Say you put 21,000 miles on the F-250 — supply house runs, four subdivisions, a warranty call two counties over — and in February your preparer asks for the mileage log you never kept. The standard mileage rate for contractors is the easiest deduction on your return and the one contractors blow most often, because 2026 doesn't have one rate. It has two, and they split at the end of June.
Miss that split and you either shortchange yourself or claim a number you can't defend. Here's how the deduction actually works on a work truck.
Two rates in 2026, split at June 30
For tax year 2026, the business standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile for miles driven January 1, 2026 through June 30, 2026, and 76 cents per mile for miles driven July 1, 2026 through December 31, 2026.
That means one annual mileage total is not enough. You need first-half miles and second-half miles as separate numbers, or the arithmetic on your return is a guess.
If your mileage app only spits out a yearly figure, pull the trip detail and cut it at June 30. Do it once in July and once in January and you'll never think about it again.
What the standard mileage rate for contractors covers — and what it doesn't
The rate is a per-mile stand-in for the cost of operating the vehicle. Gas, oil, tires, repairs, maintenance, insurance, registration, and depreciation are all baked in. Claim any of those separately and you've double-dipped.
What isn't baked in: parking and tolls on business trips. Those come off on top. If you're self-employed, the business share of vehicle loan interest is also separately deductible.
Publication 463 is the IRS's own walkthrough on car expenses if you want to read the source.
Which trucks qualify and which ones don't
The standard rate is written for cars, vans, pickups, and panel trucks. A service van, a crew cab, a 1500 with a ladder rack — all fair game.
Two rules bite contractors. First, if you claimed actual expenses with accelerated depreciation on a vehicle in its first business year, you're locked into actual expenses for that truck's life. To keep your options open, use the standard rate the first year a vehicle goes into service.
Second, on a leased vehicle, if you start with the standard rate you use it for the entire lease term. Third, fleet size. If you use five or more vehicles at the same time for your business, the standard rate is off the table entirely — you're on actual expenses for all of them. "At the same time" is the operative phrase: five trucks running the same jobs on the same day counts, while replacing one truck with another mid-year does not. Four trucks and a van puts you right at the line, so count carefully. Publication 463 spells out the test if you're close.
Mileage rate vs. actual expenses: which one to pick
The decision rule is simpler than most people make it. High miles on a paid-off truck favors the standard rate; low miles on an expensive new truck that drinks fuel and eats brakes favors actual expenses, because depreciation does the heavy lifting. My verdict for most small trade contractors: use the standard rate, and run the actual numbers only for a new dually doing 6,000 business miles a year. Who is allowed to choose, what counts as an actual expense, and a side-by-side worked comparison are in our guide to standard mileage vs. actual auto expenses.
A worked example: 16,000 business miles in a split-rate year
Say a remodeling contractor drives 20,000 total miles in 2026, and 16,000 of them are business — 9,000 before July and 7,000 after. She also paid $180 in tolls and $60 in job-site parking.
- 9,000 miles × 72.5 cents = $6,525
- 7,000 miles × 76 cents = $5,320
- Mileage subtotal: $11,845
- Tolls and parking: $240
- Total vehicle deduction: $12,085
Now the other method. Suppose her truck cost $10,800 to run all year — fuel, insurance, tires, a transmission service, registration — and it's already fully depreciated. Business use is 16,000 of 20,000 miles, or 80%. That's $10,800 × 80% = $8,640.
Standard rate beats actual by $3,205 on the same truck. That gap is why the log is worth keeping.
Track it in three phases: setup, during the jobs, closeout
Setup. Turn on automatic tracking in your phone before January and write down the odometer reading on day one. Personal miles matter too — you need total miles to prove the business share if you ever switch methods.
During the jobs. Tag trips weekly, not yearly, and tag them to the job. Mileage coded to a cost code — the bucket a cost gets filed under, like "truck & fuel" or the job number itself — tells you which jobs are eating windshield time. Two hours of daily driving to a job 40 minutes out is a real cost your bid should carry.
Closeout. At year end, reconcile the log's total miles against the odometer, split the business miles at June 30, and hand both halves over with your parking and toll totals. That log is the backup behind the number on your return, and it's part of what proper tax preparation for contractors is built on.
The miles you think count but don't
Driving from your house to your own shop is commuting. Not deductible. Loading tools in the bed the night before doesn't change that.
Shop to job, job to job, job to supply house, supply house back to the shop — all business. If you stop at the supply house on the way in, that leg counts.
If your home genuinely qualifies as your principal place of business, the trip from your driveway to a job site is business mileage from the first foot. The test has two parts. First, you use a specific area of the home regularly and exclusively for the business — a dedicated office or a corner of the garage that's yours alone, not the kitchen table you clear off at dinner. Second, that space is either where you conduct the administrative work of the business (bidding, scheduling, invoicing, ordering) with no other fixed location where you do it, or a place where you regularly meet customers.
Miss either half and you're back to commuting for that first leg. Meet both and the shop-to-job rules above apply from your own driveway. It's a real distinction worth getting right, and it's also the one the IRS asks about first when mileage on a return runs high.
Reimbursing yourself or a sub for mileage
If your business is an S corp and the truck is titled to you personally, don't run fuel through the company card. Reimburse yourself at the standard rate under a written accountable plan against a submitted log. Clean deduction for the company, nothing taxable to you.
If you hand a 1099 sub extra money for fuel or windshield time, that's part of what you paid him. For tax years beginning after 2025, the Form 1099-NEC reporting threshold is $2,000, and the payee statement and the IRS filing are both due January 31. Mileage money you paid outside the invoice still counts toward the total.
If your truck miles are living in a shoebox and nobody has split them at June 30, submit a pricing request and tell us how many trucks you're running.
