How to Increase HVAC Revenue Per Truck

Every truck you have should be a profit center for your business. But the key to unlocking more profit isn't about getting more trucks—it's about maximizing the output of the ones you already have.

Craig Clark, owner at Ocean State Air in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, learned this firsthand. "Eight years ago we were doing a million dollars in business," he told me. "We were sort of stuck in that $1 million mark."

His breakthrough came when he stopped seeing his vans as vehicles and started seeing them as individual business units. "Now we have vans that are capable of producing or installing one to one and a half million dollars a year," he explained. That's more revenue per van than his entire company was doing just eight years prior.

How? Craig sees each of his techs as the CEO of their truck, empowring them to take control over their part of the bsuiness.

Craig's story proves the secret to maximizing your HVAC Revenue Per Truck: You must fundamentally change how your technicians think about their role. This is a playbook for turning your technicians into business partners by aligning their incentive pay with your business's success.

What Is HVAC Revenue Per Truck (And Why It’s So Important)

HVAC Revenue Per Truck is a simple calculation: your total annual revenue divided by the number of service trucks you operate.

Total Annual Revenue / Number of Service Trucks = Revenue Per Truck

While the formula is simple, the figure it reveals can have a huge impact on your business.

Revenue per truck is the ultimate measure of asset utilization. It tells you how effectively you’re turning your most expensive assets (your trucks and the technicians who drive them) into business revenue.

What’s a “Good” HVAC Revenue Per Truck? (Industry Benchmarks)

The numbers can vary based on your market and service mix (e.g., residential vs. commercial, install-heavy vs. service-heavy), but from working with over 200 service businesses I’ve seen revenue per truck range from $150,000/year all the way up to $350,000+ per truck, with Craig’s $1m+ being a top 1% result. 

At the $150,000 - $200,000 per truck range you’re doing well and likely have a sustainable business but there’s significant room to improve.

At $200,000 - $300,000 per truck, you’re running a solid, profitable operation. Your processes are likely dialed in, but there are still levers to pull.

At $350,000+ per truck businesses in this range have mastered technician efficiency and sales.

If your numbers aren't where you want them to be, don't panic. The problem usually comes down to the way you structure incentives. At ShareWillow we’ve seen businesses drive 30% more revenue per technician once they’ve dialed in their technician incentives.

The Real Driver of Truck Revenue is Technician Performance

Your truck doesn’t directly make you money, the technician operating it does.

Many business owners see technician performance as just one of many factors influencing revenue. But in reality every other driver (average ticket, calls per day, callback rate) is a direct outcome of your technician's skill, motivation, and customer service.

The most successful and profitable HVAC companies cultivate an ownership mindset in their techs. They don't just see a schedule of jobs as a list to rush through as quickly as possible to get home at the end of the day, they see themselves as the CEO of their truck.

But how do you create that mindset? You don't get it from pep talks or "employee of the month" plaques. You build it by giving them a direct stake in the outcome through an incentive pay plan.

The KPI-to-Incentive Playbook: Connecting Business Goals to Technician Pay

Stop simply feeding your techs HVAC KPIs on a spreadsheet and start paying them for the results you want to see.

An effective performance-based pay system connects specific business goals directly to a technician's wallet. At ShareWillow we’ve worked with over 200 service businesses and we’ve seen how performance pay is the fastest, most effective way to align tech behavior with your company's growth.

Here’s a practical framework mapping common goals to specific HVAC technician incentives:

To increase the number of calls per day, you could offer a daily bonus for completing five or more calls, adding an "on-time arrival" bonus to ensure the day starts efficiently.

For boosting maintenance agreement sales, a simple, flat-rate bonus like a $50 spot bonus for every new membership sold can be a powerful motivator for creating recurring revenue.

To improve the first-time fix rate, a monthly performance bonus for having zero callbacks rewards quality work and reduces revenue lost to non-billable follow-up visits.

You can generate more 5-star reviews by offering a small spiff, like $10 or $20, for every review that specifically mentions the technician's name, directly tying their customer service efforts to a reward.

This approach transforms your techs from hourly employees into revenue-generating partners.

How to Build an Incentive Plan That Actually Works

A good plan isn’t buried in a handbook, it’s something your team understands and feels every single day. (And with ShareWillow’s mobile app they can keep it right in their pocket.)

The best compensation structures are built on three pillars:

1. Simplicity Your techs should be able to explain their pay plan to their spouse in 10 seconds. If they need a calculator and a spreadsheet, it’s too complicated. The logic should be a clear "Do X, make Y." Techs should know exactly what they earned after each job, down to the penny.
2. Transparency Don't keep the numbers a secret. Share performance data with your technicians. Show them their individual revenue per truck, as well as performance against any KPIs that you’re focused on as a business (first-time fix rate, 5-star reviews, on time arrivals).
3. Immediacy Don't wait for an annual review to pay out bonuses. Pay out incentive bonuses in your tech’s bi-weekly or monthly pay. This creates a tight feedback loop, constantly reinforcing the connection between great performance and financial reward. The psychological impact of seeing a direct deposit hit their account just days after earning it is immense and reinforces the desired behavior far better than a lump sum months later.

Building an incentive plan doesn’t have to be intimidating. We've designed ShareWillow to be the simplest platform to help you design a plan, based on what we've learned from helping over 200 service businesses build theirs. We help you design, launch, and manage commission pay plans that drive real growth.

Final Thoughts: Turn Your Trucks into Profit Machines

It’s time to stop looking at your trucks as sunk costs. They are platforms that enable your biggest assets — your technicians — to do their jobs effectively.

By focusing on technician motivation and aligning their personal incentives with your business goals, you create a powerful engine for growth.

You don't just increase your HVAC revenue per truck, you improve your HVAC profit margins, reduce employee turnover, and build a more resilient HVAC business.