If you work in the field, driving between work locations may take up a large part of your day. Your timecard may show only the hours you spend at customer locations even though your employer also sends you from one job to the next.
Travel between job sites during the workday generally counts as work time under federal wage law. Those driving hours can also affect your overtime pay when they push your weekly total above 40 hours.
When driving counts as work
Your normal trip from home to your first work location generally does not count as paid work time. The same usually applies to your trip home after your last job.
Travel between jobs works differently. If your employer sends you from one customer to another during the workday, that driving time counts as hours worked. For example, you may finish the job and drive 30 minutes to your next customer. Your employer has to include that half hour in your work time.
When travel creates overtime hours
If federal overtime law applies to your job and no exemption covers your work, you generally earn overtime after 40 hours in one workweek. Your employer has to include qualifying job-to-job travel when adding up those hours.
Suppose your timecard shows 39 hours spent on job sites. You also spent four hours driving between customers during the same week. That gives you 43 work hours, including three overtime hours. Leaving the driving time off your timecard does not remove it from your workweek if the law counts it as work time.
Reviewing your travel time
You may want to compare your timecard with your daily route or dispatch history. Look for trips between jobs that do not appear in your paid hours. Consider taking note of how much time they added to your week. A clear record of those missing hours can help you understand the size of the issue before you take formal steps over unpaid overtime.