Service radius is usually set by feel, and the feel is almost always 'as wide as possible, I need the work'. That is how plumbers end up doing $180 service calls ninety minutes away.
Price the drive first
A forty-mile job is not forty miles. It is eighty round trip, plus whatever the traffic does to it, plus the fact that you cannot take anything else that day in the opposite direction. On a $200 call that is most of the job.
The number to work out is simple: what does an hour in the van cost you, all in — fuel, wear, insurance, and the hour itself? Multiply by the round trip. If that is more than a quarter of the job value, the job is marginal no matter how good the price looked.
Wide for big jobs, tight for small ones
The right answer is usually not one radius but two. A repipe or a full water heater replacement will carry a sixty-minute drive comfortably. A leaking angle stop will not carry twenty.
In practice that means: set the radius wide enough to catch the big work, and be willing to decline the small jobs at the edge of it. Which only works if declining is free.
Why the mileage is in the text
Every appointment we send includes the town and the distance from you before you accept. That is deliberate — you cannot make this judgement without it, and a network that hides the distance until after you have committed is not on your side.
Decline as many as you like. Nothing is charged for an appointment you turn down and it does not count against you.
The thirty-mile floor
We require a thirty-mile minimum radius. In dense metro areas that is far more population than you need. In rural counties it is often the difference between a viable patch and one where nothing is ever booked — which is why our city pages state how many people live inside a thirty-mile radius of each town.
Booked appointments, not leads
Free to join. No monthly fee, no charge per lead. Pipe Well is paid 50% of the job after your documented materials — and only once the customer has paid you.
See how it works →Or call (562) 800-5506 — one line, answered nationwide.