Dead miles are eating your gig pay — here's how to count them
You get paid for the miles with a passenger or an order in the car. You do not get paid for the miles to the pickup, between jobs, repositioning to a busier area, or driving home empty. Those unpaid miles are called dead miles, and they still cost you fuel and wear on your vehicle. That is why two shifts with the same pay can leave you with very different profit. The shift with more dead miles…
Gig drivers often overlook the impact of "dead miles" on their earnings. These wasted miles - driven to pick-ups, between jobs, or back home empty - cost fuel and vehicle wear without earning extra pay. Two shifts with the same pay can yield vastly different profits depending on how many dead miles occurred. Dead miles are any miles driven for work that are not paid by the gig app.
To calculate them, subtract your paid miles from total miles driven during a shift. The remainder represents your dead miles. To assess their financial impact, determine your vehicle's cost per mile by dividing monthly costs (fuel, maintenance, etc.) by monthly miles driven. Multiply dead miles by this cost per mile to see the true expense of those unpaid miles.
Track this for a week, add up the cost of dead miles, and subtract it from your gross pay, along with other driving expenses like fuel, tolls, parking, and food. This will provide a clearer picture of your actual profit after accounting for dead miles. Apps like ShiftLog can help gig workers record each shift's pay and costs, making it easier to see real net profit rather than just the gross amount.
Available for free on Android, ShiftLog logs pay and costs for each shift and works without an internet connection or account.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
