Enter payment, insurance, fuel, and maintenance — see your true cost per mile and how it compares to the IRS 76¢ 2026 rate. If your CPM is above IRS, every unbilled mile eats your margin.
Weekly pricing strategy + business math for solo tradespeople — delivered every Friday.
One-time tracker + weekly business tips for solo trades. Unsubscribe anytime.
Most tradespeople know what fuel costs. Some track maintenance. Almost none add up payment, insurance, fuel, repairs, tires, and depreciation into a single per-mile number — which means they can't answer the simple question: "does my truck make money or lose money on a service call 30 miles out?"
The IRS publishes a standard mileage rate as the average all-in cost to run a light vehicle for business. For 2026 that number is 76¢/mile (raised mid-year from 72.5¢). If your actual truck runs above that, every mile you drive without billing mileage or building it into the job price is a hidden loss you're eating personally.
| CPM range | What it means |
|---|---|
| Under $0.76 | You're under IRS rate. Billing mileage at 76¢/mi to customers earns extra margin. Rare — usually means paid-off efficient vehicle. |
| $0.76 – $0.91 | Break-even zone. IRS billing roughly covers your true cost. Standard for a payment-active work truck at decent mileage. |
| $0.91 – $1.06 | Above IRS. You're eating 15–30¢/mi on every drive not directly billed. At 15K miles/yr that's $2,250–$4,500 in unreimbursed truck cost. |
| Over $1.06 | Well above IRS. Something is driving cost — heavy truck on short-mileage routes, high insurance, or major repair year. Rework the mileage rate you charge, or ase labor rates to absorb. |
Low annual miles. The fastest driver of CPM up is dividing fixed costs across too few miles. A truck with $900/mo in payment + insurance costs $10,800/yr in fixed alone — spread over 8,000 miles that's $1.35/mi before fuel. Same truck at 20,000 miles is $0.54/mi fixed. Solo shops doing tight local work often have very high CPMs and don't realize it.
Heavy truck for the work. A ¾-ton diesel gets 15 MPG and costs $1,200 to insure vs a compact van at 22 MPG and $700. On the same 15K miles that's a $2K+ annual difference. Right-size the truck to the work — a plumber who never tows a trailer doesn't need an F-350.
Aging truck with rising repairs. Past 150K miles, unexpected repairs typically double vs the first 100K. Transmission at 175K = $4K. Head gasket = $3K. If you're sitting at $3K/yr in maintenance, the truck is telling you something — either budget for the next major repair or start planning a replacement before it strands you at 6 AM.
If your CPM is above IRS, you have three choices: bill customers at your actual CPM (not IRS) for jobs outside your normal zone, raise labor rates to absorb the truck cost invisibly, or reduce the truck cost (refinance, downsize, shop insurance). Ignoring it means the truck keeps quietly subsidizing your customers.
Recalculate every 6 months. Fuel prices move, insurance renews, maintenance spikes with age — this is not a set-once number. The tradespeople who stay profitable know their CPM within a nickel at any given month.
Your work truck is one of the biggest expenses in your business, and most contractors underestimate what it actually costs per mile when everything is included: fuel, insurance, loan payments, maintenance, tires, and depreciation. Enter your annual costs and miles driven to get your true cost per mile, then use that number to set mileage reimbursement rates or bake vehicle costs into your hourly rate.
Truck cost tracking is the same math across every trade — but the pricing sheets, mileage rate calculators, and scope-of-work docs specific to what you do differ. Pick your trade — get the kit built for it.