Travel Time Pay: Portal-to-Portal Act, 29 CFR §§785.33–.41, California Morillion, and the December 2025 Villarino Decision

Fact-checked May 26, 2026

The same dispatch policy can be compliant under the federal Portal-to-Portal Act and still become an eight-figure class action in California.

That federal-vs-California divergence is the load-bearing question for every multi-state field-service, home-health, construction, and agricultural employer in the country. The federal floor — the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 (29 USC §254) and 29 CFR §§785.33–785.41 — excludes the ordinary commute, applies the "integral and indispensable" test from Integrity Staffing Solutions, LLC v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014), and counts compensable travel only when the regulation's four enumerated categories or the continuous-workday doctrine from IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), kicks in.

California's IWC Wage Orders apply a different, broader test: time the employee is "subject to the control" of the employer is compensable as "hours worked," whether or not the activity is integral and indispensable. Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 3, 995 P.2d 139 (Cal. 2000), is the state's load-bearing decision; Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 136 Cal.App.4th 263 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006), is the optional-transit safe harbor; Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 5 Cal.5th 829, 422 P.3d 880 (Cal. 2018), removed the federal de minimis doctrine from California state-law claims.

The 11th Circuit's December 2025 decision in Villarino v. Pacesetter Personnel Service, Inc., No. 23-10645 (11th Cir. Dec. 5, 2025), is the cleanest recent application of Integrity Staffing to a travel-time fact pattern: optional employer-provided transit and optional tool pickup were not integral and indispensable, transportation-cost deductions were permissible, and the case affirmed the district court for the employer.

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Quick reference

  • Federal statute: Portal-to-Portal Act, 29 USC §254 — ordinary commute excluded; preliminary and postliminary activities excluded; "integral and indispensable" exception applies.
  • Federal regulations: 29 CFR Part 785, Subpart C (Application of Principles), §§785.33–785.41 — four categories of compensable travel.
  • Federal safe harbor: Employee Commuting Flexibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-188, §§ 2101–2103, 110 Stat. 1928 (Aug. 20, 1996) — employer-provided vehicle commute non-compensable when the use is governed by a written agreement and the travel is within the normal commuting area.
  • Federal test for "integral and indispensable": Integrity Staffing Solutions, LLC v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014) — activity is integral and indispensable if it is an intrinsic element of the principal activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense.
  • Federal continuous-workday doctrine: IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005) — once the workday begins via the first compensable principal activity, all time until the last compensable activity is part of the continuous workday.
  • Federal recent: Villarino v. Pacesetter Personnel Service, Inc., No. 23-10645 (11th Cir. Dec. 5, 2025) — optional employer-provided transit and optional tool pickup not integral and indispensable.
  • California statute: Labor Code §510 (overtime); Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders 1 through 17, promulgated under Labor Code §1198, define "hours worked" as time during which the employee is "subject to the control of an employer," including all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so.
  • California load-bearing cases: Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575 (Cal. 2000); Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 136 Cal.App.4th 263 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006); Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 5 Cal.5th 829 (Cal. 2018).
  • States with hours-worked definitions broader than federal Portal-to-Portal: California, New York, Washington, Oregon — each by statute or wage order; Colorado's 2020 COMPS Order Rule 1.9 captured pre/post-shift required activities expressly.
  • States following Portal-to-Portal Act exclusions for state-law claims: the remaining 45 states by default.
  • Federal regular-rate intersection: 29 USC §207(a); 29 CFR §778.115 (weighted average for two or more rates); 29 CFR §778.208–§778.209 (non-discretionary bonus apportionment); 29 CFR §778.303 (retroactive recompute).
  • Federal recordkeeping: 29 CFR §516.2; Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946) — burden shifts to the employer when records are inadequate.

The 5 most expensive travel-time mistakes

  1. Mandatory yard time without paying the yard-to-customer drive. A service business that requires technicians to start the day at a yard or shop for tool pickup, dispatch, or vehicle inspection has begun the continuous workday at the yard under 29 CFR §785.38's "meeting place" language: "Where an employee is required to report at a meeting place to receive instructions or to perform other work there, or to pick up and to carry tools, the travel from the designated place to the work place is part of the day's work." The yard-to-first-customer drive is compensable federally. In California, Morillion's "subject to control" test extends compensability even to optional yard policies that are effectively mandatory under post-2018 California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion letters. A 30-minute yard routine plus 45-minute drive to the first customer, repeated daily across a 10-technician California workforce over the 4-year UCL limitations window under Bus. & Prof. Code §17200, is approximately 540 unpaid hours per technician — at $30/hour, $16,200 per technician in straight-time exposure alone, before §510 daily-overtime recompute, §203 waiting-time penalties, and §226 wage-statement derivative claims.

  2. Mandatory employer-provided transit in California — the Morillion trap. Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575 (Cal. 2000), held that the bus travel time was compensable as "hours worked" under California IWC Wage Order 14-80 because Royal Packing required field workers to ride company-provided buses from a designated pickup point to remote agricultural fields. The "subject to control" prong of the IWC definition was independently sufficient; the workers did not also need to be "suffered or permitted to work" during the controlled time. Any California employer that REQUIRES employees to ride employer-provided transit — shift buses, work-site shuttles, mandatory carpools, employer-mandated vanpools — owes time for the ride. Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 136 Cal.App.4th 263 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006), is the optional-transit safe harbor, but the post-2018 DLSE opinion-letter line has narrowed Overton to genuinely voluntary transit; parking-and-shuttle policies that employees cannot realistically decline trigger Morillion compensability even under nominally "voluntary" framing.

  3. The §785.39 overnight-travel passenger trap. 29 CFR §785.39 makes overnight business travel compensable during regular working hours, including the corresponding hours on nonworking days. A non-exempt employee who normally works Monday–Friday 9-to-5 and who flies Saturday from 10am-12pm is owed those 2 hours; the same flight from 9pm-11pm is not. The "corresponding hours on nonworking days" rule is the counter-intuitive part — Saturday and Sunday travel during the employee's regular weekday hours is compensable. Working-while-traveling per 29 CFR §785.41 stacks on top: a passenger who answers email, takes calls, or works on a laptop during the flight is owed the working time even when the bare passenger time wouldn't be compensable.

