Dead Miles Between Drops: What Delivery Drivers Can Still Deduct

The empty stretch after you drop off one delivery and before your next order is assigned, sometimes called dead mileage, can be deductible business driving when your log shows you were working the shift, even though no delivery app shows you a number for it. The IRS has not ruled directly on between-order mileage, so a dated, trip-level log showing you were online and available is what supports the claim. It is one of the most consistently under-tracked categories of mileage across every delivery platform.

Source: IRS Publication 463, on business mileage for self-employed drivers between assignments.

What counts as a dead mile

Any mile driven while you are actively working a shift, logged into one or more delivery apps and available for the next order, but not currently carrying a paid delivery, is a dead mile: the drive back from a drop-off toward a busier area, circling while waiting for the next assignment, or repositioning toward a restaurant cluster between orders.

Why delivery apps never show this number

Every major delivery platform's tax summary is built around the assigned delivery leg, pickup location to drop-off location. The miles driven between one delivery ending and the next one starting fall outside that window entirely, so they never appear on the platform's own mileage figure, regardless of which app you drive for.

Why it still counts under the tax rules

The test is whether you are engaged in the business at the time of the drive, not whether a specific paid order is active. A driver who is online, working a shift, and available for the next assignment is conducting business during that entire window, the same way a contractor driving between job sites without a specific call lined up is still on business time.

A worked example across a shift

A driver completes 18 deliveries over a 5-hour dinner shift. Each delivery leg averages 3.2 miles, for about 58 miles of platform-visible driving. But the driver also logs roughly 24 miles of dead mileage that shift, repositioning between drop-offs and a restaurant hotspot. Across a 4-shift week, that is close to 100 miles the platform never counted. At the 2026 split rate, 100 miles a week for a full year is about $3,860 (2,600 miles at 72.5 cents plus 2,600 miles at 76 cents).

How to actually capture dead miles

• Keep GPS tracking running for your entire shift, not just during an active delivery
• Do not stop tracking the moment you drop off an order, only when you actually log off the app
• Watch for a pattern where your logged trip mileage looks lower than what a full shift should produce, that gap is usually dead mileage

How dead mileage differs from the "online but no ride" category for rideshare

Dead mileage for delivery and the online-waiting mileage that rideshare drivers deal with are close cousins, both are real business miles the platform's own summary never shows, but they describe slightly different moments. Dead mileage specifically covers the gap between completing one assignment and starting the next. Online-waiting covers the time before any assignment has come in at all. A driver doing both delivery and rideshare work in the same week may need to track both categories side by side, since a single platform-only view will miss each one differently.

Is driving to your first restaurant pickup of the shift dead mileage too?

That first drive from home to your starting location is generally treated as commuting, not dead mileage, unless you qualify under the home-office or temporary-work-location rules. Dead mileage specifically refers to the gaps between assignments once you are already working.

Does driving home at the end of a shift count?

Generally no, the drive home after logging off is commuting the same as the drive to start the shift, unless a home-office qualification applies.

Should dead mileage be tagged separately from delivery-leg mileage in a log?

It helps for your own review, but for tax purposes both categories are simply business mileage once combined. Tagging separately mainly helps you sanity-check your total against what a typical shift should produce.

Why dead miles are easy to lose in a manual log

Of all the mileage categories a platform's own summary leaves out, dead miles between drops tend to be the largest single source of under-reporting for a driver working consistently busy shifts. A driver doing back-to-back trips all day accumulates dozens of short repositioning drives, none individually memorable, that add up to a meaningful share of the day's total mileage by the time the shift ends.

This is also the category most drivers underestimate when asked to guess their own mileage from memory, since each individual dead-mile leg is short and unremarkable. A driver asked to estimate how many miles they drove between drop-offs on a busy day almost always guesses low, simply because no single repositioning drive stands out enough to be recalled accurately after the fact.

Auto-tracking captures the whole shift, not just the paid legs, so dead miles stop disappearing. Try TruMile →

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