Revenue per van-hour
Total monthly revenue is a bad measure of whether your business is actually improving, because it rises whenever you simply work more hours. Revenue per van-hour - total revenue divided by every hour the van was out, on-site time and drive time both - answers a different question: is an hour of your business worth more than it used to be? A month with more total revenue and a lower revenue-per-van-hour number means you worked harder for a result that did not actually get better.
Why total revenue hides the thing that matters
A month with $8,000 in revenue sounds better than a month with $6,500. If the $8,000 month took 20 more hours of work to produce, and those hours were mostly drive time on poorly routed jobs, the business got less efficient while looking more successful. Total revenue cannot tell the two months apart. Revenue per van-hour can.
How to calculate it
Add every hour the van was actually out working - job time and drive time both, because both are hours that were not available for anything else. Divide total revenue for the same period by that number. A month with $8,000 in revenue across 160 van-hours produces $50 per van-hour. A leaner month with $6,500 across 110 van-hours produces $59 - the smaller month was the more valuable hour of business, even though it earned less in total.
Quoting calls, admin, and marketing time done from home are usually tracked separately rather than folded into van-hours, since they do not require the van to be out and scale differently.
Why there is no universal benchmark
A revenue-per-van-hour figure only means something next to your own history. Prices, service mix, cost of living, and route density all differ enough between operators that comparing your number to someone else's is close to meaningless - compare this month to your own last six months, and use it to test whether a change - a price increase, a new route, a new add-on - actually moved the number, or just moved total revenue by way of longer hours.
What actually raises it
Tighter routing. Less drive time per job means more of each van-hour goes toward billable work rather than the road, the same discipline covered in how many jobs you can actually fit in a day and scheduling two vans.
Prices that reflect real duration. An underquoted job lowers revenue per hour by definition - see why you are probably underquoting for the specific ways this happens without anyone deciding it should.
A service mix weighted toward high-margin add-ons. Headlight restoration and engine bay detailing take relatively little added time for real added revenue, which raises the per-hour number more efficiently than an equivalent amount of additional base-service work.
What Rigsheet does with this
Every job records its scheduled duration, actual drive time, and price, which is the exact data revenue per van-hour needs - the calculation does not require reconstructing hours from memory or a paper diary at the end of the month, because the jobs already carry the numbers.
Deciding what to do about the number - reroute, reprice, or change the service mix - is still yours. The software's job is making the number available without a manual reconstruction. What each plan includes. · What you actually net per job.
More in this section
About Rigsheet
Rigsheet is a job app from Baker Ventures LLC for one-to-three-person mobile service businesses: mobile auto detailers and residential cleaners first. Scheduling with drive-time gaps, quotes with vehicle and home-size pricing, deposits, "on my way" texts, before and after photos, invoices, and automated review requests. Plans start at $4 a month, with unlimited jobs, customers, quotes and invoices on every tier and no per-user fees.
It exists because the alternatives charge a solo operator team prices. A one-van business is not a small version of a ten-truck business, and pricing built around seats and add-ons makes that mistake expensive. The pricing calculators and operator guides on this site are free and need no account.
Questions and answers
What is revenue per van-hour?
Total revenue for a period divided by the total hours the van was out working, including drive time - not just hours spent on site doing billable work. It answers "how much does an hour of my business actually produce," which is a different and more useful question than total monthly revenue.
Why not just track total monthly revenue?
Because total revenue rises when you simply work more hours, which can look like growth while the business is not actually getting more valuable per hour worked. Revenue per van-hour strips out the effect of working longer and shows whether pricing, routing, or service mix actually improved.
How do you calculate revenue per van-hour?
Add up revenue for a period, then divide by every hour the van was out for work during that period - on-site time and drive time both count, because both are hours you could not spend doing something else. Quoting and admin time done from home is a separate question, usually tracked apart from van-hours specifically.
What is a good revenue-per-van-hour number?
There is no universal benchmark - it depends entirely on your own prices and your own route density. The number is much more useful compared against your own past months than against another operator's business, where price points, service mix, and cost of living all differ.
What actually moves this number?
Tighter routing that cuts drive time, prices that reflect real job duration rather than being underquoted, and a service mix weighted toward higher-margin add-ons - all three raise revenue per van-hour without requiring a single additional hour of work.
Rigsheet. “Revenue per van-hour.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 8, 2026. https://rigsheet.bakerventuresstudio.com/guides/revenue-per-van-hour/