Four numbers every gig driver should know

1. Cost per mile

cost per mile = ( 12 months of fuel or charge
                + insurance + registration
                + tyres, servicing and repairs
                + honest depreciation )
                / 12 months of total miles

Depreciation is the line people skip, because no money leaves the account. A defensible approach: what the vehicle was worth a year ago, minus what it is worth now. It will be larger than you expect, and it is real.

This is not the IRS rate. The standard mileage rate is a national allowance for computing a deduction. Some drivers' true cost is well below it, which quietly makes the deduction generous to them; others driving heavy, thirsty or newly financed vehicles are above it and are losing money on offers that feel acceptable. The full method. · If you drive an EV. · If you lease.

2. Break-even per mile

Your cost per mile, before tax. Below it you are paying to work.

The useful form is a round-trip test, because an offer's distance is only half its distance:

The first row is the one that matters. A $9 offer eleven miles away is a loss for that vehicle, and it does not look like one.

3. True net hourly

net hourly = ( gross earnings
               - ( all working miles x cost per mile ) )
             / hours online

All working miles is the part that changes the answer. Paid miles, plus driving to pickups, plus repositioning, plus getting back out of a delivery zone — commonly 30 to 50 percent of a delivery driver's total, unpaid by anyone and generally deductible.

A driver grossing $780 over 22 hours across 340 miles is showing $35.45/hr. At 32 cents a mile that is $30.51. At 48 cents it is $28.04. Same week, same driver — the difference is entirely what they drive. Why gross pay misleads.

4. Capture rate

The only one you cannot look up, and the only one where being wrong is invisible.

Two photographs and a subtraction:

1. Photograph your odometer today.
2. Drive a normal week. Change nothing.
3. Photograph it again.
4. Subtract. That is every mile the car moved.
5. Total your app's seven days, including personal trips, and compare.

No vendor in this category publishes a capture rate. Every one of them has a support article about missed trips, which tells you it is a known universal problem handled as a support topic rather than a product claim. The five failure modes.

What the four together let you decide

• Which offers to take. Break-even, applied to the round trip.
• Which hours to work. Net hourly by time slot, not gross.
• Which platform to keep running. Net hourly by platform. Multi-apping.
• Whether your vehicle is the problem. Cost per mile against what you earn per mile.
• Whether your deduction reflects reality. Capture rate, and it is worth real money: at 2026 rates a missing 4,000 miles is roughly $2,900 to $3,040 of deduction, near $900 of actual tax.

And in 2026, dates

2026 has two business mileage rates — 72.5¢ through June 30, 76¢ from July 1 — set by when you drove. A log without per-trip dates cannot produce a correct figure regardless of how complete it is. The explainer. · Free two-rate calculator.

Questions and answers