The miles between jobs are the business
Driving work pays for a subset of the miles and charges you for all of them. On the figures this page opens with, 141 miles were driven and 88 of them had a job on: 53 miles, or 37.6 per cent, earned nothing. Those 53 miles burned the same fuel and wore the same tyres as the paid ones, and they cost $18.90 of the $50.27 the vehicle consumed that day.
Restated as a rate, that is the number worth carrying around: the vehicle cost 35.7 cents for every mile driven, but 57.1 cents for every mile that was actually billable. If you compare a rate offer against your cost per mile driven, you are comparing it against a figure that does not exist in your day.
Where the density comes from
Two things move the paid share, and neither of them is driving skill. The first is how far you sit from where the work is — the run out and the run back happen once and are dead weight on a short shift and nearly irrelevant on a long one. The second is how far the next job starts from where the last one ended, which is a function of demand density and of what you accept.
The table at the bottom holds the driving, the fuel, the wear and the per-paid-mile rate constant and moves only the paid share. It is a wider spread than most people expect, and it explains why two drivers on the same terms in the same city report take-home figures that are not close to each other.
Two costs people leave out
Waiting is the first. Time logged on with nothing assigned is time you cannot spend on anything else, and leaving it out of the hours makes the hourly figure look better than the day felt. Put the whole logged-on span in.
Value lost is the second, and it is the largest single line in the per-mile figure for most vehicles. It never sends a bill, so it shows up two or three years later as the difference between what the vehicle was worth and what someone will hand you for it. The cost per mile calculator builds that figure line by line, and car depreciation takes the value side on its own. Do that once, write the number down, and use it here.
Related pages
Hourly value does the same subtraction for salaried work, commute and all. The mileage log is where a real paid-mile share comes from rather than an impression of one. Fuel cost handles the energy line on its own, and car ownership cost totals a year of running a vehicle.
Questions people ask
What counts as a paid mile?
Only the distance covered with the job actually on — pickup to drop-off. The drive to the pickup is not paid distance even when the offer screen quoted it, and the drive home at the end certainly is not. Splitting them this way is the only reason the page can put a number on what the empty miles cost, and on the default figures that number is $18.90 out of $50.27, which is more than a third of everything the vehicle consumed.
Why is the cost per paid mile higher than the cost per mile?
Because it is the same total cost spread over fewer miles. Drive 141 miles at 35.7 cents and the vehicle costs $50.27 whatever happens next; bill only 88 of them and each billed mile has to carry 57.1 cents. The gap between those two numbers is precisely the deadhead, and it widens every time you accept a job that starts a long way from where the last one ended.
What should I put in the per-mile field for everything except fuel?
Your own figure, worked out once a year from your own records: tyres, servicing, repairs, insurance, registration and the value the vehicle loses, added up for twelve months and divided by the miles driven in those twelve months. The number this page opens with is a placeholder to make the form run, not a rate for anything. The cost per mile calculator on this site builds the figure line by line and is the right place to produce it.
Does this tell me whether the work is worth doing?
No, and it cannot. It shows what one shift left after the vehicle was paid for, on the numbers you supplied. Whether that clears what you need depends on the target you set, on what else you would have done with the hours, and on things no calculator sees — how the vehicle ages under this use, what your insurer says about driving for hire, and how you are treated for tax. Those last two are questions for the insurer and an accountant, not for arithmetic.
Should I count tips in the gross?
Put in whatever your own statement credits you, tips included, because the costs you are subtracting are the real costs of the whole shift and the comparison only works if both sides are complete. If you want to see how much of the shift was tips rather than base earnings, run it twice — once with them and once without — and read the difference in the left-per-hour line.