The Real Cost of Gig Delivery — What You Actually Kept

The app shows you $780 for the week. You feel pretty good about that. Then you fill up the tank three times — $58, $61, $55. You drove 820 miles. Do the math on gas and actual maintenance costs and you've spent close to $240 earning that $780.

Suddenly $780 looks more like $540. And that's before accounting for the hours you spent waiting between orders.

This is the number most gig drivers never calculate — and it's the only number that actually matters. Not what the app says you made. What you actually kept after every dollar that left your pocket to earn it.

The Four Costs Every Gig Driver Has

Every mile you drive for gig work has a cost attached to it. Some hit your bank account immediately — like gas. Others are invisible until something breaks — like tires, brakes, or an engine that wore out faster than it should have. All of them are real. None of them are paid by the platform.

1. Fuel

The most visible cost. A full-time driver doing 700-900 miles per week at 28 MPG is buying 25-32 gallons. At around $3.85 per gallon that's $96-$123 per week — roughly $5,000-$6,400 per year just in fuel. Gas is your biggest operating expense and the one you have the most control over.

2. Vehicle Wear & Maintenance

The invisible one. Every mile puts wear on tires, brakes, oil, and every component in your car. The actual out-of-pocket maintenance cost for most vehicles runs about 10-15 cents per mile — covering oil changes, tires, brakes, and routine upkeep. At 800 miles per week that's $80-$120 per week you need to budget for.

Note: The IRS standard mileage deduction rate of 72.5 cents per mile is used for record-keeping purposes and includes vehicle depreciation — it is not what you actually pay out of pocket per mile in maintenance.

3. Maintenance

Oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, air filters. These don't hit every week but they hit regularly — and gig drivers go through them faster than average because of constant stop-and-go driving.

4. Unpaid Time

The platform doesn't pay you for waiting between orders, driving to a pickup zone, or sitting in a parking lot. A driver who made $30 in three hours of active delivery but spent five hours doing it made $6 per hour — not $10.

The Real Earnings Formula

That's a solid shift — $145 gross on 110 miles at roughly $1.32 per mile, netting $115.18 after real costs. Not every shift looks like this. More dead miles between pickups, lower-paying orders, or worse fuel economy changes the math significantly.

This isn't meant to discourage gig work. Plenty of drivers make genuinely good money. But the ones who make good money know their numbers. They know which platforms, zones, and hours actually produce a real profit — and they avoid the ones that don't.

How to Calculate Your Real Hourly Rate

You need three numbers after every shift:

• Gross pay — what the app says you made
• Miles driven — odometer start vs. end, or from a mileage tracking app
• Hours worked — from going online to going offline

Do this for one week and you'll know more about your actual earning power than 90% of gig drivers on any platform.

What Good Numbers Look Like

A realistic full-time driver grosses $500-$1,000 per week driving 600-900 miles — roughly $0.75-$1.25 per mile. After gas and maintenance costs of about $0.25-$0.35 per mile, a driver with strong numbers nets $0.50-$0.90 per mile.

• Real hourly rate above $25 — excellent. You're working the right zones at the right times and making genuinely strong money.
• Real hourly rate $18–$24 — solid. You're doing well. Look for what's producing the higher end and do more of it.
• Real hourly rate $12–$17 — acceptable but worth optimizing. Find which hours, zones, and order types move you up the range.
• Real hourly rate below $12 — something needs to change. Different hours, zone, platform, or stricter order standards.

The Order Acceptance Decision

Once you know your real cost per mile — 72.5 cents — you can evaluate any order before accepting it.

A $6.50 order that's 3 miles to pickup and 8 miles to drop-off is 11 miles total. At roughly $0.25/mile in actual costs that's $2.75 in expenses — leaving $3.75 for 30+ minutes of your time. Decline it.

A $14 order that's 0.5 miles to pickup and 4 miles to drop-off is 4.5 miles total. Real costs: about $1.13. Net: $12.87 for maybe 15 minutes of driving. Take it.

Tools That Make This Easier

• Everlance — automatically tracks mileage via GPS, generates IRS-compliant logs
• Stride — free mileage tracking built for gig workers
• MileIQ — simple swipe-to-classify interface, reliable tracking

See the Tools & Gear page for more detail on each one.