05/16/2026
So someone posted about Ubers and I’ve had several people make comments about my fuel surcharge and I’ve always been transparent with yall, so I want you to understand.
From my office to Hollytree country club, then to DFW, and back to my office (I used Hollytree as a marker because we have a lot of clients there, but this is suppose to signify our client pick up location — if it’s Bullard, Henderson, Jacksonville, Lindale, even East Tyler, the mileage will go up). 253 miles. 4 hours and 9 minutes on a Saturday with zero traffic and not accounting for waiting at the pick up location or the 20 minutes it takes to get in and out of the airport. So let’s average this trip at 5 hours, since the driver would have to stop for fuel, possibly a potty break for driver or clients, and to account for traffic.
253 miles with a minivan that gets 22 mpg is 11.5 gallons of fuel. It’s $3.93 next to my office right now, so $45.20 in fuel. My drivers are paid $15-18 an hour, so 5 hours is $75-90 in driver pay. There is a $2 toll in and out of DFW airport, even if you don’t park. It’s a bare minimum for every single trip, and that’s if toll 49 is avoided.
Here’s where it gets tricky. We do oil changes at $59.99 every 4,000 miles. That means cost is 0.015 per mile. Transmission services run at 0.0055 per mile. Tires we figure at 0.015 per mile. Brakes 0.01 per mile. Brake fluid and tune ups cost 0.005 per mile. That’s maintenance at 0.0555 per mile or another $14.04 per 253 mile trip.
$45.20 fuel
$82.50 average labor
$2 toll, minimum
$14.04 maintenance
Total COST for a trip to Dallas comes up at $143.74
I charge $190 each way with a 10% discount on the round trip, making round trip $171 each way. So on a round trip, I’m looking at about $27 each way in profit. This is deadheading (going empty one way or the other), which accounts for about 65% of our trips to the airports. I also did not factor in a higher cost of labor for when flights are delayed or baggage takes forever and ever amen to come out — we’ve had drivers waiting with clients on the ground for over an hour waiting for luggage before.
That profit covers commercial insurance at $2100 a month. I have an app that my drivers use to effectively and efficiently communicate with my clients, that runs $378/month. I have car payments, a storage unit since I got rid of my office and installed a home office, and other “incidentals” like a TBS on one of my cars that’s going to cost me $1658 to repair — the same week it I paid $400 for a thermostat on Van 1 and two weeks after we fixed the misfire in cylinder 3 on Van 3 that cost me another $1757 to fix. Between insurance and the website alone, we have to do 91 trips per MONTH just to cover those two expenses. My toll bill off of 49 last month was $580.16, so there’s another 21 trips just to cover 49 and the tolls there. And that’s the vehicles linked to our toll tag — NOT the rentals, those bill separately. If you prefer to use the toll but we can avoid it at the cost of an extra 5-10 minutes, please understand we are going to avoid it. The tolls from i20 to 110 in Whitehouse run at like $12-16, depending on if we’re in a rental or one of our vehicles.
When someone quotes you $100 to do that trip and claims they are commercially insured, their vehicle is well maintained, they’re making dozens of trips per month, etc., they’re cutting corners somewhere. A commercial ride share add on to a standard policy is NOT the same as commercial insurance — commercial ride share add ons cover them if they’re working in their own vehicles for a company like me, or uber, or whatever. I am commercially insured AS A BUSINESS and I meet the requirements set forth by the Texas Transportation Network. There isn’t a huge difference if there isn’t an accident, but if you end up needing to use their insurance, you’ll figure out the difference FAST.
I had someone the other day tell me I was “ripping people off,” and a couple weeks ago someone said I was “making money hand over fist from this business,” and every time I hear it my IQ drops by a couple of points — and I didn’t have that many to begin with. Stop it.
The fuel surcharge stays until fuel costs go back down — because if it doesn’t, I have to massively reduce the amount of airport transportation I do. Right now, my other services are carrying airport service financially. That is why I lean on advertisement for them so hard.
By the way, anyone notice that in all of these figures, I haven’t mentioned taking a salary yet? 🙈 imagine how many trips it would take for me to be able to have a salary rolling. No one’s getting rich over here. I don’t do this to become a millionaire — I do this because I love y’all and I enjoy the community we have built. I do this because it’s given me the freedom to show up to lunch twice a week, to every graduation and field day and celebration and science fair and field trip and Kona ice day for Oliver’s entire kindergarten. And I am unrelentlessly grateful for that.
