Question

[spiker2005 14]

Iam currently filling out paperwork to be on the vendor list for cumberland farms stores in Delaware. The maintenance manager called me today and fax me the paperwork today. He said my company sounds good and he wants to use me. This is my first chain of stores, I' am really happy, after all the talking and faxing of all the information about my company it finally came through. It just proves never give up. I owe alot of it to this network by reading asking question. Thank you. I do have a question though ( Ha Ha). On the application it all seems easy enough, but one question ask about travel rate per mile. I really don't know what to put, I always thought it was $.10 a mile but a couple of friends of mine said the going rate is $.45-$.48 cents a mile. I did a search on this, but the discussions were about deductions on taxes per mile. Is this the same or not?

[R L S 14]

I believe the rate for travel (set by the gov) miles is now.42, Thats supposed cover fuel, wear and tear etc NOT your time.

Whats your drive time worth plus the .42 per mile is your travel rate.

[RyanH 14]

The $.45 - $0.48 is the standard IRS mileage deduction; that's how much you can deduct from your total income when you file your taxes, and has no real bearing on what you can charge. The actual value is posted on the IRS website, but I think it's currently $0.42 per mile. Richard's point is what you should take: use the fuel economy of your vehicle and the time it takes you to get there (along with your desired hourly rate of pay) as your basis for cost. If you want to count beans about it, then you can also account for miscelleanous costs. For example:

If you have your oil changed every 3k miles, and it costs $50 to have it changed (plus your cost for waiting), you would add " Mileage x $50 / 3000 " to your cost.

If you change your tires every 80k miles, and it costs $800 for new tires, you would add

"Mileage x $800 / 80000" to your cost.

And so forth...basically anything business related to you being able to do business, you should charge for. That's why you are able to take the tax deductions, because the government assumes you account for these costs of doing business in your fees. Many small time companies ignore these small fees and just "give away" their time. Other companies lump all of it together and call it "overhead." I've had many headbutts with my management about having such large overhead when we could break down costs in this manner and apply it to specific jobs.

[spiker2005 14]

Thank you very much. I will figure it out now.