Do You Have to Pay Employees for Travel Time?

Paying employees for travel time comes down to a handful of federal rules that turn on when the travel happens and what the employee is doing. The ordinary commute between home and work is unpaid. Travel between job sites during the workday is paid. Special one-day trips to another city are paid, minus the normal commute. Overnight trips are paid when they fall within regular working hours or when the employee is driving. Everything else follows from those four ideas.

The Ordinary Commute Is Unpaid

Driving from home to work and back is not compensable time, whether the employee reports to the same office every day or rotates between sites within the employer’s normal service area.¹ A plumber who drives to a different house every morning is still commuting.

The rule also covers employer-provided vehicles. If the company gives an employee a truck to drive home and the drive stays within the normal commuting area, that time is not compensable as long as there is an agreement between the employee and the employer about using the vehicle.²

One meaningful exception: emergency callbacks. If an employee finishes a shift, goes home, and then gets called out at night to travel a substantial distance for an urgent job at a customer’s location, all of that travel counts as hours worked.³ The Department of Labor has not taken a formal position on whether the same rule applies to a callback to the employee’s regular workplace.

When a Commute Becomes Compensable

Two situations pull a drive out of the commute category. The first is a required stop for tools or equipment. If the employer requires the employee to stop at a shop, warehouse, or meeting point to pick up tools, materials, or a company vehicle before heading to the job site, travel from that meeting point forward is paid.⁴ A 2020 Department of Labor opinion letter applied this to construction foremen required to retrieve a company truck from the employer’s office and drive it to job sites where it was used to haul materials, concluding the travel was integral to their work.⁵

The second is working during the drive. If the employee takes work-related calls, answers emails, or handles other job tasks while commuting, that time becomes compensable. Any work an employee is required to perform while traveling counts as hours worked.⁶ A trivial personal call from a coworker probably does not flip the switch, but regularly fielding client calls or responding to a supervisor on the morning drive does.

Travel Between Job Sites During the Workday

Once the employee has clocked in at the first work location, all travel until they leave the last location for the day is compensable. Driving from one client to another, running to a supply house, or heading from the office to a field site mid-shift all count as hours worked.⁴

A genuine, uninterrupted meal break where the employee is fully relieved of duties remains non-compensable even on a day filled with travel between sites. Eating a sandwich while driving to the next appointment is not a break.

One-Day Assignments in Another City

When the employer sends someone on a special one-day trip to a city other than their usual work location, almost all of the travel time is paid. The federal regulation illustrates it this way: an employee who normally works 9 to 5 in Washington, D.C. gets sent to New York for the day, leaving at 8 a.m. and returning at 7 p.m. That entire span is work time, with two deductions.⁷

First, the employer can subtract what the employee would have spent on a normal commute. If the employee usually spends 30 minutes getting to the office, the employer can deduct 30 minutes from each end of the trip. Second, a normal meal period is deductible. Everything else is paid.

Overnight Travel

Overnight trips turn on two factors: whether the travel falls within the employee’s normal working hours, and whether the employee is driving or riding as a passenger.

Travel During Normal Working Hours

Any travel that falls within the employee’s regular working hours is compensable. This applies on normal workdays and on days the employee would not ordinarily work, including weekends and holidays. An employee who usually works Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 and who flies to a conference on Saturday from 9 to 5 must be paid for those Saturday hours.⁸ Regular meal periods are still excluded.

Driver Versus Passenger Outside Normal Hours

Outside normal working hours, compensation splits by role. If the employee is driving, that time is paid regardless of the hour. Driving is physical work performed for the employer’s benefit and counts as hours worked.⁶ The same goes for anyone riding as a helper or assistant performing duties during the trip.

If the employee is simply a passenger on a plane, train, or in a car someone else is driving, and the travel falls outside normal work hours, that time is generally not compensable. The Department of Labor treats this as an enforcement policy rather than an absolute rule, but it is the standard employers rely on.⁸ The exception: actual work done while riding as a passenger, such as reviewing documents or answering emails, is compensable even outside normal hours.

