Driver Expenses: Your Real Cost Per Mile
A driver's real cost per mile has five parts: fuel (roughly 12 to 20 cents per mile depending on MPG and gas prices), depreciation (often the largest, 15 to 30 cents), maintenance and repairs (8 to 12 cents), insurance allocated to business use, and fees, tolls, and washes. Benchmarks: the IRS allows 76 cents per mile for July to December 2026; AAA pegged a small sedan at 55.87 cents per mile in 2025. Download the mileage log template from this site's home page and track every business mile.
Gas is maybe a third of your cost per mile. The full breakdown, and a log template.
The five costs in every mile
Fuel is the cost drivers feel, but it is usually the smallest of the big three. At $3.50 per gallon and 28 MPG, fuel costs 12.5 cents per mile. Depreciation is the silent giant: a car driven 40,000 rideshare miles a year loses value far faster than a garage-kept commuter, commonly 15 to 30 cents per mile depending on the vehicle's price and age. Maintenance and repairs, tires, brakes, oil, the timing belt you will hit years early, run 8 to 12 cents per mile. Insurance allocated to business use adds several cents more, and tolls, car washes, and airport fees fill out the rest.
Add the midpoints and you land near 55 to 70 cents per mile for an efficient sedan, which is why the AAA small-sedan benchmark of 55.87 cents and the IRS rate of 76 cents bracket reality. Drive a financed SUV and you can exceed 90 cents. The IRS rate is deliberately generous; it is a tax simplification, not a promise that your car costs that much. Know your own number.
Depreciation: the cost you never see until you sell
Depreciation does not come out of your weekly pay, which is why drivers ignore it and why it destroys them. A $22,000 car with 150,000 rideshare miles is worth a fraction of the same car with 40,000 miles; the difference, spread over the miles, is 15 to 25 cents per mile of real economic cost. Financing makes it worse: interest on a car loan for a rideshare vehicle is part of the per-mile cost too.
The strategic implication is to drive the cheapest reliable car that qualifies for the trips you want. A paid-off Corolla at 55 cents per mile versus a financed SUV at 85 cents is a 30-cent-per-mile swing; over 400 miles a week, that is $120 a week, $6,240 a year, of pure profit difference for the same work. Vehicle choice is the biggest financial decision a driver makes, bigger than which hours to drive.
What the IRS lets you deduct
Self-employed drivers choose between the standard mileage rate and actual expenses, and must choose standard mileage in the first year the vehicle goes into business service to keep the option. For 2026 the standard rate is 72.5 cents per mile for January through June and 76 cents for July through December, a rare midyear increase. Multiply business miles by the rate for the period driven; that is the deduction.
Actual expenses means deducting the business-use share of gas, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and loan interest, which requires meticulous records and usually favors expensive vehicles. Most drivers do better with standard mileage, but run both in year one if your records are solid. Either way, commuting from home to your first pickup is generally not deductible; miles between trips are.
The mileage log the IRS actually wants
The IRS requires a contemporaneous record: date, business purpose, and miles for each trip, recorded near the time of the trip, not reconstructed at tax time. The template linked on this site's home page has the required columns: date, purpose, start and end odometer, miles, and notes. Apps like Gridwise, Stride, and Hurdlr automate this with GPS, which is worth it; manual logs fail exactly when you are busiest, which is when the miles pile up.
Keep the log for at least three years from the filing date, longer if you underreported income by more than 25%. In an audit, the mileage log is the first document requested and the easiest deduction to lose. A $12,000 mileage deduction with no log is a $12,000 problem.
Cutting your cost per mile
Four levers, in order of impact. Drive a cheaper, more efficient car; nothing else comes close. Cut dead miles by positioning between trips instead of cruising and by declining long pickups; every dead mile costs the full per-mile rate and earns zero. Do preventive maintenance on schedule; a $80 transmission service beats a $4,000 transmission. And shop insurance honestly: rideshare endorsements cost more than personal policies but far less than an uncovered accident, which can mean a totaled car and zero coverage.
Recompute your cost per mile yearly. Gas prices, insurance rates, and your car's depreciation curve all move, and the number you used last year is not the number you have now.
Figures current as of October 2026. Earnings: Gridwise 2026 Annual Gig Mobility Report (500,000+ drivers, released March 2026). Mileage: IRS 76 cents/mile for business, July 1 to December 31, 2026 (Announcement 2026-11).