Understanding geocoding and drive time

When you enter a site address on a bid, Gradeworks does more than pin it on a map. It verifies the address, calculates the drive time from your yard, adjusts for truck speed, and applies your drive factor tiers to compute travel cost — all automatically.

How address lookup works

When you enter a site address, Gradeworks verifies it and pinpoints the exact location. If you look up the same address again, the result is instant — the system remembers previous lookups so you're never waiting twice.

Truck-adjusted drive times

Standard drive time estimates assume passenger vehicle speeds. Construction trucks are slower — they accelerate differently, take wider turns, and observe lower speed limits on some roads. Gradeworks applies a configurable truck derating percentage to every drive time calculation.

For example, if the estimated drive time is 45 minutes and your truck derating is set to 20%, the adjusted drive time is 54 minutes. This difference can significantly impact travel cost on bids, especially for distant job sites.

Drive factor tiers

Drive factor tiers let you charge different rates based on how far the job site is. The system matches the truck-adjusted drive time against your tiers and applies the corresponding cost multiplier.

For example, jobs within 30 minutes might use a 1.0x factor (no markup), while jobs 30-60 minutes away use 1.15x, and jobs over 2 hours use 1.5x. Configure tiers in Settings > Company > Scheduling.

Bulk address lookup

When you import bids from Excel, Gradeworks looks up all site addresses automatically. You can continue working while this runs — the system handles everything and you'll see results appear on each bid as they're ready.