Shipt, Roadie and Gopuff mileage in 2026
Same rules, three different mileage shapes, and the shape decides what your tracker loses.
The tax treatment is identical across all three and identical to every other gig platform: business miles at 72.5 cents through June 30, 2026 and 76 cents from July 1, determined by when you drove, recorded per trip with a date.
What differs is the driving:
- Shipt — store time, then a delivery. Long stationary periods inside the shop, then a drive. A tracker that keys on movement handles this well; a manual-start one gets forgotten in the aisle.
- Roadie — frequently long-haul, sometimes hundreds of miles. Fewer trips, much bigger numbers, and the return leg is often unpaid and always deductible if you were working.
- Gopuff — short hops from a single hub, many per shift. The highest trip count of the three, and the shape that manual-start trackers lose most of, because nobody presses start for a six-minute run.
What the platform figure does and does not cover
| Miles | On a platform figure? | Generally deductible? |
|---|---|---|
| Hub or store to customer, order active | Usually | Yes |
| To the store or hub after accepting | Sometimes | Yes |
| Back to the hub after a drop, still online | No | Generally yes |
| Between stores on a multi-store Shipt order | Varies | Yes |
| The empty return leg of a long Roadie run | No | Generally yes |
| Repositioning while online and available | No | Generally yes |
| Anything offline | No | No |
The Roadie return leg is the one worth flagging. On a 180-mile delivery, the drive back is another 180 miles that no platform figure includes. At 76 cents that single unlisted leg is a $136.80 deduction, and a driver reporting only the paid route halves their claim on that job. Unpaid miles are still deductible.
The 2026 arithmetic
A driver with 16,000 business miles, split 7,000 in the first half of the year and 9,000 in the second:
| Period | Miles | Rate | Deduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 1 – Jun 30 | 7,000 | 72.5¢ | $5,075.00 |
| Jul 1 – Dec 31 | 9,000 | 76¢ | $6,840.00 |
| Total | 16,000 | — | $11,915.00 |
Applying 72.5¢ to all 16,000 gives $11,600 — $315 short. Applying 76¢ to all of them gives $12,160, overstating by $245. Only a dated log lands on the right number. The two-rate explainer. · Free calculator.
Multi-apping across them
Plenty of drivers run two or three of these together, and the instinct is to attribute each mile to a platform. For tax purposes, do not.
The deduction is on business miles driven. A mile driven while online for two apps is one mile, not two, and trying to split it creates double-counting risk and a log that is harder to defend.
Attribution is worth doing for a different question — which platform is actually paying you best after vehicle cost — and that analysis should live separately from the tax record. On the three here it is genuinely informative, because Roadie's long routes can look excellent per job and poor per mile once the empty return is priced in. Why gross pay misleads.
What the log needs
Publication 463's standard does not change by platform: for each trip, the date, the mileage, the destination or route, and the business purpose, recorded at or near the time.
- Every trip dated, because 2026 splits at June 30.
- Unpaid working miles included, with a one-line purpose. "Returned from delivery, online" is sufficient.
- Personal trips in the log, marked personal. More credible than a log containing only business trips, and you need total miles for Part IV of Schedule C anyway.
- Platform histories exported and archived annually, as corroboration rather than as the log.
- A monthly odometer check. The failure that costs most is not misclassification, it is trips never recorded — and on Gopuff-shaped work that is a lot of short trips. How to measure your tracker's capture rate.
The rest of the return
Mileage goes on Schedule C, Line 9, vehicle details in Part IV. Parking and tolls are deductible in addition to the standard mileage rate. Self-employment tax at 15.3 percent applies to net earnings, whether or not any of these platforms sent you a form. Schedule C for gig drivers. · 1099-NEC vs 1099-K.
General information, not tax advice. Every figure traces to an IRS source linked below. MileTruth is not affiliated with Shipt, Roadie or Gopuff.
Questions and answers
Can Shipt shoppers deduct mileage?
Yes. Shipt shoppers are generally independent contractors filing a Schedule C, and business miles are deductible at the standard mileage rate. That includes driving to the store, between stores, and to the customer, plus repositioning while online and available.
Does Roadie report my mileage?
Platform figures typically describe the paid route rather than your full business mileage, and Roadie routes are often long, which makes the gap between paid route miles and total driven miles larger in absolute terms than on short-haul delivery.
Are Gopuff delivery miles deductible?
Yes for drivers working as independent contractors. The pattern is short hops from a single hub, so the per-trip distances are small and the trip count is high, which is exactly the shape that a tracker with a manual start button loses most of.
What is the 2026 mileage rate for these platforms?
The same as for any business use of a car. 72.5 cents per mile for miles driven January 1 through June 30, 2026, and 76 cents from July 1 through December 31. The rate depends on when you drove, not which app you drove for.
How do I track mileage across several of these at once?
Track total business miles by trip rather than attributing each mile to a platform. The deduction is on business miles driven, and a mile driven while online for two apps is one mile. Per-platform attribution matters for working out which one pays best, which is a separate question from the tax one.
MileTruth. “Shipt, Roadie and Gopuff mileage in 2026.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 6, 2026. https://miletruth.bakerventuresstudio.com/answers/shipt-roadie-gopuff-mileage-deduction-2026/