Pool route value calculator

How to use this calculator

Enter five numbers about your own route, and the outputs update as you move any slider:

1. Stops per route: how many properties you'll visit in a single day (default 15).
2. Average price per stop, meaning what you actually charge per visit, not a monthly subscription total. Billing monthly instead? Divide the monthly rate by visits per month to get a per-visit figure (default $45).
3. Average drive time between stops, in minutes. That's the typical gap from one stop to the next on a normal day, not your commute to the first one (default 12).
4. Average service time per stop, in minutes: how long the visit itself takes once you're on site (default 20).
5. Work hours per day, how many hours you're realistically on the clock, driving and servicing stops combined (default 8).

The tool works out how many stops actually fit in that day, daily revenue, revenue per hour, and revenue per drive-hour, live, without reloading the page.

The numbers here are meant for a quick manual estimate. If you're running routes in PoolTechDesk, automatic visit-time logging already tracks real drive and service time per stop, so the real figures show up on their own instead of being re-entered by hand.

Worked example

Take a route with 15 stops, each priced at $45 per visit, with 12 minutes of average drive time between stops and 20 minutes of service time at each one, run across an 8-hour work day.

Total time per stop is drive time plus service time: 12 + 20 = 32 minutes. An 8-hour day gives 480 minutes to work with, so the number of stops that realistically fit is 480 ÷ 32 = 15, meaning this particular route is already running at full capacity for the day. Daily revenue is 15 stops × $45 = $675. Revenue per hour is $675 ÷ 8 = $84.38. Drive time alone eats up 15 stops × 12 minutes = 180 minutes, or 3 hours, of the day, so revenue per drive-hour is $675 ÷ 3 = $225.

Change any one number and the rest move with it. Cut drive time to 8 minutes instead of 12 and the same route fits more stops into the same 8 hours, since less of the day disappears into driving between them. That's the trade-off how many stops your route can realistically support covers in more depth. This example is illustrative arithmetic, not an industry benchmark. Your own route's real numbers will differ based on your pricing, geography, and service mix.

Why revenue per hour matters more than revenue per pool

Most pricing conversations in pool service start with a per-pool or per-customer number: how many accounts, what each one pays. That's an easy number to track, but it hides how much of the working day actually goes toward driving instead of billable service time. A route with a large customer count spread across a wide area can generate less usable income per working hour than a smaller, tighter route, even though the customer count looks better on paper.

Revenue per hour reframes the same numbers around what actually matters day to day: how much of an 8-hour shift converts into money versus disappearing into the drive between stops. Two routes with identical monthly revenue can have very different revenue-per-hour figures once drive time is factored in, and that difference compounds every day the route runs, all season.

Route optimization helps on the drive-time side of this equation by resequencing stops into a shorter path, but it works within the geography a route already has. A route spread across a wide service area starts with a lower ceiling on revenue per hour than a tightly clustered one, no matter how well the stops within it get sequenced. That's why the number worth watching over time isn't just total monthly revenue, it's whether new customers actually tighten a route's geography or stretch it thinner, since that decision shows up directly in the revenue-per-hour figure long after the sale is made.

This is also a useful way to compare two decisions that look similar at a glance: adding five more stops to a route versus raising the price per visit on the stops already there. Plugging both scenarios into the numbers above shows which one actually moves revenue per hour more, rather than assuming more customers is automatically the better move.