I run two delivery apps — how do I split my fuel between them?
Published August 21, 2026
The short answer
You don’t split them. A tank of fuel doesn’t belong to one delivery app or the other — you bought it once and both apps used it, often on the same trip. Costs belong to the week, not to a platform.
Every method for dividing them invents a number. By share of earnings, by share of jobs, by share of engaged time: each gives a different answer, none of them is what happened, and the one you pick decides which app looks better. That is a decision about your money made by an arbitrary rule.
Leaving them against the week is the only version that is simply true. It also gives you the figure that actually matters, which is what the whole week paid after what it cost you to earn it.
What you can do
- 1
Keep every receipt against the day
Fuel, tolls, parking. The day is enough — you never need to say which app it was for.
- 2
List the bills that aren’t weekly separately
Insurance, license, phone, equipment. These get spread, not dropped on one week.
- 3
Take the week’s money as one figure
Money adds across apps, so this part is simple.
- 4
Take the costs off the week, not off an app
One subtraction, against the whole week.
- 5
Say which rate you’re quoting
Before costs or after costs. They are different numbers for the same week.
Where the exact rules matter: the specifics — figures, thresholds, deadlines, and which rules apply — vary by state and by your situation. Check them with the U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov) or your state labor department rather than relying on a number from anywhere else.
In plain terms
- Spread cost
- A bill that covers much more than one week — insurance, a license, a phone plan. Divided across the period it actually covers so one week doesn’t carry all of it.
- Road costs
- What the week itself cost to work: fuel, tolls, parking. Against the week, never against a platform.
- Before costs / after costs
- The same money over the same hours, with and without what it cost you to earn it. Always say which one a figure is.
Where rippedoffworker comes in
The guide tells you what to do — the app does it with you.
rippedoffworker helps you log the hours, pay, and treatment as they happen and builds a dated record over time — so what a week really paid once the costs come out and the pattern behind it are organized in one place, ready to take to the people who can help.
rippedoffworker is a record-keeping tool, not a law firm, and does not give legal advice. Any amounts are arithmetic on the figures you entered — apparent, not a guaranteed or legally determined amount.
Why can’t costs be divided between the apps?
Because the spending was not divided when you did it. You filled the tank once. You paid the toll once, on a trip that may have carried a job from one app and ended near a job from the other. There is no fact about that money that says which app it belonged to, so any split is a rule someone made up afterwards.
It is worth seeing how much the choice would change. Split by earnings and the app that paid more carries more cost, which makes it look worse. Split by engaged time and the app that counts time generously carries more. The apps do not measure time the same way, so this is not a neutral choice — it hands one of them an advantage for a reason that has nothing to do with your driving.
What do costs belong to instead?
The week. All the money that landed, less everything the week cost you, over all the hours you were out. One figure, no invented splits, and it is the number that tells you whether the work paid.
Some costs are not weekly at all — insurance, a license, a phone plan. Those are spread across the year rather than dropped on the week you happened to pay them, so a week does not look terrible because an annual bill landed in it.
Doesn’t that mean I can’t tell which app is worth doing?
You still can, from the figures that genuinely belong to each app: what it paid you, over the engaged time it counted. That is each app’s own rate, and comparing those two is fair because neither has had a made-up share of your fuel attached to it.
What you cannot do is say “this app cost me $60 in fuel”. That sentence has no true version, and a tool that produces it is producing a number rather than a fact.
How much difference do costs actually make?
On the example week below, a lot. The same money over the same hours is $19.41 an hour before costs and $14.21 an hour after costs — the costs are most of the distance between what a week feels like it paid and what it left you with.
That is also why every figure has to say which one it is. Two people quoting the same week, one before costs and one after, will disagree by about a third and both be right.
What the example week cost, and where each cost belongs
| Cost | Belongs to | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel, tolls, parking on the road | the week | $128.50 |
| Vehicle insurance | spread across the year | $35.38 this week |
| Business license | spread across the year | $2.31 this week |
| Insulated delivery bags | spread across the year | $1.42 this week |
| Phone plan (monthly) | spread across the year | $11.08 this week |
| Total against this week | the week, never one app | $178.69 |
None of these is divided between the apps, because none of them was divided when it was spent. Against the week’s $666.40 that landed, they turn $19.41 an hour before costs into $14.21 an hour after costs, over the 34:20 you were out. A monthly bill is annualised first — $48 a month is $48 × 12 ÷ 52, or $11.08 a week, not $48 ÷ 4.33.
Check it against your own week
Put your week in with what it cost you, and see both figures side by side — what it paid before costs, and what you actually kept after them.
Check my weekFree, no account needed. Private to you — nobody is contacted or notified.