Normal commuting between home and a regular job site is not compensable, but that presumption breaks down the moment an employer calls an employee back after the workday has already ended. Under § 785.36, when an employee who has gone home is called out at night to travel a substantial distance (travel well beyond the employee's normal commute) to perform an emergency job for one of the employer's customers, all time spent on that travel is working time — not merely the time spent once the employee arrives and starts the repair. The rule is narrower than it might first appear: the Wage and Hour Division takes no position on whether the same treatment reaches an employee who is called back to report to their own regular place of business rather than out to a customer's site. The clear case, and the one an employer should assume is compensable, is the after-hours emergency dispatch away from the regular workplace.

A related problem arises when an employee who normally works at a fixed location is given a special one-day assignment in another city. Because that travel is performed for the employer's benefit and at the employer's special request to meet the needs of an unusual assignment, it cannot be treated as ordinary home-to-work travel — § 785.37 treats it as an integral part of the day's “principal” activity (the main work activity the employee is employed to perform), comparable to the emergency call travel in § 785.36. Even so, not all of the time is counted: the employee would have had to report to the regular work site anyway if not for the special assignment, so the travel time the employee would ordinarily have spent commuting from home to that regular workplace stays in the “home-to-work” category and may be deducted. The usual meal period — a bona fide (genuine, not just nominal), duty-free break, ordinarily 30 minutes or more — is deductible as well, and what remains compensable is the travel beyond that deductible portion.

Overnight travel away from the employee's home community is treated differently again. Under § 785.39, travel that keeps an employee away overnight is working time whenever it falls within the employee's regular working hours — the hours this particular employee is normally scheduled to work — and those hours count the same way on a weekend or other nonworking day as on a normal workday, since the employee is simply substituting travel for other duties. Regular meal periods are not counted, and as an enforcement policy the Wage and Hour Division will not treat as working time any travel outside regular working hours during which the employee rides as a passenger on a plane, train, boat, bus, or car.

That passenger exception shifts if the employee is offered public transportation but chooses to drive instead: under § 785.40 the employer may count either the actual driving time or the passenger travel time the employee would otherwise have had during working hours. And any work actually performed while traveling — driving the vehicle, or riding as a required assistant or helper — is hours worked under § 785.41 regardless of when it occurs, except during bona fide meal periods or when the employee is permitted to sleep in adequate facilities furnished by the employer. § 785.41 does not itself define “adequate” for travel situations; elsewhere in Part 785, § 785.22 sets two separate conditions for excluding a sleep period from hours worked when an employee is on duty 24 hours or more — adequate sleeping facilities furnished by the employer, and the employee usually being able to enjoy an uninterrupted night's sleep — and both conditions must be satisfied independently — satisfying one does not substitute for or establish the other.