  4. Pre-shift system logins and dispatch that quietly start the continuous workday. IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), held that once the workday begins via the first compensable "integral and indispensable" activity, all time until the last compensable activity is part of the continuous workday — including travel between work-site components. Operationally: a home-health nurse who logs into the electronic health record before driving to the first patient; a delivery driver who receives the route on the dispatch app before leaving home; a sales rep who syncs the CRM at the kitchen table. Each is a "principal activity" that starts the continuous workday under IBP, and the time after the login — including the drive to the first stop the employer has been treating as commute — becomes compensable. The exposure is invisible until someone audits the app login timestamps alongside the time records, and litigation discovery routinely surfaces both.

  5. GPS records that prove the drive time the employer didn't pay. 29 CFR §516.2 requires the employer to record all hours worked. When records are deficient, Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), shifts the burden to the employer: the employee establishes the amount and extent of uncompensated work by "just and reasonable inference," and the employer must come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed. Vehicle telematics, mobile clock-in geolocation, and dispatch-app logs create the exact-time records the rule contemplates. Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442 (2016), extended Mt. Clemens to representative evidence in class-action overtime claims when the employer's records are inadequate. The defensive posture: pay for the time the records will eventually surface anyway.

The federal floor

29 USC §254 — the Portal-to-Portal Act

The Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, codified at 29 USC §254, excludes two categories of activity from FLSA compensable hours:

  1. §254(a)(1) — "walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities which such employee is employed to perform" — the ordinary commute.
  2. §254(a)(2) — "activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities" — pre and post-shift activities.

Two structural carve-outs survive the exclusions. First, the statute does not exclude travel during the workday — the text excludes travel "to and from the actual place of performance," not travel between sites once the workday has begun. Second, an activity that is "integral and indispensable" to the principal activity remains compensable; the test was articulated by the Supreme Court in Integrity Staffing Solutions, LLC v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014):

"An activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities."

Integrity Staffing rejected the suggestion that an activity becomes integral and indispensable because the employer requires it; the test is whether the principal work would be impossible without the activity, not whether the employer cares about it.

The 1996 Employee Commuting Flexibility Act safe harbor

The Employee Commuting Flexibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-188, §§ 2101–2103, 110 Stat. 1928 (Aug. 20, 1996) — Title II of the Small Business Job Protection Act — added §254(a)'s present-day proviso that an employee's use of an employer-provided vehicle for commute travel is NOT a principal activity, but only when:

  1. The travel is within the normal commuting area for the employer's business; AND
  2. The use of the vehicle is subject to an agreement between the employer and the employee (or the employee's representative).

The agreement requirement is the load-bearing gate. A service business that hands keys to a technician without a written take-home-vehicle agreement does not get the §254(a) safe harbor, and the commute time can become compensable if the vehicle's contents (tools, parts, dispatch device) or pre-route obligations (mandatory inventory check, route review) shift the activity toward integral and indispensable.

29 CFR §§785.33–785.41 — Subpart C, Application of Principles

The DOL regulation interpreting Portal-to-Portal Act travel-time treatment for FLSA purposes. The travel sections live in Subpart C of 29 CFR Part 785 (Application of Principles), §§785.33 through 785.41. Subpart D of the same Part covers recordkeeping at §§785.46–785.48.

29 CFR §785.33 — General

"The principles which apply in determining whether or not time spent in travel is working time depend upon the kind of travel involved. The subject is discussed in §§ 785.35 to 785.41, which are preceded by a brief discussion in § 785.34 of the Portal-to-Portal Act as it applies to traveltime."

§785.33 cross-references the Portal-to-Portal Act framing in §785.34 and sets up the §§785.35–785.41 enumeration that follows.

29 CFR §785.35 — Home to work; ordinary situation

"An employee who travels from home before his regular workday and returns to his home at the end of the workday is engaged in ordinary home to work travel which is a normal incident of employment. This is true whether he works at a fixed location or at different job sites. Normal travel from home to work is not worktime."

The closing sentence is the bright-line rule. The "fixed location vs. different job sites" clause is what makes §785.35 load-bearing for field-service businesses: a plumber driving from home to a customer's house is on uncompensated commute time even if the customer is 90 minutes away. The rule has been read broadly — long commutes, day-to-day-varying commutes, and (with the §254(a) safe harbor) commutes in employer-provided vehicles all generally remain non-compensable.

29 CFR §785.36 — Home to work in emergency situations

"[I]f an employee who has gone home after completing his day's work is subsequently called out at night to travel a substantial distance to perform an emergency job for one of his employer's customers all time spent on such travel is working time."

§785.36 also contains an explicit DOL non-position:

"The Divisions are taking no position on whether travel to the job and back home by an employee who receives an emergency call outside of his regular hours to report back to his regular place of business to do a job is working time."

Practical effect: emergency travel to a customer location is compensable; emergency travel back to the regular workplace is unsettled at the federal level.

29 CFR §785.37 — Home to work on special one-day assignment in another city

The regulation uses a Washington, D.C.-based employee assigned to New York City as its illustrative example: depart 8am, arrive noon, work through 3pm, return home at 7pm. The key regulatory holdings:

  • Such travel "cannot be regarded as ordinary home-to-work travel" and IS compensable because it serves "the employer's benefit and at his special request."
  • The travel is "an integral part of the 'principal' activity" the employee was hired to perform that workday.
  • Two deductible portions: (a) travel between home and the transit depot (home-to-work category retained), and (b) normal meal periods.

Practical effect: when a non-exempt employee takes a one-day trip to another city — a sales meeting, customer visit out of region, HQ training day — the travel hours (less normal commute and meal periods) are compensable. The "in another city" language has been read to mean genuine inter-jurisdictional travel, not a longer-than-usual trip within the regular commuting area.

