You clock out at your first patient's house at 10:30 a.m., then drive 20 minutes across town to reach your next appointment at 11:00 a.m. You’ll travel another 30 minutes from the home of that client to reach the next. Your employer gives you the 2025 IRS rate of 70 cents per mile to cover gas and wear on your car. Problem solved, right?
Not even close. Many Massachusetts home health aides believe getting a mileage stipend means they're being paid fairly for their time on the road. However, reimbursement for gas and vehicle expenses is completely separate from wages owed for travel between appointments.
At Phillips Garcia Law, our Dartmouth employee rights attorneys see this misunderstanding cost home health aides thousands of dollars annually in unpaid wages. Knowing the facts about mileage reimbursement and travel time compensation could mean the difference between financial struggle and fair pay for your dedicated work.
Understanding Mileage and Travel Time Pay: Two Separate Legal Requirements
Under the Massachusetts Wage Act, as specified in M.G.L. c. 149, § 150, employers have two distinct compensation obligations to home health aides who travel between patients during their continuous workday:
- Mileage reimbursement. This covers out-of-pocket vehicle expenses such as gas, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation. The current federal mileage rate helps offset these costs, but it doesn't compensate you for your actual time spent behind the wheel.
- Travel time compensation. Employers are required to pay your regular hourly rate for every minute spent driving from one patient's home to another during your shift. This isn't a courtesy or benefit—it's a mandatory payment for work time under both federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Massachusetts wage laws.
Think of it this way: if you spend 30 minutes driving between patients, you deserve 30 minutes of wages at your regular hourly rate, plus enough money to cover the cost of using your personal vehicle for business purposes. That’s the law.
What Are Some Employer Tactics That Shortchange Home Health Aides?
Some companies deliberately blur the line between those two compensation requirements, hoping employees won't notice they're being cheated out of actual wages. Have you experienced any of the following?
- Claiming mileage "covers everything". Employers might suggest that gas money somehow pays for your time as well as vehicle expenses. Again, this violates Massachusetts wage laws.
- Scheduling tricks to hide unpaid time. Some companies create appointment schedules that appear to account for travel time but actually underpay workers. For example, spacing appointments 45 minutes apart for a 30-minute drive, then paying only for the 15 minutes of "patient preparation time" while treating the 30-minute drive as covered by mileage alone.
What’s the Real-World Impact of Unpaid Travel Time on Your Paycheck?
This is what happens to many of our clients. Maria is a home health aide who works six days per week caring for five patients daily. She earns an average Massachusetts minimum wage of $15 per hour. Maria spends roughly 2.5 hours each workday driving between appointments, and her employer only reimburses for mileage, but doesn’t pay her an hourly wage for travelling between clients. Let’s do the math on her unpaid time:
- 2.5 hours/day x $15/hour = $37.50 per workday.
- Assuming her scheduled appointments are the same each workday, that’s $37.50/day x 6 days/week = $225 per week.
- Over a full year of 50 work weeks, this adds up to $225/week x 50 weeks = $11,250 annually.
Yes, you read that right: she’s losing more than $11,000 in travel time pay, which she's legally entitled to receive.
Maria's employer might provide a mileage reimbursement, but without compensating her for those daily hours behind the wheel at her regular wage rate, she's not getting what her actual travel time pay should be by law. Multiply this across many years of employment, and the financial impact becomes substantial.
How Will Phillips Garcia Law Help You Pursue the Full Compensation You Deserve?
You work too hard to let your employer simply take money from you. Under the Massachusetts Wage Act, employers who fail to pay legally required travel time compensation could owe workers up to three times their unpaid wages, plus attorney fees and costs. This means a sizable financial recovery if evidence indicates you’ve been shortchanged.
The law also protects against retaliation, so employers cannot fire or punish workers for asserting their right to proper travel time compensation.
At Phillips Garcia Law, we help home health aides throughout Massachusetts recover unpaid travel wages. We provide free consultations to evaluate your case and explain your rights under state law—and there's no upfront cost for our legal representation. Download our free book, The Original Pocket Legal Guide to Massachusetts Wage & Hour Laws, and contact us today to ensure you're receiving every dollar you've earned.