Getting paid · tipper haulage

How Tipper Hauliers Get Paid for Waiting Time, Return Loads & Extra Miles

On a per-load job, the delivery rate is only part of the job. Waiting time, return loads and extra miles are real money, and they're the hardest to check when you're matching dozens of tickets to a weekly self-bill invoice by hand. Here's how each one works, and how to make sure you claim it.

Waiting time

Waiting time is the time your tipper spends on site beyond an agreed allowance, charged per hour. Two common arrangements:

• Free allowance, then charged: many jobs give a free period (often the first 30 minutes) and pay per hour after that.
• Chargeable from the first minute: jobs marked chargeable on the ticket are paid from minute one, usually at a higher hourly rate.

The time on site is printed on the delivery ticket, and the payment appears on the customer's weekly self-bill. The trap: the invoice can show fewer minutes, or the wrong rate, and nobody notices. Always compare the ticket against the invoice line.

Return loads

A return load is material carried back from site, spoil, muck-away or planings, instead of running empty. It's paid separately from the outbound delivery, usually per tonne, and should appear as its own line on the weekly invoice. If the ticket shows a return but there's no return-load line on the invoice, that's one to raise with the customer. Setting the base rate itself? Start from your own cost per mile with our guide to haulage rates per mile.

Extra miles

When a driver is diverted to a site further than planned, those extra miles are almost never on the delivery ticket, so the customer won't pay them unless you ask. The only reliable way to claim is to record the planned route and the actual route for each load, so you can evidence the difference.

If the job is cancelled or you're turned away at site, there's no ticket at all. That's a separate charge, covered in our guide to abortive and cancelled job charges.

Checking the weekly self-bill invoice

Your customers pay you on a weekly self-bill, with waiting-time and return-load lines sitting under each delivery ticket. Matching every ticket by hand is slow and easy to get wrong. This is exactly what Raahi Flow automates: drivers snap each ticket, Raahi Flow reads the weekly invoice and matches every ticket to it, so you go to one screen and see which loads match and which need a look. Raising your own invoices? Our free haulage invoice template has waiting and return columns on every line.