29 CFR §785.38 — Travel that is all in the day's work

"Time spent by an employee in travel as part of his principal activity, such as travel from job site to job site during the workday, must be counted as hours worked. Where an employee is required to report at a meeting place to receive instructions or to perform other work there, or to pick up and to carry tools, the travel from the designated place to the work place is part of the day's work, and must be counted as hours worked..."

The end-of-day boundary example in §785.38 is also load-bearing. An employee finishing work at 5pm, completing another job at 8pm, and returning to the employer's premises at 9pm: "all of the time is working time." But if the employee goes home after 8pm instead of returning to the employer's premises: "the travel after 8 p.m. is home-to-work travel and is not hours worked."

Practical effect: site-to-site travel during the workday is fully compensable, and the meeting-place / tool-pickup language is what makes mandatory yard time plus yard-to-customer drives compensable in field-service businesses. The end-of-day boundary turns on whether the employee returns to the employer's premises or goes home directly.

29 CFR §785.39 — Travel away from home community

"Travel that keeps an employee away from home overnight is travel away from home. Travel away from home is clearly worktime when it cuts across the employee's workday. The employee is simply substituting travel for other duties. The time is not only hours worked on regular working days during normal working hours but also during the corresponding hours on nonworking days. Thus, if an employee regularly works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday the travel time during these hours is worktime on Saturday and Sunday as well as on the other days. Regular meal period time is not counted. As an enforcement policy the Divisions will not consider as worktime that time spent in travel away from home outside of regular working hours as a passenger on an airplane, train, boat, bus, or automobile."

The "corresponding hours on nonworking days" rule is the counter-intuitive part. A Monday–Friday 9-to-5 employee flying Saturday from 10am-12pm is owed those 2 hours; the same flight 9pm-11pm — outside regular hours, even on a workday — is not. Regular meal periods are deducted, but only if they meet the 29 CFR §785.19 bona-fide-meal-period test (employee completely relieved of duty). Non-overlapping passenger time is not compensable as an enforcement-policy matter.

29 CFR §785.40 — When private automobile is used in travel away from home community

"If an employee is offered public transportation but requests permission to drive his car instead, the employer may count as hours worked either the time spent driving the car or the time he would have had to count as hours worked during working hours if the employee had used the public conveyance."

The "offered public transportation but requests permission" language is load-bearing — this is an employee-elected substitution. When the employer requires the employee to drive (no public transit offered, or the employer mandates the vehicle), the entire driving time is compensable as travel-as-work under §785.41 and the §785.39 overlap rules.

29 CFR §785.41 — Work performed while traveling

"Any work which an employee is required to perform while traveling must, of course, be counted as hours worked. An employee who drives a truck, bus, automobile, boat or airplane, or an employee who is required to ride therein as an assistant or helper, is working while riding, except during bona fide meal periods or when he is permitted to sleep in adequate facilities furnished by the employer."

Two exceptions baked into the verbatim text: (a) bona fide meal periods, and (b) periods when the employee is permitted to sleep in employer-furnished adequate facilities. The driver of a vehicle is always working; the passenger working-while-riding is compensable when the §785.39 overlap or §785.38 site-to-site rules apply, OR when the employer requires actual work (email, calls, deliverables) during transit under §785.41.

The continuous-workday doctrine — IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez

IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), held that once the workday has begun via the first compensable "integral and indispensable" activity, all time until the last compensable activity is part of the continuous workday — including travel between work-site components.

The case was a consolidated appeal from the 9th and 1st Circuits. Alvarez involved meat-processing workers donning and doffing protective gear; the Supreme Court held that the donning of unique protective gear was integral and indispensable to the principal activity, which began the workday, and that walk time between the locker room and the production floor was therefore part of the continuous workday and compensable.

Application to travel-time facts:

  • A field-service technician who picks up tools at the yard has begun the workday at the yard (per §785.38's meeting-place language); the yard-to-customer drive is compensable.
  • A home-health nurse who logs into the electronic health record before driving has begun the workday at the home office; the drive to the first patient is compensable from that point forward.
  • A meat-processing worker who dons protective gear at the locker room has begun the workday at the locker room; the walk to the production floor is compensable.

The continuous-workday doctrine is what makes the line between "commute" (non-compensable) and "site-to-site travel" (compensable) turn on when the workday actually began, not on the employer's clock-in policy.

Integrity Staffing Solutions, LLC v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014)

The Supreme Court's "integral and indispensable" test. Integrity Staffing held that post-shift security screenings at warehouse-fulfillment facilities were not compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act because they were not "an intrinsic element" of the principal activities and the principal work could be performed without them.

The opinion clarified that the integral-and-indispensable test is not satisfied by the employer's requirement of the activity alone — the activity must be necessary to the principal work itself. This is the federal floor against which Villarino analyzed optional employer-provided transit and optional tool pickup.

Villarino v. Pacesetter Personnel Service, Inc., No. 23-10645 (11th Cir. Dec. 5, 2025)

Facts. Pacesetter Personnel Service is a temporary labor agency. Workers reported to a "labor hall" (shop) each morning to pick up assignments. Workers then either rode employer-provided transit (a company truck) to the jobsite or made their own way there. Tools were sometimes provided by the employer, sometimes by the jobsite, and sometimes brought by the employee.

Procedural posture. The district court ruled for the employer on summary judgment. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed in a published decision dated December 5, 2025.

Holdings.

  1. Travel time — time spent waiting for and riding employer-provided transit from the labor hall to the jobsite was NOT integral and indispensable, because workers were free to travel to the jobsite using personal transportation. The employer-provided transit was an optional service the worker could decline.
  2. Tool pickup — time spent collecting and returning employer-supplied tools was NOT compensable, because tools were not indispensable to the work: some jobs required no tools, some jobsites supplied tools, and employees could bring their own.
  3. Transportation cost deductions — the employer could deduct transportation expenses from wages because the transit served the employees' commuting convenience, not the employer's business interests; the deductions did not bring net pay below the FLSA minimum-wage floor.

