Splitting the Commute: When Mid-Day and Dispatch-Driven Travel Is (and Isn’t) Compensable Under the FLSA

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division issued two new opinion letters, FLSA2026-9 and FLSA2026-10 on July 22, 2026, addressing how the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) treats travel by employees who work part of their day at home. Read together, the letters offer useful guidance for employers navigating telework, split shifts, and mobile field workforces.

By way of background, a DOL opinion letter is an official written opinion on how a law applies to a specific workplace situation. The letter responds to a request submitted to the DOL and is based solely on the facts articulated in the request. Opinion letters are not binding on courts, but they carry weight as persuasive authority and can help demonstrate good faith to avoid liquidated damages in FLSA litigation.

What the DOL Said

Both letters address the same core question: when does travel between an employee’s home and worksite become compensable work under the FLSA? The answer turns on whether the travel is an “ordinary” commute that benefits the employee, or employer-dictated travel that primarily benefits the employer.

Opinion Letter FLSA2026-9: Mid-Day Commuting in Telework/Split-Shift Arrangements

• The Question: Must an employer record and pay for mid-day travel between an employee’s home and work office as compensable “hours worked” under the FLSA, where the employee voluntarily splits the workday between both locations?

The DOL’s Answer: No. Such mid-day travel qualifies as “ordinary” or “normal” commuter travel, a category of non-compensable time, so employers need not record or pay for it.  

• Key Facts: An employer permitted non-exempt office staff to telework but did not allow them to split a single workday between home and office, fearing mid-day travel could be treated as compensable under the continuous workday doctrine. The employer posed three examples of employee-driven scheduling changes –shifting a commute to avoid rush hour, performing optional project work from home before a shift, and catching an earlier bus home to finish work remotely, and asking whether any or all of the described mid-day travel would be compensable.
• The DOL’s Holding: Most significantly, the DOL concluded that “ordinary home-to-work travel that occurs during the workday constitutes a third category of time during the workday, in addition to bona fide meal breaks and off-duty time, that is not considered ‘hours worked’ under the FLSA,” and clarified that this exclusion applies whether the commute happens before, after, or in the middle of the workday. All three scenarios presented by the employer qualified as “ordinary,” non-compensable because each employee, not the employer, chose to change the timing of the commute for their own benefit, and remained fully relieved of duties during the travel. That said, travel is  unlikely to be treated as an ordinary commute where the employer, rather than the employee, dictates its timing and manner and imposes real constraints on the employee’s time; in that case, the travel is more likely to be compensable, as illustrated in companion letter FLSA2026-10.

Practical Insight for Employers: FLSA2026-9 gives employers a good faith basis to let non-exempt staff split a workday between home and office, whether to dodge rush hour, take on optional project work, or catch a last bus home, without treating the mid-day commute as paid time, so long as the employee, not the employer, is driving the choice of timing. The more an employer dictates the timing and manner of the travel and imposes constraints that primarily benefit the employer, the more likely the travel is to be treated as compensable.

Opinion Letter FLSA2026-10: Field Service Engineer Paging, Scheduling Calls, and Drive Time

• The Question: Must a field service engineer be compensated for (a) time receiving pages from an employer’s paging system, (b) time calling clients and other engineers to schedule service appointments, and (c) drive time from home to the first client site?
• The DOL’s Answer: Receiving pages is not compensable. Calling clients to schedule appointments is compensable. Whether the drive time itself is compensable depends on whether the employer, rather than the employee, dictates the timing and manner of the travel.  
• Key Facts: A field service engineer with no fixed office drives an employer-provided vehicle to service MRI equipment at client sites. Each morning between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m., before the 8:00 a.m. paid shift, the employer sends pages requesting service calls, which the engineer accepts and then calls clients to schedule (sometimes also coordinating other engineers). In one scenario, the engineer completes all pages and calls at home before 8:00 a.m. and then drives to the first appointment during the paid shift, with the employer not paying for the 7:00–8:00 a.m. period. In a second scenario, the engineer must leave home before 8:00 a.m. for a distant first appointment and performs some or all of the paging and calling while driving, with the employer paying for pre-shift drive time only beyond the first hour.
• The DOL’s Holding: Most significantly, the DOL explained that receiving pages is not compensable, since accepting a page takes about 15 seconds and is merely incidental to using an employer-provided commuting vehicle, while calling clients to schedule appointments (and coordinating other engineers) is compensable, since that work is integral and indispensable to the engineer’s job, not incidental to commuting. Whether the resulting drive is compensable then depends on the surrounding facts. Where the drive immediately follows required scheduling calls and the employer, not the engineer, controls the timing and manner of the trip, the drive is also compensable and is not an ordinary commute, even where all of the calls were finished before the engineer left home. By contrast, where the engineer begins driving before performing any required work, the first hour of that drive remains a non-compensable ordinary commute, with compensability starting only once required calls begin.

Practical Insight for Employers: FLSA2026-10 shows that dispatch and paging systems, by themselves, are safe, but employers should scrutinize what happens next. If a pre-shift task like scheduling calls is required and bleeds into the drive that follows, that entire block of time, not just the first hour, is likely compensable.  Where at-home work time varies unpredictably day to day and is hard to track minute-by-minute, employers and employees can agree in writing to a reasonable estimate of that time for pay purposes, an option regulations have long allowed for exactly this kind of variable, hard-to-measure work.

What the Letters Mean Read Together

Together, the two letters draw one line: an ordinary commute, even one occurring mid-workday, is not compensable unless the employer dictates its timing and manner and imposes constraints that make the travel primarily benefit the employer rather than the employee. The controlling test remains whether the time predominantly benefits the employer or the employee.

Conclusion

These two opinion letters offer a practical, largely employer-friendly framework for compensability questions that are increasingly common in hybrid and mobile work environments. Employers should review existing policies, document that schedule flexibility is voluntary, and confirm that any required pre-shift work, however brief, is being captured and paid.

For questions regarding these opinion letters and their implications for your workforce, feel free to reach out to your Womble Bond Dickinson attorney, the authors of this Insight, or another member of our Labor and Employment Practice Team. We will continue to monitor wage-and-hour developments and provide updates as warranted, so make sure you are signed up for the Womble Bond Dickinson newsletter.