Seems a fairly standard thing in the UK now that you lose half an hour travel per day. I think it would be difficult for a company to take more than this. My nearest customer is 15 minutes drive, so if I spend all day there it's all square, I couldn't find a workshop based job with any shorter commute. If the company didn't pay travel at all I would simply quit as my average weekly travel to and from work is about 13 hours. I also have 2 customers that involve a 5 hour round trip. I wouldn't be doing that for nothing. So to sum up, losing the first half hour is fine by me, I took the job on that basis, but any more would not be acceptable.