Why it matters. Villarino is the cleanest recent application of Integrity Staffing to a travel-time fact pattern. The decision reinforces a strict reading: optional employer-provided transit does not become integral just because the employer offers it. The case sits squarely on the federal side of the federal-vs-California divide — under California law, the analysis would turn on whether the transit was REQUIRED, not whether it was OPTIONAL, and the result could flip.

29 CFR §785.19 — bona fide meal period (cross-reference)

§785.39 deducts "regular meal period time" from compensable travel hours. The §785.19 bona-fide-meal-period test controls whether the deduction applies:

"Bona fide meal periods are not worktime. Bona fide meal periods do not include coffee breaks or time for snacks. These are rest periods. The employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purposes of eating regular meals. Ordinarily 30 minutes or more is long enough for a bona fide meal period. A shorter period may be long enough under special conditions."

If the employee answers a customer call, reviews a deck, or otherwise works during the "meal period," it is not a bona fide meal period and cannot be deducted from compensable travel hours.

29 CFR §785.17 — on-call standby (cross-reference)

§785.36's emergency-callback rule sits on top of the §785.17 on-call standby framework. When an employee is on-call before the emergency call, whether the standby itself is compensable turns on the Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), totality-of-the-circumstances test — typically resolved on the engaged-to-wait / waiting-to-be-engaged axis.

California — broader than FLSA

California's IWC Wage Orders define "hours worked" much more broadly than the FLSA, and California law explicitly rejects the Portal-to-Portal Act exclusions for state-law claims. The result is the largest travel-time class-action exposure in the country.

The "subject to control" test — IWC Wage Orders + Labor Code §1198

The IWC Wage Orders are promulgated under California Labor Code §1198 and apply sector-by-sector to substantially all California employees. The "hours worked" definition appears verbatim across all 17 wage orders: time during which an employee is "subject to the control of an employer," including all the time the employee is "suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so."

The two prongs operate independently — "subject to control" alone is sufficient; the employee does not also have to be "suffered or permitted to work" during the controlled time. This is the structural divergence from the federal "integral and indispensable" test: the California test focuses on whether the employee is free to use the time, not whether the activity is necessary to the principal work.

Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575, 94 Cal.Rptr.2d 3, 995 P.2d 139 (Cal. 2000)

Facts. Royal Packing Co., an agricultural employer, required field workers to ride company-provided buses from a designated pickup point to remote agricultural fields. Workers could not leave the bus once boarded, could not use the time for personal purposes, and could not decline the bus and drive themselves — the fields had no public access.

Held. The bus travel time IS compensable as "hours worked" under California IWC Wage Order No. 14-80 (the agricultural wage order). Workers were "subject to the control of an employer" during the time, and the "subject to control" prong was independently sufficient — workers did not also have to be "suffered or permitted to work" during the travel.

Reasoning.

  • California's "subject to control" test is broader than the federal Portal-to-Portal Act's "integral and indispensable" test.
  • The federal Portal-to-Portal Act limits FLSA liability but does not limit state-law wage claims under independent state statutes.
  • IWC Wage Order definitions of "hours worked" control California claims regardless of FLSA treatment.

The "subject to control" language appears across IWC Wage Orders 1 through 17; the doctrine generalizes beyond Wage Order 14-80's agricultural facts to every California sector.

Practical effect. Any California employer that REQUIRES employees to ride employer-provided transit (shift buses, work-site shuttles, mandatory carpools, employer-mandated vanpools) owes time for the ride. Voluntary employer-provided transit — rideshare credits, optional shuttle programs — generally remains non-compensable per the Overton distinguisher and the California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion-letter line.

Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 136 Cal.App.4th 263 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006)

Facts. Disney assigned employees to park in a satellite lot one mile from the employee entrance and provided a Disney-operated shuttle from the parking lot to the entrance. Approximately 90% of employees used the shuttle; the remaining 10% used alternate transportation that bypassed the shuttle.

Held. Disney did NOT owe pay for the shuttle time. The case fell outside Morillion's mandate because Disney did not REQUIRE employees to park in the satellite lot or take the shuttle — the 10% who used alternate transportation demonstrated the option was real.

Reasoning. The California Court of Appeal distinguished Morillion on the "required vs. permitted" axis. The same shuttle service is compensable in California when mandatory and non-compensable when optional. The 90/10 actual-usage split was held immaterial — what matters is whether the employer requires the route, not whether most employees in fact use it.

The post-2018 California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion-letter line has narrowed Overton's safe harbor by holding that informally-but-effectively mandatory transit (employees would face operational penalties or termination for not following the parking policy) shifts the analysis from Overton back to Morillion even when the formal policy is "voluntary."

Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 5 Cal.5th 829, 422 P.3d 880 (Cal. 2018)

Troester rejected the federal de minimis doctrine for California state-law claims under Labor Code §§510, 1194, and 1197 and IWC Wage Order 5-2001. Applied to travel time: even small amounts of pre-shift or post-shift travel are compensable in California when the travel is required or under the employer's control. A 3-minute walk from the employer-mandated parking lot to the clock-in terminal, repeated daily, is compensable; the federal ~10-minute-per-day de minimis threshold from Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery does not apply to California state-law claims.

Troester stacks on top of Morillion + Overton for travel-time analysis: when the activity is compensable as "subject to control," there is no de minimis exclusion that would limit the duration counted.

