Emergency and After-Hours Pricing for Service Trades

“What should I charge for a 2 a.m. call?” For some trades the night call is the job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says most plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters “work full time, including nights and weekends” and are “often on call to handle emergencies.” Locksmiths, water damage crews and HVAC techs know the same phone. The usual mistake is pricing the night like the day plus a round number that feels fair. This article prices what the night actually costs, then covers how to say it before you roll and where the law starts caring about emergency prices.

What a night call costs you

If you go yourself, the cost is your sleep and the next day’s work. If you send an employee, federal wage rules set most of the bill:

• Overtime comes from the week, not the clock. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires time and one-half for hours over 40 in a workweek, and it “does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, or regular days of rest, as such” (Fact Sheet #23). So a night call is not automatically overtime, but a call on top of a full week is, and hours cannot be averaged over two weeks. Your state’s rules may add to this; see Overtime on a Day Rate or a Piece Rate.
• The drive is paid time. The regulation on emergency call-outs says that if an employee who has gone home after the day’s work “is subsequently called out at night to travel a substantial distance to perform an emergency job for one of his employer’s customers all time spent on such travel is working time” (29 CFR 785.36). The rest of the travel rules are in Is Drive Time Paid?
• Waiting by the phone may or may not be work. An employee required to stay at your premises, or so close that he cannot use the time effectively for his own purposes, is working while on call; one who only has to leave word where he can be reached is not (29 CFR 785.17).
• On-call pay raises the overtime rate. Even when the on-call hours are not hours worked, a payment for being on call is included in the employee’s regular rate (29 CFR 778.223), so it raises the overtime owed that week.
• Call-out minimums depend on prearrangement. If you guarantee a minimum number of hours for a call-out, the part above pay for the hours actually worked may be left out of the regular rate, and cannot be counted toward overtime owed, when the call comes “without prearrangement.” Prearranged payments may not be left out (29 CFR 778.221).
• Weekend and holiday premiums. A true premium for work on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays is not part of the regular rate (Fact Sheet #23). To stay out of it and count toward overtime owed, the premium must be at least one and one-half times the rate for like work in non-overtime hours on other days; a smaller premium goes into the regular rate (29 CFR 778.203).

Then there are the costs no regulation lists. The supply house is closed, so the part comes off the truck or the job takes a second trip, and the tech who worked until 4 a.m. is slower, or off, the next morning.

A worked example

Every figure here is invented for the example. Say a plumbing shop pays a tech $30 an hour and $50 a week to carry the on-call phone; he only has to be reachable, so the on-call hours themselves are not hours worked. He has worked 40 hours by Friday night when a burst pipe comes in at 2 a.m.: 30 minutes’ drive each way and two hours on the job, three hours of work in all.

That is about $45.58 an hour before payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and the rest of the burden, which Your Real Hourly Cost walks through. The $50 a week is a cost of offering nights at all: if the phone rings twice a week on average, that is $25 a call before anyone gets in the truck. Add the truck’s running cost for the hour of driving, your markup, and something for the slow morning that follows. Only then compare the total with your daytime price for the same repair.

Three ways to price it

The flat-rate approach is covered in Flat-Rate Pricing for Plumbing, HVAC and Electrical Service Calls. Whichever you choose, write down exactly what “after hours” means: the weekday times, weekends, and which holidays. And give every caller the choice. A dripping trap can wait for the morning price; a flooding basement cannot. Offering both lets the customer decide what the night is worth.

Say the price before you roll

1. On the phone. Give the after-hours fee or minimum, what it covers, the rate after that, and how they pay. Ask for a clear yes.
2. In writing before you leave. Send a short email or text from your own phone repeating the fee and the address, so nobody remembers a different number in the morning. If you record calls, the recording does the same job; the consent rules are in Recording Customer Calls.
3. At the door, before the repair. Diagnose, then give the price for the fix and get approval before you start it.
4. Everywhere else. Put the after-hours terms on your website and in your voicemail greeting, so the caller has heard them before you pick up; see Your Voicemail Greeting Is Losing Jobs.

One more rule touches the night call that grows into a bigger sale. The FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule leaves out a sale where the buyer started the contact and the work is needed to meet a bona fide immediate personal emergency, but only when the buyer gives you a separate, dated and signed personal statement, in the buyer’s own handwriting, describing the emergency and waiving the right to cancel within 3 business days (16 CFR 429.0). Without it, the usual rule may apply; see The 3-Day Right to Cancel.

Where emergency price laws start

A night premium charged every week is a price, not a gouge. State price-gouging laws are switched on by a declared emergency, and Price-Gouging Laws After a Storm covers how Florida, Texas, New York and California each trigger and measure them. The point for night pricing is the baseline. Florida, for one, compares your price with the average at which you sold or offered the service in the usual course of business during the 30 days before the declaration, allowing for added costs you incurred and wider market trends (Fla. Stat. §501.160(1)(b)). So an after-hours rate you posted and charged before the storm is part of the history you are measured against. A brand-new “storm rate” announced after the declaration is not, and needs receipts behind it.

For plumbers, HVAC techs, locksmiths and water damage crews, nights are part of the work. Price them from the payroll up, say the price before the truck moves, and keep last month’s invoices where you can find them.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.