Dollars per mile or dollars per hour: which tells you if a delivery offer is worth it?
“Never take less than $2 a mile” is the most common rule in delivery driving. It’s easy to remember, and it’s often wrong.
What a per-mile rule gets right
Pay per km or mile is a quick check of how much driving an offer asks for. Very long, low-paying trips fail it, which is useful. It also needs only two numbers from the offer, so you can check it in a second.
What it misses
- Time. A short trip can still take a long time: busy store, slow pickup, apartments, parking. A 3 km offer for $8 is $2.67 a km, and can still be a bad hour.
- The drive to pickup. The offer’s distance starts at the store. If the store is 12 km away, those kilometres are unpaid but very real.
- Your costs. $2 a mile in a hybrid and $2 a mile in a pickup truck are different businesses.
- Your goal. A rule of thumb doesn’t know how much you need to make this week.
Net dollars per hour
Dollars per hour after car costs puts distance and time into one number: (pay − car cost) ÷ total time, where the car cost and total time both include the drive to pickup. It answers the question you actually care about: what does this offer pay me for the next stretch of my day?
Same offer, two answers
| Offer A | Offer B | |
|---|---|---|
| Pay | $12.00 | $21.00 |
| Trip | 5 km · 22 min | 11 km · 34 min |
| Per km | $2.40 (passes) | $1.91 (fails a $2 rule) |
| Drive to pickup | 14 km · 18 min | 2 km · 8 min |
| Net $/h (at $0.30/km, 10 min extra) | $7.56 | $19.73 |
The per-mile rule takes A and skips B. Per hour after costs, B pays more than twice as much: A’s long, unpaid drive to the store eats most of its pay.
Use both, in the right order
Keep a per-km filter to throw out obviously bad trips, then decide on net $/h against your goal. That’s how TripEye works: your filters (minimum pay, longest trip, longest time, number of homes) narrow the field, and the grade comes from $/h after costs.
Start with how to work out your real hourly pay.
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