Airport and Station Wait Times

Waiting at an airport or train station follows the same framework. Waits inside regular working hours are paid. Waits outside those hours, without work being performed, are not. An employee with a 9-to-5 schedule who arrives at the airport at 7 a.m. for a flight is not on the clock for those first two hours, but is on the clock from 9 a.m. forward.

Travel Hours Count Toward Overtime

Compensable travel is not a separate bucket. It adds to every other hour worked that week, and if the total exceeds 40, the employer owes overtime at one and a half times the regular rate.⁹ A technician who works 38 hours at customer sites and drives 4 hours between locations has 42 hours worked, and the last 2 must be paid at the overtime rate.

Employers can pay a lower hourly rate for travel time than for active work. That is legal but changes how overtime is calculated. When an employee works at two or more rates in a single week, the overtime rate is based on a weighted average: add up all earnings for the week and divide by total hours. The overtime premium is then half of that blended rate, applied to every hour over 40.¹⁰

An example: an employee works 30 hours at $25 per hour and travels 15 hours at $15 per hour. Total earnings are $975 and total hours are 45. The weighted average regular rate is $21.67 per hour. For the 5 overtime hours, the employee is owed an additional $10.83 per hour on top of the rate already paid.

Recordkeeping Falls on the Employer

Compensable travel time must be tracked the same way as any other hours worked. Federal regulations require records showing hours worked each workday and total hours each workweek, along with total wages paid and the regular hourly rate.¹¹ Payroll records must be preserved for at least three years, and basic time records for at least two.

The burden of keeping accurate records falls on the employer. If a dispute arises and the employer cannot produce adequate records, courts tend to accept the employee’s reasonable estimate of hours worked.

Penalties for Getting It Wrong

Misclassifying compensable travel as unpaid time is a wage violation. An employer who underpays is liable for the full amount of unpaid wages or overtime, plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, effectively doubling the bill.¹² The court must also award reasonable attorney’s fees and costs to the employee.

Employees can file claims going back two years for standard violations, or three years if the violation was willful, meaning the employer knew or should have known the travel time was compensable and failed to pay it anyway.¹³ For a company with dozens of field workers who have been misclassified for years, the exposure in a collective action can be significant. Willful violations also carry potential criminal penalties of up to $10,000 in fines and six months of imprisonment, though criminal prosecution is rare and typically reserved for the most egregious cases.¹²

Mileage Reimbursement Is a Separate Question

Travel time pay and mileage reimbursement are different obligations that get confused often. Travel time pay compensates the employee for hours spent traveling. Mileage reimbursement covers the cost of using a personal vehicle, including gas, wear, and depreciation.

Federal law does not require mileage reimbursement in most situations. The only federal guardrail is that unreimbursed expenses cannot push effective hourly pay below the minimum wage. Only a handful of states, including California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, have laws requiring employers to reimburse necessary business expenses like mileage. When employers do reimburse, most use the IRS standard mileage rate, which is 72.5 cents per mile for 2026.¹⁴ That rate is a tax benchmark, not a legal requirement.

State Law Can Require More

Everything above is the federal floor. State and local laws can impose stricter rules, and when federal and state requirements conflict, employers must follow whichever gives the employee the greater benefit. Some states have reporting-time pay laws that require a minimum number of hours of pay (typically between one and four) when an employee shows up or travels to a work site but is sent home early. A few states also trigger overtime on a daily basis rather than only weekly, which can change how travel hours factor in. Employers operating in multiple states should check each state’s wage and hour rules before setting a travel pay policy.

1
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.35 – Home to Work; Ordinary Situation
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 254 – Relief From Liability and Punishment
3
GovInfo. 29 CFR 785.36 – Home to Work in Emergency Situations
4
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.38 – Travel That Is All in the Day’s Work
5
U.S. Department of Labor. WHD Opinion Letter FLSA2020-16
6
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.41 – Work Performed While Traveling
7
GovInfo. 29 CFR 785.37 – Home to Work on Special One-Day Assignment in Another City
8
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.39 – Travel Away From Home Community
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 207 – Maximum Hours
10
eCFR. 29 CFR 778.115 – Employees Working at Two or More Rates
11
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 516 – Records to Be Kept by Employers
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations
14
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Sets 2026 Business Standard Mileage Rate at 72.5 Cents per Mile, Up 2.5 Cents