Deliver on Your Business

Episode 77: How to Save on Gas Costs While Delivering Uber Eats Doordash Grubhub Postmates, etc.

• The EntreCourier • Season 1 • Episode 77

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A few weeks ago gas prices were ridiculously low. As people are getting back to work we're seeing gas prices start to move up in price. With gas getting more expensive and as much as we have to drive to deliver for gig economy apps, how do we make sure that we're not paying too much for gas?

Before diving into that topic, a couple things we touched on to start the episode:

Okay, on to this week's episode

You can follow along on the blog post associated with today's episode and see links and screenshots there.

The most important tip for cutting down on gas costs? Drive less

I drive around in a 20-mpg Chevy Equinox and spend less on gas than a lot of people who drive a Prius. Why? Because I keep my miles down. Too many drivers are driving way too many miles. Don't be that guy (or gal).

Don't drive extra miles to save on taxes.

I learned on Uber Eats that distance was a better factor for evaluating deliveries than the offered price.

Use the available cost saving tools.

Use my GetUpside referral link to receive a bonus 15¢ per gallon cash back on your first fill up.

Check out GasBuddy for info on gas prices and save money on gas purchases with their debit card. (not an affiliate link.

Get the GoBank card from Uber Eats for up to 6.5% cash back on gas. Don't deliver for Uber Eats yet? Sign up here.

Use gas savings at warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam's Club

Keep the big picture in mind

Think about what the cost is for whatever savings you pursue. Driving 6 miles out of your way costs you more in time and vehicle cost than what you save.

