 total		$1,248.00

Step two, the regular rate for the week is the weighted average required by 29 CFR 778.115: $1,248 divided by 44 hours = $28.36 an hour.

Step three, overtime premium. The straight-time pay already covered every hour once, so the overtime hours get an extra half of the regular rate: 4 hours times $14.18 = $56.72.

Total for the week: $1,248.00 plus $56.72 = $1,304.72.

Two things to notice. The overtime rate, $42.55 when you count the time-and-a-half together, isn't time and a half of either rate; it's time and a half of the blend, and the blend moves week to week with the mix of hours. And the travel hours pulled the overtime rate down, which is exactly why the agreement needs to exist before the week is worked, not after.

Federal law also allows an alternative. Under FLSA section 7(g)(2), you can pay overtime at time and a half of the rate in effect for the work performed during the overtime hours instead of the weighted average, but only with an agreement made in advance (29 CFR 778.419). That arrangement has more ways to go wrong, so most small crews are better served by the weighted-average default their payroll system already understands.

Should you pay a lower travel rate at all

Worth asking before you build it. The case for: on route-heavy work, pricing drive time at skilled-labor rates quietly erodes every bid. The case against: a second rate adds payroll complexity and can read as chintzy to a crew you're trying to keep. A middle path many shops land on: regular rate for everyone, but relentless attention to shrinking drive time through routing and staging. If margins on travel-heavy work are the problem, run the numbers both ways first; job costing will tell you what travel actually costs you per job.

Making it work without a Friday calculator

Two-rate pay fails in practice for one reason: the hours never get separated. If the timesheet can't say which 6 hours were travel, the whole arrangement collapses back into arguments.

This is a tagging problem. In Clox, every hour is tagged to a job and task, so travel is a task like any other: the worker switches the tag when they roll, and the week arrives on Friday already split into site hours and travel hours. Clox supports multi-rate pay, the overtime engine does the weighted math automatically, and the totals you approve match the payroll export to the penny. The policy line for your handbook:

Copy-paste template

Time driving between job sites during the workday is paid at $[rate] per hour and must be recorded under the Travel task. All travel hours count toward overtime. Overtime is calculated on the weighted average of rates worked in the week, as required by law.

The short version

A separate travel rate is legal federally when it clears the applicable minimum wage, is agreed in advance in writing, and every travel hour still counts toward the 40. Overtime is time and a half of the week's weighted average, not of any single rate. The whole thing lives or dies on whether the hours are actually separated at the punch.

Clox is free for 14 days with no credit card, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Set up a travel task and a travel rate once, and the math runs itself every Friday after that. Start a free trial and price your windshield time on purpose.