How to Price Travel Fees as a Mobile Dog Groomer

A note on the numbers. The worked examples below use the starting prices in My Pet Groomer's mobile starter menu and a running cost per kilometre we made up for the example. Your van, your suburb and your speed will move every figure. Treat this as a way of working it out, not as advice on what to charge. Written October 2026.

Most mobile groomers start the same way. Everyone within a sensible distance pays the menu price. Then a client from the other side of the river books, and you drive forty minutes each way for a bath and tidy. On the way home you do the maths and decide that, next time, you will "add a bit".

"A bit" is where most travel fees come from, and it is why so many of them are wrong. Usually too low, sometimes so high that the far-away clients quietly stop booking. There is a better way to get to the number, and it starts with what a minute of your day is worth.

What a minute of your day is worth

A mobile groomer sells time. The menu price is just time with a dog attached. In our comparison of mobile and salon prices, the mobile starter menu works out at about $55 per booked hour, travel within the local area included. A medium full groom is $135 for two and a half hours.

So a minute is worth roughly 90 cents. Every minute behind the wheel that the booking doesn't already cover is 90 cents you are giving away. On top of that you pay to move the van.

That gives a simple formula for the extra drive to a far-off client:

Travel fee = extra minutes × your rate per minute + extra kilometres × your running cost per km

The words that matter are extra. The menu durations already assume a short drive. In our starter menu every mobile service is booked for thirty to forty-five minutes longer than its salon twin, and some of that is travel. You are not charging for the whole drive. You are charging for the part of it the price never covered.

A worked example

Say your base is in a middle-ring suburb. Most of your clients are within twenty minutes, about 15 kilometres, and the menu covers that. A new client is 35 minutes away, about 25 kilometres. For this example we assume the van costs 40 cents a kilometre to run (fuel, tyres and servicing, not the loan or the insurance, which you pay either way).

• Extra minutes: 35 − 20 = 15 minutes each way, so 30 minutes in total.
• Time cost: 30 × $0.90 = $27.
• Extra kilometres: 25 − 15 = 10 each way, so 20 in total.
• Running cost: 20 × $0.40 = $8.

That comes to about $35 to cover what the far-away booking costs you that a nearby one doesn't. Most groomers would round it to something a client can read at a glance: $30 or $35.

That is the honest number. If you have been adding $10 for clients like this one, you have been paying about $25 a visit to see them, which is why the far clients feel like a loss.

Bands, not a rate per kilometre

You could charge by the exact minute, and nobody would understand the invoice. Clients compare prices in steps, and a step is also easier for you to defend on the phone. So nearly every mobile business ends up with bands:

These are the bands My Pet Groomer suggests when a business first switches on mobile grooming. They are a starting point, not a recommendation, and the worked example shows why you should run your own numbers against them: the client 35 minutes away falls in the $20 band, but costs about $35. A band's fee is right for clients near its start and too low for clients near its end. If a lot of your clients sit at the far end of a band, raise its fee or split it in two (20 to 30 minutes $20, 30 to 40 minutes $30).

A few things make bands work:

• The free band should be generous. It's where most of your clients live, and "no travel fee" is a good line on your booking page. If 80 per cent of your clients are inside 20 minutes, keep it at 20.
• Each step should be big enough to matter. A $5 step isn't worth explaining. $15 to $20 is.
• The last band is a door, not a price. Past an hour, a one-dog visit rarely pays at any fee a client will accept. "Call us" lets you say yes to the regular with three dogs and no to the one-off bath. In My Pet Groomer, an address past your last band can't book online; the client is asked to call you.

Drive time or distance?

Time is fairer to you, because time is what you are short of. Twelve kilometres across a city at 8 am is not the same as twelve kilometres down a highway. Distance is easier for a client to check on a map.

If you price by time, use the drive without traffic. It means the quote is the same whether the client books at midnight or in the 8 am rush, and it's the cheapest honest number. Traffic is a risk you manage with the order of your day, not something you charge one client for. (That's how My Pet Groomer's mobile grooming works it out. Each address is priced once, from your location, and the client sees "12 min away · no travel fee" or the band's fee before they pick a time.)

If your clients are mostly rural or semi-rural, distance can be fairer, because the roads are open and the kilometres are the real cost. My Pet Groomer lets each location choose drive time or distance for its bands. Either way, pick one and say it on your booking page.

When to show the fee

Before they choose a time. Always. A travel fee that appears at the end of the booking, or worse on the day, reads as a trick even when it's fair. One that's on the screen next to the services, with the reason ("28 min away · $20 travel"), reads as a professional who has thought about it.

That also means the address has to come early in the booking, not on the last page. Clients don't mind giving it. It's the first thing they'd tell you on the phone anyway.

Should the travel fee get a discount?

We'd say no. If you run a deal for 10 per cent off a first groom, take it off the groom, not the drive. The groom is what you are discounting to win a client. The drive costs the same whatever you charge for the groom.

The same goes for multi-dog homes. Three dogs at one address is the best booking a mobile groomer gets: one drive, three grooms. Charge the travel fee once for the visit, not once per dog. It's one of the best reasons to pick a client further out.

When to say no

A travel fee makes a far booking fair. It doesn't make it a good day. Two things to watch:

1. The far booking that breaks a cluster. A 9 am in your own suburb and an 11 am forty minutes away cost you far more than the band says, because the 11 am also took the slot you'd have filled with a neighbour. Where you can, book the far clients on the day you're already out that way. We go through booking by area in how many dogs a day can a mobile groomer do?
2. The one-dog one-off. A first groom, one small dog, an hour out, booked for a weekday morning. Even at $35 travel, that slot was probably worth more filled locally. "Call us" past your last band is how you keep the choice.

The short version

• Work out what your minute is worth: menu price ÷ booked minutes.
• Charge the extra minutes and the extra kilometres beyond what your menu already covers.
• Round it into three or four bands, with a free band where most of your clients live.
• Price by drive time without traffic, or by distance if your roads are open.
• Show the fee before the client picks a time, charge it once per visit, and keep a "call us" door at the edge.

A travel fee set like this doesn't drive clients away. It's the reason you can afford to say yes to them.

If you'd like the bands worked out and shown to clients for you, mobile grooming in My Pet Groomer prices every address by drive time or distance and shows the fee before the client picks a time. There's more on how it fits a one-van business on our page for mobile groomers, and a 30-day free trial to try it with your own numbers.