The call is almost always “the door won’t open.” The job is almost always a torsion spring. The price that gets advertised — $189, $249, “we beat any quote” — treats the kit and an hour in the driveway as the whole cost. The van still had to get there.
Kit on a 16×7: roughly $175 from a supplier, more for high-cycle. Shop time: about an hour and a quarter if the tracks and cables are honest. Loaded wage (wage plus burden) on a $28 tech at 30% burden is $36.40. That is about $45 of shop labor. Then the drive: forty minutes each way is 40 miles at 30 mph — $32 of vehicle cost at $0.80/mile plus $48 of travel labor. The ticket already costs about $300 before overhead. A $189 special is underwater by more than a hundred dollars.
The same ticket eight miles from the shop can still clear a 25% margin. Distance is the product, not the spring.
Evening and weekend premiums belong on shop labor. They do not make the miles cheaper. If you only raise the advertised special by $40 and drive across town at 8 p.m., you paid for the privilege.
The garage door bid calculator flags a spring job when travel is 35% or more of the price, or when the drive costs more than the hour in the driveway. Use it to decide whether to quote a trip fee, raise the ticket, or pass. It is not a safety inspection and it does not tell you the door is safe to operate.
Charge the spring kit, the shop hour at a loaded wage, travel labor plus miles, then overhead and margin. A advertised $189 special is often below cost once the van has driven forty minutes each way.
Only if the door itself is the problem. A rusted, uninsulated slab may need replacement, but quoting a full door when the customer called for a spring is how the job walks to the next truck. Price both tickets and let the customer choose.