Minimizing Kilometers and Paid Travel in a Cleaning Business

One of the biggest hidden costs in a cleaning business isn’t wages—it’s travel time and kilometers. I’ve watched many businesses struggle or fail because they underestimated the impact of excessive travel expenses. If you’re paying for travel time and kilometers, you need a clear strategy to keep it under control.

This travel optimization series will walk you through how to reduce travel costs, increase efficiency, and protect your business.

1. Roadside Assistance & Comprehensive Insurance: A Must-Have

If your business pays travel and kilometers, you must require staff to have:

✅ Comprehensive car insurance – To cover accidents that could leave them off the road.

✅ Roadside assistance – To prevent lost hours (and wages) due to breakdowns.

Why? Because I’ve lost thousands of dollars paying travel costs for staff members whose cars kept breaking down or who were off the road for months after an accident. If travel is part of your business, make vehicle reliability a hiring and onboarding requirement.

💡 Pro tip: Ask staff to provide proof of insurance and registration annually as part of your compliance process.

2. Cluster Cleans & Geographic Zoning

The most efficient cleaning businesses don’t just accept jobs randomly—they work in zones.

How to do it:

✅ Cluster cleans within small geographic areas to minimize unnecessary travel.

✅ Assign cleaners to specific zones instead of having them drive all over the city.

✅ Limit your service radius – The bigger your area, the harder it is to control travel costs.

📌 Example: If a cleaner has four jobs in one shift, grouping them within a 5-10km radius saves hours in travel time.

💡 Pro tip: Use Google Maps, Route4Me, or GPS apps to optimize routes for maximum efficiency.

3. Solo Cleaners: The Most Profitable Strategy

Solo cleaners = maximum profitability.

🚀 Why it works:

• They take full responsibility for their cleans.

• No time wasted meeting up with a second cleaner.

• Less room for conflict – Fewer issues with pace mismatches or disagreements.

• Stronger team culture – Cleaners learn to stand on their own two feet and work to a consistent standard.

Exception: If a job has security risks or an absolute necessity for two people, then teamwork is unavoidable. Otherwise, keep your cleaners solo.

4. Managing Team Travel: Paid Travel vs. Unpaid Travel

If two cleaners must travel together, make sure they:

🚗 Meet at the first job and then drive together.

📍 Meet at a central location where paid travel starts and ends.

Best practice:

• Travel is paid from the moment they meet up.

• It stops when they return to the meeting location.

• Reduce back-and-forth driving by scheduling cleans in a straight-line route, not zig-zagging across the city.

💡 Pro tip: Set clear expectations in employment agreements about when travel is paid and when it isn’t.

5. Track & Optimize Your Travel Costs

Every month, run a ‘Xero report’ to see:

📊 Total travel hours paid

📊 Total kilometers reimbursed

📊 Which staff members have the highest travel costs

Look for:

🔎 Overlapping routes – Can you restructure them?

🔎 Jobs outside your ideal zone – Are they worth it?

🔎 High-travel employees – Can their cleans be restructured?

💡 Pro tip: If a job requires a lot of travel and isn’t profitable, consider dropping it or charging a higher rate for travel.

6. The 15-Minute Rule for Travel

Many cleaning businesses assume travel takes longer than it does.

🚦 Reality check: At 60km per hour, a 15-minute drive is only 15km.

If a job requires more than 30 minutes of total travel (round trip), ask yourself:

🤔 Is it worth it?

🤔 Can I charge for extra travel?

🤔 Can I schedule another clean nearby to make the trip more efficient?

💡 Pro tip: Factor travel into your quoting process. If you undercharge, those kilometers eat away your profit.

Final Thoughts: Travel is a Business Expense—Control It!

Your key takeaways:

✅ Require roadside assistance and comprehensive insurance for all cleaners.

✅ Cluster cleans and use zoning to reduce unnecessary travel.

✅ Solo cleaners are the most profitable—use teams only when necessary.

✅ If teams travel together, meet at the first clean or a central location to start paid travel.

✅ Track travel costs monthly and make adjustments to optimize efficiency.

✅ Factor travel into your pricing—don’t let it eat your profits!

When you optimize travel, you increase profits, efficiency, and staff satisfaction.

👉🏻 Want help refining your travel process? Join my cleaning coaching program, where we teach geographic zoning, route optimization, and pricing strategies to keep your cleaning business profitable.