What should I charge for a service call?
Short answer
Charge enough to cover the truck, the tech, and the windshield time, not just the drive. Most owner-operated shops land between $79 and $149 for a diagnostic trip, and the fee should apply toward the repair if the customer books it.
Start from the truck, not the competition
Most owners set the service call fee by guessing what the guy down the road charges. That's backwards. Start with what a truck actually costs you per hour on the road, loaded, and set the fee so two or three calls a day cover that cost before you make a dime on repairs.
If your loaded truck and tech cost is $95 an hour and a service call eats 45 minutes of drive and diagnostic time, your fee needs to be north of $70 just to break even on the visit. Under that, every diagnostic-only call is a loss you're funding with your install margin.
Waive it into the repair, not away entirely
The fee should disappear into the invoice if they approve the repair. This does two things: it removes the customer's objection to paying to find out what's wrong, and it protects you when the visit is truly diagnostic only and nothing gets fixed.
Never fully waive the fee for a straight diagnostic with no repair. If you do, you've told every customer in your service area that showing up is free, and you will get buried in no-charge fishing expeditions.
Setting the fee on the phone
Customer calls asking what it costs just to come look.
Customer
“What do you charge just to come out and look at it?”
You
“Our service call is $89. That covers the technician's time to diagnose the problem and give you a firm price to fix it. If you move forward with the repair, that $89 comes right off the invoice.”
Customer
“That seems like a lot just to look.”
You
“I get it. It's the same reason a doctor charges for the visit even if he doesn't prescribe anything. It pays for the truck, the tools, and a technician who knows what he's looking at. Most of our customers find it's worth it because they get a real number, not a guess.”
Do not say
- “Don't say 'it's free if we do the work' without a floor, some techs will lowball a fake repair to waive the fee, then walk away with nothing.”
What the service call fee needs to cover
| Loaded tech + truck costwages, burden, fuel, insurance, truck payment spread over billable hours | $85/hr |
|---|---|
| Average time per service calldrive plus diagnostic time | 0.75 hr |
| Break-even fee0.75 x $85 | $64 |
| Fee you should chargebreak-even plus margin for the ones that go nowhere | $89-$99 |
The math: Loaded hourly cost x average hours per call = break-even fee. Add margin on top because not every call converts to a repair.
Where owners get this wrong
- Pricing the fee off a competitor's website instead of your own cost.
- Waiving it completely for anyone who complains, which trains your whole market to expect free visits.
- Charging a low fee to win the call and trying to make it up on the repair price, which customers can smell.
Ask your version of this question
This is one business owner-tested take. Your shop size, trade, and team change the answer. Ask the exact version inside Ask a Shop Owner and get a response grounded in how owners like you actually handled it.
Now run it against your numbers.
This answer is written for shops in general. Inside Ask a Shop Owner it becomes your answer: your revenue, your crew, your market, your history. Ask "What should I charge for a service call" and get the version that accounts for what you already told us.
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