The Radius Slider Is the Most Expensive Free Lever.

How far should a contractor target ads?

As far as the job still pays for the drive, which for a typical $1,800 ticket at a 40% margin usually lands somewhere between 20 and 35 miles. The honest answer depends on your ticket and your traffic, not on a round number — a $600 service call and a $12,000 install have completely different economics on the same road.

Why does widening the radius look free in the ad account?

Because none of the cost lands there. The ad account shows more reach and more leads; the cost shows up in fuel, in wages paid to people sitting in traffic, and in a schedule that fits fewer jobs. Nobody reconciles those two reports, so the campaign reads as a success while margin falls.

What is the real cost of drive time per job?

Vehicle cost plus crew wages for the hours in transit. At the IRS standard business mileage rate of 76 cents and a two-person crew at BLS-average loaded pay, a 25-mile job with two trips runs about $76 in vehicle cost and roughly $290 in wages — nearly half the gross margin on an average home-services ticket.

Why use the IRS mileage rate instead of just fuel?

Because fuel is roughly a quarter of what a mile actually costs. The IRS rate is set from a study of the full fixed and variable cost of running a vehicle — fuel, maintenance, tyres, insurance and depreciation — which is why it is 76 cents rather than the 20 or so cents fuel alone would suggest.

Should I add insurance and maintenance on top of the mileage rate?

No, and doing so is the most common way this calculation gets double-counted. The standard mileage rate already includes them. Add only things it genuinely excludes, such as parking, tolls and the cost of a vehicle sitting idle.

Which matters more, the margin loss or the capacity loss?

Usually the capacity loss, and by some distance. Losing half a job per crew per day to windshield time costs far more over a month than the fuel does, because every one of those lost slots was a full ticket. The planner shows both so the comparison is explicit.

Does a higher average ticket justify a wider radius?

Yes, and it is the single strongest lever here. Drive cost is fixed per mile while margin scales with the ticket, so a $12,000 install absorbs a 50-mile trip that would destroy a $400 service call. Trades running both should target them as separate campaigns with different radii.

What should I do about leads in the outer band?

Three options, in order of preference: set a minimum ticket for that zone, add a travel charge that covers the round trip, or exclude the zone from targeting. What you should not do is serve them at your standard price and assume volume makes up the difference — it does not, because the cost scales with every job.

Should quote visits count as a trip?

Absolutely, and forgetting them is why so many contractors underestimate this. If you quote in person and then return to do the work, that is two round trips — and if the quote does not close, you paid the drive cost for nothing. Trades that quote on site should run this at two or three trips per job.

What average speed should I use?

Door to door including traffic and parking, which is always slower than people guess. Dense metros realistically run 18 to 25 mph, suburban areas 30 to 40, rural 40 to 50. Using a highway speed here is the fastest way to make a bad radius look acceptable.

Does this replace excluding areas in the ad platform?

No, it tells you where to draw the exclusions. Once you know the break-even radius, implement it as a targeting radius or a set of excluded postcodes in Meta and Google, and revisit it whenever your ticket or your crew cost moves materially.

How does this interact with cost per lead?

It sits underneath it. A $41.26 lead from the outer band and a $41.26 lead five miles away cost the same to buy and completely different amounts to serve. Cost per lead is blind to geography, which is exactly why a channel can look stable while your margin drifts.

What if my competitors advertise across the whole metro?

Then some of them are losing money on the edges and have not worked it out yet. Matching a competitor's radius without matching their ticket, crew cost or drive times copies their exposure rather than their strategy.

Are any of these numbers Elev8 Operations data?

None of the defaults. Vehicle cost is the IRS standard business mileage rate, labour cost is the BLS private-industry average total compensation per hour worked, and the ticket reference is from SearchLight's LSA dataset. Your radius, speed, crew size and margin are yours.