Driving Between Appointments: What Home Health Workers, Service Technicians, and Field Workers Need to Know

Many workers drive from one worksite to another as a regular part of their day — home health aides traveling between client homes, HVAC technicians moving from one service call to the next, cable technicians running multiple customer appointments, or sales workers visiting accounts across a territory. For these employees, the time spent driving between locations during the workday is compensable work time under the Fair Labor Standards Act. If an employer is not counting that travel as hours worked, the worker may be owed back wages — and if the uncounted hours push the weekly total above 40, overtime pay as well.

The FLSA and its implementing regulations establish that travel that is "all in the day's work" must be counted as hours worked and compensated accordingly. When an employee travels from one job site to another during the workday — whether driving their own vehicle or a company vehicle, whether the sites are across town or across a county — that travel time is compensable. This is true even if the employee is not performing their primary duties while in transit. The time is under the employer's control and direction, which makes it work time under the law.

The most significant exception to travel-time compensation involves the regular home-to-work commute. An employee's commute from home to their first work location in the morning, and from their last work location back home at night, is generally not compensable — even when the first and last locations are client homes rather than an employer's central office. However, this exception has important limits. If an employee is required to report to a central location at the start of the day — to receive assignments, pick up supplies, or load a vehicle — time spent traveling from that central location to the first worksite may be compensable. Emergency after-hours call-outs present similar questions.

For home health aides and personal care workers, inter-client travel is a routine and often substantial part of the workday. Some agencies manage costs by not counting travel between clients as work time, by paying travel time at a reduced rate that may violate the FLSA's regular rate rules, or by asking workers to log only "in-home" time. These practices can produce significant underpayment, especially for workers who see multiple clients in a day and drive long distances between them. When travel time is excluded from hours worked, it can also push workers below minimum wage for the workweek or cause overtime to go uncompensated.

Workers who believe their travel time is not being counted should keep their own records. Noting departure and arrival times at each location, recording odometer readings or GPS data, and retaining any scheduling or dispatch records can help document compensable travel time. Employers are required by law to maintain accurate records of hours worked. Where employer records are incomplete or exclude travel time entirely, workers may use their own estimates and other available evidence to establish the time owed.