Things California employers consistently miss

  • Mandatory yard time plus yard-to-customer drives. The classic Morillion-extension pattern. Service businesses with "start the day at the yard" policies for tool or inventory loading have begun the workday at the yard under federal §785.38 meeting-place reasoning; in California, Morillion's "subject to control" test compounds the federal rule because the employer's control during the yard-to-customer drive is itself sufficient even without the meeting-place hook.
  • Effectively-mandatory parking shuttles. Overton's safe harbor is narrower than employers assume. Per the post-2018 DLSE opinion-letter line, parking policies that employees cannot realistically decline (no employee parking near the building, prohibitive guest-lot fees, mandatory satellite-lot assignment) trigger Morillion compensability even when the formal policy is "voluntary." The 90% / 10% Overton usage split that worked for Disney does not generalize to employers where the 10% who decline face operational penalties.
  • Pre-shift dispatch on mobile apps starts the continuous workday. IBP v. Alvarez's continuous-workday doctrine controls California claims via the IWC Wage Orders' "subject to control" definition. A home-health nurse logging into the EHR before driving; a delivery driver receiving the route on the dispatch app; a field technician syncing the CRM at the kitchen table — each begins the workday under the federal rule and, in California, the activity is independently compensable under "subject to control."
  • §785.39 overlap on Saturday and Sunday business travel. California follows the federal §785.39 framework for travel-away-from-home overlap analysis, but Troester's no-de-minimis layer means any compensable working-while-traveling per §785.41 is fully compensable in California, no matter how small.
  • IWC Wage Order 16 construction-industry rules. Wage Order 16, which governs the construction, drilling, logging, and mining industries, includes additional reporting-time and travel-time provisions that trigger compensable travel from mandatory crew meetings under CA law more readily than under federal law alone.

California Labor Code §510 — overtime regular-rate intersection

When travel time is compensable in California, it counts as "hours worked" for purposes of California's daily-overtime and double-time thresholds under Labor Code §510(a):

  • 1.5× the regular rate for hours over 8 per workday;
  • 1.5× the regular rate for hours over 40 per workweek;
  • 2.0× the regular rate for hours over 12 per workday;
  • 1.5× for the first 8 hours on the 7th consecutive day of a workweek; 2.0× for hours over 8 on the 7th day.

The interaction: compensable yard time plus drive time plus billable hours can push a non-exempt California technician across the 8-hour daily threshold even when the billable hours alone do not. The §510 overtime exposure stacks on the underlying compensable-hours exposure.

State-by-state table

StateHours-worked ruleAuthority
California"Subject to control" of the employer per IWC Wage Orders; broader than FLSA; rejects Portal-to-Portal Act for state-law claims; no de minimisIWC Wage Orders 1–17; Lab. Code §1198; Morillion, Overton, Troester
New YorkNYLL §663; 12 NYCRR §142-2.1(b) — "hours worked" includes time the employee is "required to be available for work at a place prescribed by the employer"NY DOL guidance; courts apply Morillion-style reasoning to mandatory pre-shift logistics and employer-required transit
WashingtonWAC 296-126-002 — "hours worked" includes "all time during which an employee is authorized or required to be on duty on the employer's premises or at a prescribed workplace and all time during which an employee is permitted to work"Washington L&I; broader than FLSA; applied to compensable employer-mandated transit in administrative actions
OregonORS 653.010 — "hours worked" includes time the employee is "required or permitted" to work AND time the employee is required to be at a prescribed locationOregon BOLI administrative guidance has interpreted this to include mandatory employer-provided transit
ColoradoCDLE COMPS Order Rule 1.9 (2020 revision) — "hours worked" includes "all time during which an employee is performing labor or services for the benefit of an employer"The 2020 revision explicitly captured pre/post-shift required activities; travel-time application underdeveloped in case law
MassachusettsMGL c.151 §1A definition tracks federal broadly; treble damages automatic under MGL c.149 §150Practical effect: travel-time claims carry the same 3× back-pay multiplier as other wage-and-hour claims
IllinoisIllinois Minimum Wage Law tracks federal; Wage Payment and Collection Act amendments make class certification easierFederal floor for travel time; reduced class-cert barrier increases litigation risk
AlaskaAS 23.10.060 — state wage and hour act; daily overtime layered on topTravel-time analysis follows federal Portal-to-Portal Act; state DOL guidance has not extended beyond FLSA
NevadaNRS §608.018 — daily overtime for workers earning less than 1.5× the state minimum wageTravel-time analysis follows federal Portal-to-Portal Act
Other 41 statesFollow federal Portal-to-Portal Act exclusions for state-law claims§254(a) safe harbor applies; ordinary commute non-compensable; site-to-site compensable; §§785.36–785.41 categories control

The 50-state coverage is concentrated in the broader-than-federal jurisdictions (CA, NY, WA, OR, CO, with MA's treble-damages overlay) plus the daily-overtime states (CA, AK, NV, CO) where compensable travel can compound daily-premium exposure. The remaining states follow federal default, and Portal-to-Portal Act exclusions plus the §254(a) ECFA written-agreement safe harbor are the operative rules for state-law claims as well.

Industry-specific rules

Field service — multi-site service technicians

Plumbers, HVAC technicians, electricians, locksmiths, appliance repair, pest control, garage-door installers, and similar field-service technicians. The canonical pattern: drive from home to first customer, between customers throughout the day, home from the last customer.

Federal treatment.

  • Home → first customer = NOT compensable per 29 CFR §785.35 ordinary commute.
  • First customer → second customer = COMPENSABLE per 29 CFR §785.38 site-to-site.
  • Last customer → home = NOT compensable per 29 CFR §785.35 ordinary commute.
  • The compensable "principal activity" begins at the first customer — OR earlier if the employee picks up tools, receives dispatch, or logs into a system before driving, per §785.38's meeting-place language.

California treatment.

  • If the employee is required to start the day at the yard (tool pickup, dispatch, vehicle check), the yard-to-customer drive is compensable per Morillion-extension reasoning (employer control during commute) plus the federal §785.38 meeting-place principle.
  • If the employer requires the company vehicle AND prohibits its personal use, courts have applied "subject to control" to find compensability for home-to-yard or home-to-first-customer drives even under the federal §254(a) ECFA safe harbor.

Common exposure pattern. Service businesses with mandatory "start the day at the yard" policies (for tool / inventory loading) in California consistently owe yard time plus yard-to-customer-drive time. Multi-state operators face the additional complexity that the California rule diverges from the federal rule — the same optional-transit policy can fit the federal Villarino rule and still become a class action in California under Morillion if the transit is effectively required.

