Texas travel time pay for hourly employees follows the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, because Texas has no separate state rule on the subject. The short version: your normal commute is unpaid, but travel your employer directs you to do during the workday, special one-day trips out of town, and most overnight travel all count as hours worked. Getting the line right matters, because unpaid travel time can quietly drag your effective wage below minimum wage or cost you overtime you’ve earned.
Your Commute Is Not Paid
Driving from home to your regular workplace and back at the end of the day is not work time, no matter how far the drive or how heavy the traffic. That is true whether you report to the same location every day or to a different site each morning.1eCFR. 29 CFR 785.35 The Portal-to-Portal Act carves this travel out of paid hours.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 254 – Relief From Liability and Punishment Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
A company vehicle doesn’t change this. If you and your employer have agreed you’ll use an employer-provided vehicle for the commute, and the driving stays within the normal commuting area, that time remains unpaid.3U.S. Department of Labor. Travel Time
Hauling heavy tools or equipment to a job site is a narrower question. Federal case law treats picking up and returning employer-provided tools as compensable only when doing so is truly essential to your main duties. If some jobs don’t need the tools, if the site supplies them, or if you could bring your own, the tool handling generally doesn’t turn your commute into paid time.
Travel Between Job Sites During the Workday
Once your workday has begun, any travel your employer sends you on is paid. A plumber driving between service calls, an office worker sent across town for supplies, a home health aide moving between patients — that mid-day travel is hours worked.3U.S. Department of Labor. Travel Time You’re on the clock, under your employer’s control, and moving for their benefit.
The bookends of the day are where employers get this wrong. Driving from home to your first site in the morning and from your last site back home in the evening still counts as a commute, even if those sites change daily.1eCFR. 29 CFR 785.35 Only the travel between sites during the day is compensable. Employers who classify mid-day travel as a string of “mini commutes” are misreading the rule.
One-Day Assignments in Another City
When your employer sends you on a one-day trip to a city other than where you normally work, the travel time is paid. Federal regulations treat this differently from a commute because the trip is at the employer’s specific request for an unusual assignment.4eCFR. 29 CFR 785.37
The employer can subtract the time you’d normally spend commuting. If the special trip involves four hours of round-trip driving and your regular commute is 30 minutes each way, the employer owes you three hours, not four. Meal breaks during the trip can also be deducted.4eCFR. 29 CFR 785.37
Overnight Travel
When a work trip keeps you away overnight, the rules split based on when the travel happens and whether you’re driving or riding.
Travel during your normal working hours is paid, even on days you wouldn’t ordinarily work. If your regular schedule is 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, travel between those hours on a Saturday or Sunday still counts as work time. You’re substituting travel for the work you’d otherwise be doing.5eCFR. 29 CFR 785.39
Outside your normal working hours, your role during the trip decides it. Riding as a passenger on a plane, train, bus, or car without working is unpaid.6eCFR. 29 CFR 785.39 – Travel Away From Home Community Doing the driving is paid regardless of the hour. Two employees on the same overnight trip can produce two different pay obligations if one drives and one rides.
How Travel Time Affects Overtime and Minimum Wage
Compensable travel time counts toward the 40-hour weekly threshold that triggers overtime. Under the FLSA, hours over 40 in a single workweek must be paid at one and a half times your regular rate.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 207 – Maximum Hours
Say you work 38 hours at your job site and log 6 hours of compensable travel in the same week. That’s 44 total hours, and 4 of them must be paid at overtime rates. An employer who tracks job-site hours and travel hours on separate systems can miss the combined total. You shouldn’t.
Texas uses the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and has no higher state rate.8U.S. Department of Labor. State Minimum Wage Laws If your employer pays a lower rate for travel time, the blended average of all your hours has to meet that floor. Paying $5.00 an hour for travel and $12.00 for job-site work can be legal if the weighted average stays at or above $7.25. It’s not legal if the travel hours drag the average below.
What to Do If You’re Owed Travel Pay
Start by documenting everything. Keep pay stubs, timesheets, and any written communications about the travel: emails, text messages, dispatch records. A log with the date, destination, departure time, and return time for each trip creates a record that’s hard to dispute later.
Raise It With Your Employer First
The Texas Workforce Commission recommends bringing the issue to your employer before filing a formal complaint.9Texas Workforce Commission. Texas Payday Law Wage Claim Many travel-time violations come from confusion rather than bad intent, especially at smaller companies without dedicated HR staff. A direct conversation pointing to the specific rule often resolves things.
File a State Wage Claim With the TWC
If that doesn’t work, you can file a wage claim with the Texas Workforce Commission. The deadline is 180 days from the date the wages were originally due, not from the date you noticed the problem.9Texas Workforce Commission. Texas Payday Law Wage Claim Miss that window and the TWC won’t accept the claim. After you file, the TWC sends a notice to your employer, who has 14 calendar days to respond. The commission then investigates and issues a determination.
File a Federal Complaint With the DOL
You can also file with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, either online or by calling 1-866-487-9243. The federal deadline is longer: two years from the date the wages were due, or three years if the violation was willful.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations A field office contacts you within a couple of business days to evaluate whether to investigate. If violations are found, you receive a check for the lost wages. For travel-time disputes specifically, the federal route is often the more direct fit, because the rules come from federal regulations.
Private Lawsuit
You can also sue in federal court under the FLSA. The same two-year deadline applies, or three years for willful violations.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations A successful FLSA case can recover your unpaid wages plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, doubling the recovery. The employer avoids the doubled damages only by proving a good-faith belief that its pay practices were lawful. Courts also award reasonable attorney fees to prevailing employees, which is why many wage-and-hour lawyers take these cases on contingency.
Retaliation Protections
Federal law makes it illegal for your employer to fire you, cut your hours, reassign you, or punish you in any way for raising a travel-time pay issue. The protection applies whether you complain to a manager, file with the TWC, contact the DOL, or testify in someone else’s wage case.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 215 – Prohibited Acts It covers verbal complaints as well; you don’t need to put anything in writing for the protection to apply.12U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
If your employer retaliates, you can file a separate complaint with the DOL or bring a private lawsuit seeking reinstatement, back pay, and liquidated damages. The protection also extends to former employees, so leaving the job doesn’t shield an employer from liability.