Per Address vs Cents Per Mile

Which is better? Per Address Mileage or Per Mile?

It depends

In 2013 my store switched from Per Address ($1.10 per house) to per mile. Per mile was and is paid on a sliding scale based on gasoline prices. On the Monday that starts a pay period, mileage is set for that period. 

Since the mid 1990's I have been keeping track of every shift and how much money I make. See How to Keep Track of Your Tips, for more on that. It was east for me to take my spreadsheet and change per address mileage to per mile. I knew how much I had every shift in mileage, how many runs, and how many miles I drove each day. It took looking at the data from about three days to see where it was going to end up. Per mile was going to be way more money. About double the mileage from per address.

Driver check out report

This was easy to confirm. The Domino's Driver checkout sheet shows your mileage as a percentage of the sales amount you delivered. When I started in 1985, mileage was 6%. Yes people scammed to get big runs for the mileage. When I was getting per address mileage, the mileage percentage was 3-4%. 3.2% and lower were normal. The first day of per mile mileage, my percentage was over 6%. This was further confirmed when I learned that the first year of cents per mile, mileage paid by the franchise doubled. Doubled.

When we started per mile, the sliding scale bottomed out at 32 cents per mile at $2.399 per gallon. One thing is that for the almost two years when gasoline was below $2.399 a gallon mileage was still 32 cents a mile. Pennies will stack up. In 2019 the bottom tier was revised to 39 cents per mile. This week, January 4, 2022 gasoline is $2.799 and mileage is 42 cents a mile.

The biggest reason cents per mile is so good for me is that my delivery area has big houses. I average over four miles per run. The $4.99 delivery fee and the $7.99 carry out special guarantee every few short runs.

How to Figure Out if Per Mile is good for you

Gather your data. Record your starting and ending miles each shift for a week. Record how many runs you take. Now add your mileage. A spreadsheet will make this easy, but a calculator and notebook will work.

Now, take your table of data and recalculate your mileage using cents per mile. Monday your drove 73 miles. You took 13 runs at $1.20 a run. Per address mileage is $15.60. 73 miles at 23 cents a mile is $16.79. Now do the whole week.

Why?

Why are franchises going to cents per mile? To stay out of court. Or more accurately to not lose in court and have to pay back milage. Per mile is a more accurate way of paying mileage. The franchise I worked for used a service to calculate the true cost of their 400 or so drivers annual vehicle expenses to come up with a baseline number.