Mileage reimbursement intersection. Once a drive is compensable hours-worked, the vehicle expenses incurred on that drive are also reimbursable — under federal 29 CFR §531.35 (cannot reduce wages below minimum), under California Labor Code §2802 (necessary expenditures, with the IRS standard mileage rate as a safe-harbor benchmark or actual cost), and under similar state expense-reimbursement statutes (Illinois 820 ILCS 115/9.5, Massachusetts 454 CMR 27.04, others). Field-service businesses that pay for drive time but do not reimburse mileage face the second-largest single source of field-service wage-and-hour exposure after compensable-hours itself.

Home health and home care

Home-health nurses, aides, and caregivers drive between patient homes throughout the day.

Federal treatment. Same as field service: first patient ends the commute and starts the workday; last patient ends the workday and starts the commute. Drive time between patients is compensable per 29 CFR §785.38. Pre-shift system logins to the EHR or scheduling app before driving begin the workday under the continuous-workday doctrine.

Industry-specific wrinkle. The federal Domestic Service rule at 29 CFR Part 552 historically exempted some home-care workers from FLSA minimum-wage and overtime coverage, but a 2013 amendment (effective Jan. 1, 2015 after a court delay) narrowed the exemption — drive time between patient locations is generally covered for home-care workers employed by third-party agencies.

Construction

Crews meet at a yard, project office, or designated meeting point at the start of the day; drive to the project site; perform work; drive back at end of day.

Federal treatment. If the meeting point is mandatory (tool pickup, crew assembly, safety briefing), the workday begins at the meeting point — yard-to-site drive is compensable per 29 CFR §785.38. If employees report directly to the project site, the home-to-site drive is non-compensable commute. The 1996 ECFA preserves the commute-in-employer-vehicle exception when the vehicle is taken home as a courtesy under written agreement.

California wrinkle. IWC Wage Order 16 (construction industry) has additional reporting-time and travel-time provisions; mandatory crew meetings trigger compensable travel from the meeting point under California law more readily than under federal law.

Electrical and specialty trades

The National Electrical Contractors Association industry guidance reflects an industry that has had to adopt Portal-to-Portal Act practices for 50+ years. Tool-yard pickup, mandatory shop time, and apprentice training all create compensable pre-shift travel windows under both federal and California law.

Trucking and commercial motor vehicle operations

Commercial Motor Vehicle drivers are subject to FMCSA hours-of-service rules at 49 CFR §395.3 separately from FLSA. The intersection: FLSA treats CMV driving as compensable hours worked, but the FLSA "motor carrier exemption" at 29 USC §213(b)(1) exempts most interstate CMV drivers from FLSA overtime. Travel time is "compensable" for minimum-wage purposes but not for overtime calculations under federal law alone. State law (California, Oregon, Washington) sometimes restores the overtime entitlement; this is a per-state question for trucking specifically.

Overnight and multi-day business travel

The 29 CFR §785.39 overlapping-hours rule. The pattern: a salaried-non-exempt employee travels Sunday afternoon for a Monday-morning meeting. Sunday is the employee's day off; the travel is outside regular working hours. Federal rule: NOT compensable as a passenger.

The exposure trap: working-while-traveling. If the employee answers email, takes calls, or works on the laptop during the flight, the work itself is compensable per 29 CFR §785.41 — even when the bare passenger travel would not be.

Agriculture

The setting of Morillion. Agricultural workers riding employer-mandated transit to remote fields are compensable in California under Wage Order 14. Federal law applies the §213(b)(12) agricultural exemption from FLSA overtime when the employer employs 500 man-days or fewer of agricultural labor in the highest quarter of the preceding calendar year — the exemption applies to overtime only and does not address compensability of the underlying hours.

Multi-state and remote workers

Travel-time liability follows the employee's work location, not the employer's headquarters or the employee's residence. For multi-state field-service businesses, this rule produces three structural patterns:

  • A federal-floor employer's policy that "yard time isn't paid" may comply federally when transit and tool pickup are genuinely optional, but it creates California exposure for California-domiciled employees with mandatory yard-pickup routines. The same dispatch policy can be lawful under the federal floor and a class action in California.
  • A national service business needs either (a) per-state policies that account for Morillion in California, or (b) a strict-everywhere policy that pays yard time plus travel-to-first-site in every state. The marginal labor cost of strict-everywhere is small; the elimination of per-state policy complexity is large.
  • Remote workers traveling for in-person meetings face the §785.39 overlapping-hours rule based on their regular working hours, which the employer's HQ time zone does not control. A West Coast employee traveling East for a meeting has different overlap windows than an East Coast colleague traveling to the same meeting.

The strict-everywhere defense: pay all yard time, all dispatch and pre-shift app-login time, all site-to-site drive time, and all working-while-traveling time. A California-baseline travel-time policy satisfies every other state's rule.

Recent changes (last 18 months)

  • December 5, 2025 — Villarino v. Pacesetter Personnel Service, Inc., No. 23-10645 (11th Cir. Dec. 5, 2025). The Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the employer on three holdings: optional employer-provided transit was not integral and indispensable; optional tool pickup was not integral and indispensable; transportation-cost deductions were permissible because the transit served the employees' commuting convenience. Federal-floor employers gained a clear citation. California employers should NOT read Villarino as relaxing the California "subject to control" analysis — Villarino applies federal law; Morillion controls state-law claims.
  • Post-2018 California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion letters. Multiple opinion letters clarifying employer-mandated parking and shuttle scenarios. The DLSE opinion-letter archive is the primary source for the post-Morillion extension cases — particularly the line that informally-but-effectively mandatory transit triggers compensability even under nominally "voluntary" policies.
  • Post-pandemic remote work patterns. Pre-shift system logins, "first email of the day" timing, and EHR or scheduling-app access points are driving new travel-time-adjacent litigation in California. The continuous-workday doctrine reaches further when the employee's "first principal activity" can happen at the kitchen table.
  • DOL Wage and Hour Division guidance — DOL Fact Sheet #22 (Hours Worked Under the FLSA). The canonical agency reference for compensable hours including travel time; updated periodically by the Wage and Hour Division. State-specific guidance from California DIR, New York DOL, and Washington L&I has tightened in the same direction.
  • California rounding doctrine — Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 84 Cal. App. 5th 638 (Cal. Ct. App. 2022); review granted by California Supreme Court Feb. 1, 2023 (S277518). Camp held that time-clock rounding is impermissible under California law when the employer has actual exact-time data. GPS, dispatch-app, and mobile clock-in records ARE actual exact-time data. Camp is persuasive-only authority during California Supreme Court review; most California employer-side counsel already advise clients to stop rounding compensable drive time.

