Revenue Per Truck Per Day: The HVAC Metric That Separates $2M From $5M Companies
Most HVAC owners track total revenue. Some track revenue per technician per month. Almost none track the single metric that tells you the most about delivery efficiency in the shortest amount of time: Revenue Per Truck Per Day (RPTD).
RPTD is the daily revenue output of a single truck — calculated as total service revenue divided by trucks in service divided by working days. It's not a vanity metric. It's a diagnostic instrument that catches four different operational problems simultaneously: dispatch inefficiency, call mix problems, low average ticket, and job cycle time bloat.
The difference between a $2M company and a $5M company with the same number of trucks is almost always RPTD. Not more trucks. Not more marketing. More revenue per truck per day.
How to Calculate RPTD
The formula is straightforward. The key is using the right inputs.
Two important notes on inputs. First, exclude installation revenue from the numerator — installs run on different day-structure than service calls and will skew your RPTD higher in ways that obscure service delivery efficiency. Calculate a separate RPTD for installs if you want to track that. Second, use truck-days in the denominator, not calendar days. A truck that was in the shop for 5 days this quarter shouldn't count against your service RPTD.
RPTD Benchmarks by Revenue Band
These benchmarks apply to residential service-focused operations in US markets with average ticket sizes in the $450–$600 range. If your market has significantly lower average tickets (common in certain rural markets), adjust benchmarks down by 15–20%. If you run a premium market position with tickets above $700, adjust up.
"We were running 6 trucks at $1,400 per truck per day. I thought we needed to add a 7th truck. Turns out we needed to fix dispatch. Six months later, same 6 trucks, $2,600 per truck per day. That's more revenue than a 7th truck would have added." — HVAC owner, 6 trucks, $2.8M revenue, Texas
Find out what your RPTD is — and what's holding it back.
MarginPlug's Delivery pillar calculates your Revenue Per Truck Per Day, benchmarks it against your revenue band, and identifies which of the four RPTD levers is your biggest opportunity.
Run the free diagnostic Free during beta · No credit card · 8 minutesThe 4 Levers That Move RPTD
RPTD is a composite metric — it captures the output of four distinct operational systems. When RPTD is below benchmark, one or more of these four levers is the cause. Identifying which one is the diagnostic work; fixing it is the operational work.
Poor dispatch routing adds 30–60 minutes of non-billable drive time per truck per day. At a loaded tech cost of $54/hour, that's $27–$54 in pure cost with no revenue attached. But the revenue impact is larger: a tech who loses 45 minutes of productive time per day completes 4.5 jobs instead of 5.5 — at $480 average ticket, that's $480 in daily revenue never generated.
The fix isn't always software. The single highest-leverage dispatch improvement is sequencing calls geographically — morning calls clustered in one zone, afternoon calls in another — rather than dispatching by call-in order. Most dispatchers know this intuitively but don't enforce it because it requires saying no to a customer who wants a specific tech at a specific time. Build a policy, communicate it, enforce it.
A diagnostic-only call might take 45 minutes and generate $95. A repair call takes 60 minutes and generates $520. A system replacement takes a full day and generates $4,800. Your RPTD is deeply affected by which call types fill your schedule — and most scheduling systems don't prioritize by revenue potential.
This doesn't mean turning away diagnostic calls — those lead to repairs. It means ensuring your highest-ticket technicians are assigned to the highest-value call types, that replacement opportunities are staffed with your best closers, and that the daily schedule is built to maximize total revenue per truck rather than just fill time slots.
RPTD = jobs per day × average ticket × close rate. Average ticket is one of the three multipliers. A tech running 5 calls per day at a $380 average ticket generates $1,900 RPTD. The same tech running 5 calls with a $520 average ticket generates $2,600 — a $700/day difference with no change in the number of calls or the close rate.
The path to higher average ticket is well-documented: three-option presentation on every call, systematic upsell of protection plans and maintenance agreements, and a parts markup discipline that doesn't erode the ticket from below. See our full breakdown in the HVAC close rate benchmarks article.
Job cycle time is the elapsed time from tech arrival to departure. It includes the diagnostic, the parts run (if any), the repair, the presentation, and the paperwork. Each of those sub-components has waste that compounds across a full day.
The highest-impact cycle time improvements are: eliminating parts runs by stocking trucks correctly (a tech who leaves a job to get a part loses 30–60 minutes and potentially the job), streamlining invoicing and payment collection (moving from paper to digital typically saves 8–12 minutes per job), and reducing the time between call completion and next call dispatch. A tech who completes a job and waits 20 minutes for the next dispatch loses one full call every 2–3 days.
The metric to track: jobs per truck per day. Industry average is 4.2–5.0. Top performers run 5.5–6.5 on service-call-heavy schedules. The difference between 4.5 and 5.5 jobs per day, at $480 average ticket and 75% close rate, is $360 in additional daily revenue per truck.
RPTD and Your Revenue Ceiling
RPTD × trucks × working days = your revenue ceiling with your current fleet. Most HVAC owners buy more trucks when they hit a revenue ceiling. The right question is whether they've maximized RPTD first.
The same 4-truck operation generates anywhere from $1.46M to $3.33M per year depending on RPTD. That's a $1.87M revenue difference with zero additional fleet cost. Before buying truck #5, the question is: what is your current RPTD, and have you closed the gap to top-quartile on the existing fleet?
Adding a truck when RPTD is below average compounds the problem — you're scaling inefficiency. Adding a truck when RPTD is at or above top quartile compounds the efficiency — you're scaling a machine that works.
Know your RPTD and whether you're ready to add a truck — or need to fix the ones you have.
MarginPlug's Delivery diagnostic calculates your Revenue Per Truck Per Day, benchmarks it against your revenue band, and identifies which of the four levers is your biggest opportunity. Free during beta.
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