The 2024 IRS standard mileage rate was 67 cents per mile for business travel. If your techs drive 30,000 business miles a year in your trucks and you're not tracking every mile, you're potentially leaving $20,000 in deductions on the table. That's real money.
Standard Mileage vs. Actual Expenses
You have two methods for deducting vehicle costs. Standard mileage is simple: track your business miles and multiply by the IRS rate. Actual expenses means deducting your real costs: gas, insurance, registration, repairs, and depreciation, times the percentage of miles that are business.
For most contractors running dedicated work trucks, actual expenses often produce a larger deduction because your costs are high and the vehicle is 100% business use. For someone driving a personal vehicle partially for business, standard mileage is often simpler and competitive. Run the comparison with your accountant for your specific situation.
What Counts as a Business Mile
Driving from your shop or home to a job site is a business mile. Driving from one job site to another is a business mile. Driving to pick up parts is a business mile. Driving to a supply house for business purposes is a business mile.
Commuting from home to a regular office doesn't count. But if you're a contractor who works from home and drives directly to job sites, your situation may be different. Your accountant can confirm what applies to your setup.
How to Actually Track Them
A written mileage log is the IRS standard: date, destination, business purpose, and miles. Doing this manually is tedious. Do it digitally instead. Apps like MileIQ, Everlance, or TripLog use your phone's GPS to track trips automatically and let you swipe to categorize them as business or personal. You'll capture miles you'd forget otherwise.
For a dedicated work truck that's 100% business use, your odometer readings at January 1 and December 31 tell you total miles. Subtract any personal miles (almost zero if it's a work truck you don't take on weekends). That's your deduction base. Still keep a log of some kind in case you're audited.
The Numbers Are Worth It
If you're in the 22% federal bracket plus self-employment tax, a $20,000 mileage deduction saves you roughly $6,000-$8,000 in taxes. The app costs $50 a year. That math isn't complicated. Start tracking today, even if you only capture the rest of this year. Partial-year data is better than nothing.
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Written by
Dina Good
Founder, WerkOps
Dina grew up in the trades. Her father was a contractor, then a building inspector, and the job site was her classroom long before any formal one was. She went on to own her own contracting company, which is where she first felt the pain of running a skilled trade business on bad software and worse spreadsheets. A love of data pulled her into programming, and the two worlds eventually collided into WerkOps - software built by someone who has actually been on the truck.