Connection to the regular rate — the overtime overlay

When travel time IS compensable, it counts as "hours worked" for the overtime regular-rate calculation under 29 USC §207(a). Three practical implications:

Compensable travel pushes the workweek over 40 hours

A field technician works 36 billable hours across the week and drives 6 hours between customer sites (compensable under §785.38). Total hours worked: 42. The employer owes 2 hours at 1.5× the regular rate — but the payroll system, configured to compute overtime against billable hours only, computes 0. The compensable drive time was never tracked as "hours worked" for overtime purposes, so the 40-hour threshold was silently crossed.

Weighted-average regular rate under 29 CFR §778.115

When the employer pays a different rate for drive time than for billable work, 29 CFR §778.115 requires the weighted-average regular rate for overtime, not the higher rate.

Worked example. A technician works 30 billable hours at $30/hr and 12 drive hours at $15/hr in a workweek. Total straight-time pay = (30 × $30) + (12 × $15) = $900 + $180 = $1,080. Total hours = 42. Regular rate (weighted average) = $1,080 ÷ 42 = $25.71/hr. Overtime hours = 2. Overtime premium = 2 × 0.5 × $25.71 = $25.71 (half-time on top of the straight-time already paid). Total weekly compensation = $1,105.71.

The §7(g)(2) alternative under 29 USC §207(g)(2) permits paying overtime at the rate established for the type of work performed during the overtime hours — but only by prior written agreement made before the work is performed and only when the underlying rates are bona fide.

Non-discretionary bonus plus compensable travel = layered regular-rate recompute

When the technician earns a non-discretionary bonus (per-stop commission, monthly performance bonus, quarterly safety bonus), the bonus must be included in the regular rate per 29 CFR §§778.208–.209 and apportioned across all compensable hours in the bonus period. Compensable travel hours get apportioned the same as billable hours; the bonus-per-hour computation uses TOTAL compensable hours, not just billable hours. If the rate is increased retroactively, 29 CFR §778.303 requires the overtime premium for every affected workweek to be recomputed at the higher rate.

The combined failure pattern in the field is: piece-rate-per-stop technician, unpaid drive time, monthly safety bonus. All three failure modes stack — drive time is uncompensated; the 40-hour threshold is missed when drive is added back; and the bonus apportionment understates the regular rate when drive hours are excluded from the divisor.

Recordkeeping and Mt. Clemens

29 CFR §516.2(a) requires every employer of a non-exempt employee to record: personal information; time and day the workweek begins; hours worked each workday and total each workweek; basis on which wages are paid; regular hourly rate for any workweek in which overtime is owed; total daily or weekly straight-time earnings; total overtime premium pay; additions and deductions; total wages paid; date of payment and pay period covered.

When the employer's records are deficient, Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), applies: the employee carries the burden of producing sufficient evidence to show the amount and extent of the uncompensated work as a matter of just and reasonable inference, and the burden then shifts to the employer to come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed. Missing records mean the employee's good-faith recollection controls.

Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442 (2016), extended Mt. Clemens to representative evidence in class-action overtime claims when the employer's records are inadequate — the most directly applicable Supreme Court precedent for travel-time class actions where each technician's drive log is missing or imprecise.

For field-service businesses, the practical recordkeeping primitive is GPS plus vehicle telematics plus clock-in geolocation — the same technology that proves the employee was at the customer site also creates the federal-required record that survives Mt. Clemens burden-shifting. GPS data is admissible and beats "we estimate the drive time" testimony in both federal and California courts.

FAQ

What is the federal rule on commute time?

Ordinary home-to-work commute is NOT compensable under 29 CFR §785.35 and the Portal-to-Portal Act, 29 USC §254. This applies whether the employee works at a fixed location or different job sites and regardless of how long the commute is. The rule's closing sentence is the bright line: "Normal travel from home to work is not worktime."

When does the federal rule require pay for driving between job sites?

29 CFR §785.38 makes site-to-site travel during the workday compensable as "hours worked." The same regulation extends compensability to travel from a mandatory meeting place to the work place — when the employee is required to report at a meeting place to receive instructions, perform other work, or pick up and carry tools, the travel from the designated place to the work place is part of the day's work.

What is the "integral and indispensable" test?

The Supreme Court's test from Integrity Staffing Solutions, LLC v. Busk, 574 U.S. 27 (2014): "An activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities." Activities that meet the test remain compensable despite the Portal-to-Portal Act's exclusion of preliminary and postliminary activities. Activities that fail the test — even when the employer requires them — are not compensable under federal law.

When does the workday begin for a field-service technician?

Under IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), the continuous workday begins with the first "integral and indispensable" activity. For a technician who picks up tools at the yard before driving to the first customer, the workday begins at the yard, and the yard-to-customer drive is compensable per 29 CFR §785.38. For a technician who logs into a dispatch app at home before driving, the workday begins at the login, and the drive to the first customer is compensable. For a technician who drives directly from home to the first customer with no pre-drive activity, the home-to-first-customer drive is non-compensable commute.

What does California require for employer-provided transit?

Mandatory employer-provided transit is compensable in California under Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575 (Cal. 2000). The IWC Wage Orders' "subject to control" test — broader than the federal "integral and indispensable" test — controls California claims and is not limited by the federal Portal-to-Portal Act. Voluntary employer-provided transit is generally not compensable per Overton v. Walt Disney Co., 136 Cal.App.4th 263 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006), but the post-2018 California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion-letter line has narrowed Overton's safe harbor: parking-and-shuttle policies that employees cannot realistically decline trigger Morillion compensability even when formally framed as voluntary.

