If you are a consultant do you ever charge travel time?

[Thandeka]

Just wondering how much travel is reasonable for a job. I am setting up as an educational consultant and since I am based in London mostly its fine but occasionally I have to go elsewhere. Have had one contract where travel time was included (which was good because one day I spent 5 hours travelling- luckily I was able to work on train!), but other contracts where I had to travel further (plus an overnighter in a hotel) where my travel/hotel expenses were paid but travel time wasn't (but the day rate was very generous so I didn't mind too much.- although it was 1.25days really but I got paid a day- so hmmmm.

Just thinking about what I will need to think about charging if I do need to travel to a job. I think maybe it would be reasonable to expect travel/hotel expenses on top of your dayrate (or up the dayrate to include them!) but is it unreasonable to expect travel time charges? (I think it maybe reasonable not to charge for the first hour of each journey as that could be considered a standard "commute".)

I don't ever charge for time spent travelling and I can't see that I ever would tbh.

I consulted (behaviour) privately and included costs in the package price. For me this had to include my own childcare costs to some extent, as well as travel. I did not alter the price whether I was working locally in London or in the North of England, I just tried to balance the work out.

I know some private consultants charge a fee and then expenses separately. I'm not sure which works best psychologically speaking!

Perhaps you could work this out as follows:

(?)

Ascertain an equivalent hourly rate for similar work PAYE, i.e. as an employee.
Set that as your base rate.
Work out the total costs to you doing this freelance and then add this to the equivalent hourly rate PAYE.
Reduce or increase according to how massively far away you are from the rate you'd be paid if you were employed by someone (and presumably not being paid to actually get to clients beyond very basic expenses, i.e. petrol)

Always, always, compare against the hourly fee of a plumber.

Charging travel expenses is one thing, which you could do if you don't take into account that kind of thing in your fee, but I can't see myself charging an hourly rate for being sat in the car or in a train on the way to a job tbh.

I am an environmental consultant and don't charge for travel time, I charge mileage for visits carried out on behalf of a client but not to their site. I only charge expenses for necessary hotel stays. There is a lot of travelling though so it is built into the standard day rate. Do you quote per job? If so I would just quote a slightly higher day rate if there would be excessive travelling time involved.

Thanks for the replies guys. Yup tend to quote per job (or sometimes the rate is set by the employer) so could charge a slightly higher day rate.
Master plans.

Now got to sort all my tax stuff.....