It's usually not even in the contract (most contracts were supplied by customer). Contracts usually have something to the effect that the customer will pay for travel. You can justify this by saying that because your place of business (usually your home or office) isn't nearby, and your work does not require you to be on-site, you will charge for the actual time spent on travel to and from customer site. You have to be firm on this, and be prepared to walk away if they refuse. I haven't once encountered any pushback, though, even though my hourly rate was pretty high. Also, where I couldn't park for free, I'd pass through parking as an expense. Clients are cool with that too. Somehow they don't allow any of this shit for regular employees, for reasons that I don't quite understand. :-)

> Somehow they don't allow any of this shit for regular employees, for reasons that I don't quite understand.

It's because contractors are capex and employees are opex. I'm on a staff augmentation contract at a rate 2x the salary cap for the most senior employees. They keep begging me to convert but can't because I would be taking a $100,000 pay cut. It's a ridiculous situation.

> most contracts were supplied by customer

This is precisely why I don't have a standard contract -- which, after doing this for a number of years, still seems very odd to me. A while back, I hired a lawyer to revise and amend a contract _supplied by customer_ only to have it rejected because of the time and effort it would have taken their lawyers to review/revise/amend my changes. As I understand it, this same line of reasoning would also prevent (most) of my clients from signing a contract presented by me. This makes businesses sense, and I've since learned that it's standard practice, but I resent that I'm the one who has to make the take-it-or-leave-it decision about whether to work _for_ this client, as opposed to _with_ this client.