With fuel prices rising, it’s not surprising if you feel like crying when you start your shoeing rig every morning. When it’s costing you so much to run, it’s difficult to think of your rig as a friend.

So maybe you’d better think of it as an employee.

Mike Joshua, a certified journeyman farrier from Denver, Colo., started looking at his shoeing rig that way several years ago – when fuel prices were comparably reasonable.

“My truck was costing me $7,000 a year,” he told farriers during a presentation at the American Farrier’s Association convention in Chattanooga, Tenn. “I decided to start thinking of my truck as an employee of my business. That means it has to be revenue producing.”

Charging For Travel Time

Joshua began charging travel expenses. It’s a move that a lot of farriers say they would like to do, but don’t because of fears of a client backlash. Just 22 percent of respondents in the 2004 Farrier Business Practices Survey charged travel fees, despite driving an average of 465 miles a week.

But Joshua says he had few complaints with his new policy.

“I got more flack from my peers than I did from my clients,” he says.

Joshua set up a truck revenue account and found that charging for travel time…