Traveling For Projects

[mcw615]

I live in Central/Southwest, Virginia. There are some landscape companies that have roughly 7-10 employees that say they are set up so they can travel.

I have not dealt with any calls or anything outside of my market area, so I am kind of thinking a few years ahead of the ball game. This one guy and 5 of his guys just did a project up near D.C. and took about 2 weeks, it wasn't anything too intense, but figuring two weeks of hotels, maybe meals, bonuses to employees etc are all additional things the company has to incur for traveling.

I know another company here that has about 20ish employees they have a huge camper that primarily gets used by the owner and his family I'm sure but company write off and use that as living quarters for the workers when needed to travel.

Something else... Say you do get a prosepct call that is an hour or more away, you want to try and gain as much information as possible over the phone, but do you have a mile limit you will show up, meet and greet at no charge before you have to charge a consultation?

[PaperCutter]

I pre-qualify like crazy over the phone if it's any kind of distance from the house. At this point, I've taken on design clients within about a 3-hour radius (including one down by you, in Lynchburg). If all they're hiring me for is the design, I just factor the additional travel time into my fees and I'm covered. I will say that I only do these distance jobs if they were a strong referral from someone I trust. It's not worth the risk if it's a random web inquiry.