Chimney Sweep: Cleanings Per Day From Drive Time

All versions

A chimney crew does not sell cleanings, it sells hours — and every job eats the cleaning time plus the drive to the next address. Book too few and the truck sits idle; book too many and the last customer gets a call at 6 p.m. This recipe turns the workday length, average cleaning time and average drive time into a whole number of jobs per day, plus the minutes left over.

Quick formula: Workday minutes divided by one job's cleaning-plus-drive time, rounded down:

=INT(B2*60/(C2+D2))

An 8-hour day at 60 minutes per cleaning and 25 minutes of driving fits 5 jobs with 55 minutes to spare.

Functions used (tap for the full reference guide):

INT IF

The example

Three crews with different job lengths and routes. Longer cleanings and longer drives both shrink the number of jobs that fit.

	A	B	C	D	E	F
1	Case	Hours	Clean min	Drive min	Jobs	Idle min
2	Crew A	8	60	25	5	55
3	Crew B	8	90	30	4	0
4	Crew C	10	45	20	9	15

The formula

Total minutes in the day divided by the minutes one job really consumes, rounded down because half a job is not a booking:

=INT(B2*60/(C2+D2)) // jobs per day; idle minutes = Hours*60 - jobs*(CleanMin+DriveMin)

How it works

Here is the logic, one piece at a time:

B2*60 converts the workday from hours to minutes so it matches the job times.
C2+D2 is the true cost of one job: the cleaning itself plus the drive to reach it.
INT(...) rounds down to whole jobs. A crew cannot finish 5.6 cleanings, so 5.6 is 5.
The second formula multiplies jobs by the per-job minutes and subtracts from the day, exposing the idle time you could sell as a short add-on such as a cap inspection.

Use your real averages from the last month of invoices, not the best day on the calendar.

Try it: interactive demo

Interactive

Enter the workday length and the minutes per cleaning and per drive.

Workday hours

Minutes per cleaning

Minutes driving per job

Variations

Reserve a lunch and truck-load buffer

Subtract fixed daily minutes (lunch, loading, paperwork) before dividing.

=INT((B2*60-45)/(C2+D2))

Find the jobs a longer day would add

Test a 10-hour peak-season day by changing the hours cell and comparing.

=INT(10*60/(C2+D2))-E2

Pitfalls & errors

Drive time is the number most crews guess. Pull it from your GPS or route app; a 25-minute guess that is really 40 minutes costs you a job a day.

Do not use ROUND here. Rounding 5.6 up to 6 books a sixth job you cannot finish.

Heavier jobs (a stainless liner install, heavy creosote) take longer. Keep a separate average per job type.

Practice workbook

📊

Download the free Chimney Sweep: Cleanings Per Day From Drive Time practice workbook

Edit the yellow hours and minute cells; jobs per day and idle minutes recalculate.

Frequently asked questions

Should the last job of the day include a drive?

Yes if the crew returns to the shop and you pay for that time. Many shops treat the drive home as unpaid and drop one drive from the total; the formula here is the conservative version.

How do I count a two-person crew?

Run it per truck. Two trucks is two rows, not a doubled hour count, because both crews still drive between their own jobs.

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Function references: INT IF