Why almost everyone underestimates their own mileage
Memory records deliveries, not driving. That is the whole mechanism.
The trips that are easy to recall are the ones with an event attached: an order, an address, a customer. The driving in between leaves no event behind, so it leaves no memory, and the estimate you produce in April is built from the parts that were memorable.
Four categories go missing, and they are the same four every time:
Repositioning while online. You drop in a dead area and drive back toward a busy one. No order, no record, no memory. Frequently the largest of the four.
The drive to a zone. Once you are online, this is business driving. It feels like a commute, so it is remembered as one.
Returns and backtracking. An undelivered order, a stacked order that sends you past the first customer and back.
Short hops. Moving between two restaurants, circling a mall lot, repositioning in a car park. Individually trivial, and they accumulate across a year.
Platform figures do not fix this, because they generally reflect on-trip distance and therefore omit the same category. They are a floor, not a total.
And the cost is arithmetic. At the second-half 2026 rate, 3,000 missed miles is $2,280 of deduction, before considering that it also distorts what you believe the work pays per hour.
Finding your own number
Do not take a percentage from an article, including this one. Measure it.
The two-week test:
1. Photograph the odometer at the start.
2. Log every business trip as you go, honestly.
3. At the end, photograph the odometer again.
4. Total miles minus your logged business miles = personal
driving over two weeks.
5. Is that a plausible amount of personal driving?If the residual is far larger than your actual personal driving, the difference is business miles you did not log. That is your number, and it is far more useful than any benchmark.
The other version, if you are already using a tracker: run a manual log alongside it for two weeks and compare. The gap between them is the value of automatic capture for you specifically. A mileage app versus a notes app.
Why the estimate goes one way
Not carelessness. Two properties of memory doing exactly what they always do.
Events are recalled; durations are not. A delivery is an event. Twelve minutes of driving with nothing happening is not, and no amount of intending to remember changes that.
Reconstruction fills in the typical case. Asked how far a shift was, people rebuild a representative shift and multiply. A representative shift omits the unusual detour, the failed delivery and the bad hour, because those are not typical, and the year is made of them.
Both push in the same direction, which is why the error is not random. It is systematically low.
What it costs, beyond the deduction
The deduction. 3,000 miles at 76 cents is $2,280 off taxable profit, which reduces both income tax and self-employment tax at 15.3 percent. Why a deduction is not a refund.
The hourly rate you think you earn. If you are underestimating miles, you are underestimating vehicle cost, so the figure you carry around for what the work pays is too high. That affects which offers you accept, every shift, all year. Why the earnings screen is not your income.
The platform comparison. Comparing platforms on earnings per mile requires the miles to be right. Underestimating them makes every platform look better than it is, and makes the long-distance ones look best of all. Multi-apping.
The fix is structural, not effort
Record at the moment, not at the end of the day. The IRS values records made at or near the time of use for the same reason this page exists: reconstruction is systematically wrong.
Or record automatically, which removes the memory step entirely. That is the actual argument for a tracker, and it is not about convenience. Why apps miss trips.
Either way, photograph the odometer twice a year, because the total is what makes an underestimate visible. Without a total, the number in your log is unfalsifiable, including to you. One car for business and personal use. · How to start a mileage log today.
The one place the error runs the other way
Overstating is also possible and it is a different kind of problem. A round number chosen in April with nothing behind it can be too high as easily as too low, and an overstatement is a position you would have to defend.
The defence against both is the same record, kept at the time, with a total around it. What happens if the IRS questions your mileage. · What records to keep and for how long.
More in this section
About MileTruth
MileTruth is an iOS app from Baker Ventures LLC that tracks deductible business mileage for gig and delivery drivers and shows true net pay: what is left after mileage, fuel and self-employment tax, not what the platform showed you at acceptance. It is built for people driving several platforms in the same shift, and for anyone who needs a mileage log that would hold up if the IRS asked for it. The app is in development.
Everything on this site is free and needs no account: the mileage deduction calculator, the per-platform pay breakdowns, and the answers, each one linked to the IRS publication or platform document it came from. MileTruth publishes the source for every number, including the 2026 split-year standard mileage rate, because a deduction you cannot substantiate is not a deduction.
Questions and answers
Why do gig drivers underestimate their mileage?
Because memory records deliveries rather than driving. The trips that are easy to recall are the ones with a destination attached, and the repositioning, the returns and the short hops between stops leave no memorable event behind.
How much mileage do drivers typically miss?
There is no single figure, and the useful exercise is measuring your own: run a tracker and a manual log for two weeks and compare. Most drivers who do this find a meaningful gap, and it is always in the same direction.
Which miles are missed most often?
Repositioning while online, the drive to a zone, returns to a store, backtracking on stacked orders, and short hops in a car park. None of them produces a delivery record, so none of them produces a memory.
Does using a platform's mileage figure fix it?
No, it produces a different underestimate. Platform figures generally reflect on-trip distance, so they omit the same category of driving your memory omits, which is why they are a floor rather than a total.
What does the gap cost?
At the second-half 2026 rate of 76 cents a mile, 3,000 missed miles is $2,280 of deduction, which is a meaningful amount of tax at any marginal rate. It also distorts what you believe the work pays per hour.
How do I find out my own number?
Photograph the odometer, keep a log, and compare the log's business miles plus a plausible personal figure against the odometer total. A large unexplained residual is the answer.
MileTruth. “Why almost everyone underestimates their own mileage.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 7, 2026. https://miletruth.bakerventuresstudio.com/why/why-drivers-underestimate-their-own-mileage/