Start from billable hours, not scheduled hours
A crew that is paid for eight hours is not available for eight hours of work. Loading, drive time, fuel stops, supply house runs, breaks, paperwork and end-of-day closeout come off the top before anything is sellable.
Measure it once honestly across two weeks. Most companies find between five and six-and-a-half billable hours per crew per day, and the gap between that and eight is where margin quietly disappears.
The capacity formula
- Available hours = crews × working hours per day × working days.
- Billable hours = available hours × utilization rate (start at 0.70-0.80 and correct with real data).
- Jobs per day per crew = billable hours per day ÷ average job duration including travel.
- Weekly ceiling = jobs per day per crew × crews × working days.
- Sold capacity ÷ weekly ceiling = how tight the week actually is.
Why capacity has to be measured per skill
One pooled capacity number hides the constraint. If only two of six technicians can perform system changeouts, the changeout queue has a capacity of two crews regardless of how empty the rest of the board looks.
Track capacity by job type or certification. The bottleneck almost always sits in one specific skill, and that is the hire or the training decision worth making.
Getting job durations right
- Use the median of completed jobs, not the average — one nightmare job distorts the average.
- Split by job type. 'Service call' is not a duration; a drain clear and a full re-pipe are not the same commitment.
- Include the last fifteen minutes: cleanup, payment, photos and notes.
- Re-measure quarterly. Durations drift as crews and job mix change.
- Track scheduled vs actual duration as a standing metric — it is the single best predictor of late arrivals.
When to add a crew or a truck
Add capacity when the backlog lengthens for two consecutive weeks, when the lead-to-appointment lag passes the point where customers start calling someone else, or when overtime becomes routine rather than seasonal.
Do not add capacity to fix a scheduling process problem. If utilization is under 60% and the week still feels impossible, the issue is sequencing and job durations, not headcount.