MyWayCost per stop for delivery drivers in the US: 2026 numbers
6 min read
Short answer: on a busy parcel day — 120 stops and 90 miles — each stop costs you about $2.45 once you count gas, wear on your car and your time. Gas is only 14 cents of that. What really costs you is the miles and the minutes between stops, so the quickest way to earn more per stop is to drive less between them.
What goes into one stop
Every stop costs you three things:
- Gas. About 19 cents for every mile you drive, at today’s US average of $4.47 a gallon and 23.5 miles per gallon.
- Your car. Tires, oil, repairs, insurance and the value your car loses with every mile. Together with gas, that comes to about 76 cents a mile — the rate the IRS uses for business driving since July 1, 2026.
- Your time. In the examples we count it at $25 an hour. Use whatever your time is worth to you.
Add up a day, divide by the number of stops, and you have your cost per stop.
What a stop costs on four typical days
These are example days, not averages; swap in your own.
| Example day | Stops, miles, hours | Car only, per stop | Car and time, per stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short parcel block | 40 stops, 35 miles, 4 hours | $0.67 | $3.17 |
| Full-day parcel route | 120 stops, 90 miles, 9 hours | $0.57 | $2.45 |
| Same-day courier runs | 15 stops, 80 miles, 4.5 hours | $4.05 | $11.47 |
| Service or sales visits | 8 stops, 120 miles, 9 hours | $11.40 | $39.53 |
On the full-day parcel route, gas comes to $17 a day — 14 cents a stop. The rest is the car and, above all, your time.
Why one stop costs $2 and another $40
The parcel driver and the service tech pay the same for a mile and for an hour. The difference is how many stops they fit into them: 120 stops in 9 hours against 8. Stops close together are cheap; stops spread across the county are expensive.
That is also why the price of gas matters less than it seems. If gas went up by a dollar a gallon, each stop on the parcel route would cost about 3 cents more. A better order of stops saves much more than that.
4 ways to lower your cost per stop
- Plan the order before you leave. Every mile you don’t drive saves about 76 cents and two or three minutes.
- Group stops that are close together. Same street, same building, same complex: deliver them in one go instead of coming back later.
- Sort your packages by stop. Hunting for a package at each door is the slowest minute of the day. Here is a simple packing system.
- Park once, walk to several doors. In a study of parcel deliveries in downtown Seattle, drivers spent a median of 2.3 minutes just looking for parking on each trip.
Example: what a shorter route is worth
Say a better order of stops makes the full-day parcel route 20% shorter: 72 miles instead of 90.
- You save 18 miles, which is $13.68 of car costs.
- You drive about 43 minutes less, which is $18 of your time.
- Together that is $31.68 a day, or about $697 a month over 22 working days, and your cost per stop drops from $2.45 to $2.18.
How much you save depends on how you plan today. If you already drive a familiar route in a good order, less; if your stops change every day, usually more. Try your own numbers in our Cost Per Stop Calculator, which estimates what a better order saves you in a month.
MyWay Route Planner puts your stops in the best order: up to 15 stops for free, and up to 200 stops on Pro at $9.99 a month. On the parcel route above, that is less than a third of what the shorter route saves in a single day. Get the app.
FAQ
What is a good cost per stop for a delivery driver?
It depends on how close your stops are. In our examples, a busy parcel route costs $2.50 to $3.20 a stop with your time counted, and well under $1 a stop for the car alone. Same-day courier runs and service visits cost $10 to $40 a stop, which is why they are priced per job or per mile.
What is the IRS mileage rate for 2026?
72.5 cents a mile from January 1 to June 30, 2026, and 76 cents a mile from July 1, 2026. The IRS raised it mid-year because of higher fuel prices.
Should I count my time in the cost per stop?
Yes, if you want to know whether a route or a job is worth it. A stop that costs 60 cents of gas but takes 6 minutes really costs you $3.10 at $25 an hour.
What’s the fastest way to lower my cost per stop?
Drive fewer miles between stops. Plan the order before you leave, group nearby stops, and keep packages sorted so each stop takes less time.
How we calculated
Cost per stop = (miles × cost per mile + hours × your hourly rate) ÷ stops. For the full-day parcel route: 90 miles × $0.76 = $68.40 for the car, plus 9 hours × $25 = $225 for your time, makes $293.40; divided by 120 stops, that is $2.45 a stop.
- Gas: $4.465 a gallon, the US average for regular in the week of September 28, 2026 (EIA), at 23.5 miles per gallon, the same assumption as our calculator.
- The whole car: the IRS standard mileage rate for business use, 76 cents a mile from July 1, 2026 (72.5 cents from January to June). AAA’s Your Driving Costs 2026 puts an average new car at 74 cents a mile at 20,000 miles a year, maintenance, repairs and tires at 11.7 cents a mile, and the full cost per mile at 62 cents for a small sedan up to $1.10 for a half-ton pickup.
- Your time: $25 an hour is our example. For comparison, employed couriers and messengers earned a median of $18.85 an hour in May 2025, and employers paid $36.38 an hour for a transportation worker, benefits included, in the second quarter of 2026 (both BLS).
- Driving speed: 25 mph on average, the same assumption as our calculator.
- Parking time: University of Washington Urban Freight Lab, parcel deliveries in downtown Seattle, 2018.
All per-stop figures are our own calculations from these numbers.