Your real cost per km: how to work it out
The fare on your screen is not what you earn. Fuel, insurance, repairs and the car itself all come out of it, and they come out for every kilometre you drive, including the kilometres to the pickup and the ones spent waiting for the next ride. Knowing your real cost per km is the first step to knowing which rides are worth taking.
What counts as a cost
Add up what the car costs you over a full year:
- Fuel: litres per 100 km, times the price per litre, times the kilometres you drive.
- Insurance: the yearly premium. A policy for paid passenger transport can cost more than a private one, so use your own figure.
- Maintenance and tyres: servicing, brakes, tyres and repairs. Look at what you really spent last year, and add the big jobs you know are coming.
- The car itself: the monthly payment or rental, or, if you own it outright, how much value it loses in a year.
- Taxes and checks: road tax, the roadworthiness inspection, licences and anything else you pay on a schedule.
The formula
Real cost per km = (fuel + insurance + maintenance + car + taxes and checks over a year) ÷ kilometres driven in that year.
Use every kilometre you drive for work, not only the paid trips. The drive to the pickup and the empty kilometres between rides cost exactly as much as the ones with a passenger.
A worked example
Take a car that drives 40,000 km a year, uses 6.5 litres per 100 km and buys fuel at €1.70 a litre. These figures are only an example: put your own in.
| Cost | Per year | Per km |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | €4,420 | €0.11 |
| Insurance | €1,200 | €0.03 |
| Maintenance and tyres | €1,600 | €0.04 |
| Car payment or rental | €3,600 | €0.09 |
| Taxes and checks | €300 | €0.01 |
| Total | €11,120 | €0.28 |
So this car costs about €0.28 for every kilometre, before any tax on your earnings and before counting your own time.
From km to hour
Cost per km is useful, but a working day is measured in hours. Count how many kilometres you really drive in an hour of work, waiting included. If it is 28, the car costs about 28 × €0.28 = €7.84 for every working hour. That is money you must earn before anything is left for you. Measure your own number for a week: it can surprise you, because waiting and pickup drives are part of it.
Check an offer against your cost
Suppose an offer pays €12.80, with 1.8 km to the pickup and a 7.4 km trip. The kilometres that matter are 9.2, so the offer pays €12.80 ÷ 9.2 = €1.39 per km. Your cost for those 9.2 km is about 9.2 × €0.28 = €2.58. What is left is €10.22, to pay for your time and your taxes. Do the same sum for a short, cheap offer with a far pickup and the answer changes quickly.
Three common mistakes
- Counting only the paid kilometres and forgetting the pickup and the empty drive.
- Leaving out the car itself. A car that costs nothing to run this month still loses value every month.
- Working it out once and never again. Prices and repairs change: redo the sum every few months.
If you would rather not do this by hand, DLEM does it for you: you set your costs once, and it counts the pickup drive and those costs in the verdict it shows for each offer.