How does overnight business travel get paid?

29 CFR §785.39 makes overnight business travel compensable during regular working hours — including the corresponding hours on nonworking days. A Monday–Friday 9-to-5 employee flying Saturday from 10am-12pm is owed those 2 hours; the same employee flying 9pm-11pm on a weekday is not owed those hours as passenger time. Regular meal periods that meet the §785.19 bona-fide-meal-period test are deducted. Work the employee actually performs during travel — answering email, taking calls, working on a laptop — is compensable per 29 CFR §785.41 independent of the §785.39 overlap.

What is the 1996 ECFA safe harbor for commute in employer-provided vehicles?

The Employee Commuting Flexibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-188, §§ 2101–2103, 110 Stat. 1928, added a proviso to 29 USC §254(a) that an employee's use of an employer-provided vehicle for commute travel is NOT a principal activity, but only when (a) the travel is within the normal commuting area for the employer's business AND (b) the use of the vehicle is subject to an agreement between the employer and the employee. The agreement requirement is the load-bearing gate — a take-home-vehicle program without a written agreement does not get the §254(a) safe harbor.

What did Villarino change for federal employers?

Villarino v. Pacesetter Personnel Service, Inc., No. 23-10645 (11th Cir. Dec. 5, 2025), affirmed for the employer on three points: optional employer-provided transit from a labor hall to a jobsite was not integral and indispensable; optional tool pickup was not integral and indispensable because some jobs required no tools and some jobsites supplied them; and the employer could deduct transportation expenses from wages because the transit served the employees' commuting convenience. Villarino is a strict application of the Integrity Staffing test to a travel-time fact pattern and gives federal-floor employers a clear citation for "optional" transit and tool programs.

How does compensable travel time affect overtime calculations?

Compensable travel counts as "hours worked" for the overtime regular-rate calculation under 29 USC §207(a). The two most common failure modes: (1) compensable drive time pushes the workweek over 40 hours and the employer's payroll system, configured against billable hours only, does not compute the overtime; (2) different rates for drive time and billable time require the weighted-average regular rate under 29 CFR §778.115, not the higher of the two rates. Non-discretionary bonuses must be included in the regular rate under §§778.208–.209 and apportioned across all compensable hours including travel.

If you discover you've been doing this wrong

  1. Audit by employee work location. Pull time records, GPS telemetry, dispatch-app logs, and mobile clock-in logs for the full statute period — 2 years federal (29 USC §255(a)); 3 years federal if willful; 4 years California under the unfair-competition statute (Bus. & Prof. Code §17200); 6 years New York (NY Lab. Law §198); 3 years Massachusetts with mandatory treble damages (MGL c.149 §150). For California employees, every minute counts under Troester.

  2. Identify the first-principal-activity timestamp. For each affected employee, find the earliest activity that qualifies as integral and indispensable: yard arrival, EHR login, dispatch-app login, tool pickup. The gap between that timestamp and the recorded clock-in is the unpaid pre-shift travel window. The §785.38 meeting-place language and the IBP continuous-workday doctrine work together to make that gap compensable.

  3. Compute back wages and overtime. Straight-time recompute at the regular rate for the unpaid compensable hours. Overtime recompute: for any workweek where total compensable hours exceeded 40, the overtime premium owed at 1.5× the regular rate; for California, daily overtime under Lab. Code §510 at 1.5× over 8 hours and 2× over 12. Bonus apportionment: if non-discretionary bonuses were paid during the affected workweeks, recompute under 29 CFR §§778.208–.209 with travel hours included in the divisor.

  4. Decide on voluntary-payment posture. Voluntary payment under DOL supervision (the PAID program or Wage and Hour Division supervised settlement) can resolve federal claims with a release. Voluntary payment without DOL supervision does not waive employee rights to liquidated damages or attorneys' fees under 29 USC §216(b). California requires Labor Commissioner or court approval for valid wage releases under Lab. Code §206.5.

  5. Consult counsel before any payment exceeding per-worker thresholds. Practical class-action threshold under FRCP Rule 23 or 29 USC §216(b) collective-action procedures is $5,000–$10,000 per worker; above that, class-mechanics counsel is the load-bearing dependency. Tyson Foods's representative-evidence rule plus Mt. Clemens burden-shifting make class certification dramatically easier when employer records are deficient.

The bottom line

Travel-time exposure runs through three structural failure modes: mandatory pre-shift activities that quietly start the continuous workday (yard pickup, dispatch, app login), mandatory employer-provided transit in California (the Morillion trap), and passenger overnight travel during overlapping work hours (the §785.39 trap). Villarino marks the strict federal floor; Morillion, Overton, and Troester mark the broader California ceiling; New York, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado sit between.

The structural divergence between federal and California law is the load-bearing operational fact for multi-state employers: the same dispatch policy is compliant federally and an eight-figure class action in California. The highest-leverage operational discipline is the recordkeeping primitive at 29 CFR §516.2 plus GPS, vehicle telematics, and clock-in geolocation — records that survive Mt. Clemens burden-shifting also remove the "we estimate the drive time" testimony that loses class-action trials.

For multi-state field-service operators, the answer is the same as for overtime, breaks, sick leave, and off-the-clock work: standardize to the strictest applicable rule. California-baseline travel-time capture satisfies every other state's requirement, the marginal labor cost is small, and the elimination of per-state policy complexity is large.

Sources

Federal statutes

Federal regulations

DOL guidance

State authorities

Case law

Related

About Clockspot

Clockspot helps small businesses track employee time and keep payroll-ready records. Used in all 50 states since 2007, we focus on getting time and pay right — including the wage-and-hour rules that shape both.

Clockspot captures yard time, site-to-site drives, dispatch app-login timestamps, and GPS clock-in geolocation — the records that survive Mt. Clemens burden-shifting under 29 CFR §516.2. See how Clockspot tracks travel time.