You'd think that would be the case, but this car has been very good to me. I'd say between buying the car for 4000 dollars 4 years ago, and all the repairs i've had to make, i've put perhaps 7k into this car in that span. Most of that is me having let vital maintenance such as replacing the timing belt go far too long.

So the total cost of the vehicle including purchase and maintenance, we'll round up to 7k. I really don't think I've spent even that much. We'd also have to include the vehicle's depreciation in value. I'd say this car would fetch no more than 1500. that's a 5500 dollar difference. I bought the car at 102,000 and now has 168,000. That's 66,000 miles.

5500/66000 comes out to just over 8 cents a mile. That doesn't include gas, for which I get reimbursed nearly twice as much as I spend. Even if you took those numbers and tripled them, that's still 30 cents a mile, over 10 miles that's 3 dollars in cost, which is far beyond any worst case scenario. I deliver in a heavily urbanized area, so I'd say for every 10 miles I drive I take probably 4 or 5 runs on average. for 4 runs I would get at the moment 3.20 in gas/vehicle reimbursement, and then whatever tips I get for it. So even in that event i still take home 90% of my tip money as spending money.

Believe it or not, after sales taxes and gas expenses my net income was still a little over 30k last year, just on this job. Not bad for a "pizza boy" and his little grocery getter beater car.

That being said, good tippers such as yourself motoguy are a huge reason I'm still in this business. If I got 2 dollars or less all the time with the way gas prices are nowadays, I'd be finding another job. I promise you that every time I go to spend a few hundred to fix this vehicle, I crunch the numbers real hard.