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Well, hello, Courier Nation. Welcome to the Deliver on your business podcast, where you are the boss. Each week we talk about how to make the most of your business as an independent contractor, as a courier delivery for gig economy apps like Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats and so many others. Well, hey, everybody, welcome back for another week, and I'm kind of a welcome back for me with that for about a week. I had pre-recorded at last week's episode so we could take some time with the family and it was good getting away, but it's good to be back too. And before I dive into today's topic, though, I want to try something just a little bit different. We'll see how it goes. And let me know what you think. I'm doing this, but kind of more just before we get into the actual topic. Just going to touch on some of the things that are going on in the delivery world. And so let's go. Let's go for that. Number one, let's talk about pandemic relief and especially pandemic relief for independent contractors. Now there are two things that are very timely right now. One for what just happened and what's about to happen. What just happened? The government opened up the EIDL, which is disaster recovery loans, and those loans include a $1000 grant. Now those are actual loans. They are not forgivable loans, but it is something that has been just opened up. Stay tuned because I want to write about that a little bit more on the website. Also, the for the part that's coming up is the Paycheck Protection Program. June 30 is the deadline for the applications. It's been kind of surprising, actually, that the money lasted to the deadline and because really it went so fast with the first round and then Congress put some more money into the program. If you're thinking about it, you can still apply if you go to entrecourier.com/womply, and that's a referral link. So I'll earn something out of that, but I'll put the link in the show notes as well, but you can go still and do your application. I'm also going to have in the show notes some links to a couple of articles that I wrote about the about the Paycheck Protection Program, how it works, what it's like to apply for and how loan forgiveness works, because that one does have loan forgiveness. So keep in mind, keep an eye on those those different things if there are some areas where you need some assistance because of everything that's happened with this pandemic. Second thing, I want to throw out there real quick, just something that I've been hearing from some people and seeing in forums and stuff. A lot of people lately have been getting these carrots dangled in front of them by DoorDash. Have you have you received any of these emails that talk about if you go and complete three hundred deliveries in the next month or whatever that you'll you'll get at least seventeen hundred and fifty dollars? Guys pay careful, careful, careful attention to what they say when they offer these things for you. These companies are scum because they word that in such a way, they know full well that when you see that you're sitting there thinking, Oh, I'm going to get an extra $1750, pay careful attention to the wording because they say you will earn at least$1750. All that is saying is if you go out, you do 300 deliveries and you didn't make seven hundred and fifty dollars. We're just going to make up the difference. Folks, if you did 300 deliveries and all you got was $1750. Or less? You're doing something wrong. That's less than six dollars per delivery, guys, they're not offering anything in this. They're not giving you anything really extra. It's just a carrot to dangle at you at geo, to manipulate you into doing something. You're not going to get extra money by doing those 300 deliveries. Third thing I want to do real quick, I want to talk about goal setting. I want you to think about goal setting. We're going to dive back into that eventually here. But we just spent this last week at this little mountain community. We go up there probably once a year or so. I just got one of those last unspoiled mountain areas and we went around. We kind of looked at some houses and things like that that it was. We're not ready to buy something yet, but we're sure thinking about it. And we started thinking about all the things that we've got to do to be able to get to that place of being able to buy a vacation home or to retire up there. Different things like that. Think about that. When it comes to goal setting, I'm starting to put pictures up of that community because. It is something to kind of drive you a little bit. What are you working for? What's your why? Think about stuff like that when it comes to setting goals for thing I want to throw out. Go check out Mike delivers. It's another podcast here. For the longest time, I was thinking I was like about the only delivery podcast out there because I do searching. And yet here he is, and he's got a bigger audience, I think, and probably because he's better at this than I am seriously, because he's entertaining in a way that I could never be. He's he goes at it, a different approach than I do. And I think we each kind of have different ideas. But, you know, I hear about somebody else has got to do a podcast about delivery. And of course, you start to. I must crush him. That's competition. But I I love the fact that he's out there, just more stuff to help people out and and just an enjoyable podcast, and I think we do things differently enough that I I'm not worried about him. I don't know if he's worried about me. He shouldn't be. So anyway, last thing talking podcasts, it just dawned on me. This is a one year anniversary for this podcast. We launched on July 1st last year on the Deliver on Your Business podcast, and so what kind of celebration should idea should there be a celebration? Is there anything I should do about that? Let me know if you got some ideas on that. OK, so let's dive into our topic for today. It's we're talking all about how to save on gas, how to save money, how to cut down on the gas that we use and because that's one of the biggest expenses for us. You know, it wasn't that long ago is only maybe a few weeks ago you started thinking, who needs to save gas on doing deliveries because gas is so cheap? And if there's one thing is wonderful about kind of that whole stay at home thing was it was that gas prices just bottomed out next to nothing for a while. And it was kind of a double whammy for a lot of us doing deliveries because you're able to make more money. Part of it was because you get more deliveries done because there's no traffic, there's no hassle getting into parking and all that stuff. You could make more money and you didn't have to spend as much on gas. It was like a sweet. Now, I heard other people say that, you know, that low price gas, it was kind of like a hairbrush for a bald man, you know, it's that if you're staying home and you're not going anywhere, what good is that cheap gas? But for those of us that were out there, that was nice. But I don't know about your area, but I definitely can see it in our area that those days are over. Gas prices are just about back to where they were before everything got crazy. Now the good news is I think gas is still low. You know, usually in the summer, we see a good little bump in the price, and gas prices are still kind of more at winter prices and things like that. I'm sure that those might catch up soon as much as it's been climbing. And like I said, as gas, as couriers, gas is kind of that one experience you notice the most, that's the money that's coming out of your pocket every time we fill up and every delivery brings us closer to having to fill up. Unless, of course, you're doing a bicycle delivery or something like that, but. You know, how do we keep the costs down so that we can keep more of our earnings as we're doing our deliveries? Want to throw out a few tips for you? Some things to think about? All right, so my first tip here for you today is don't drive so much, and it seems a little obvious, doesn't it? Less driving, less gasoline. Yeah, that would make sense, right? But you'd be amazed how many people think that is a great idea to drive as many miles as possible. And a lot of that comes from this thinking that, well, you can deduct fifty seven and a half cents a mile for 2020 numbers off of your taxes. And it's not off your taxes, it's off your income. But anyway, the more you drive, the less you pay in taxes, right? But don't be that idiot, OK? Do the math here. Does it really make that much sense to spend 25 to 50 cents a mile? So that you can pay nine cents a mile less on your taxes because the bottom line is your car costs between 25 and 50 cents a mile, maybe a little bit more if it's a really valuable car, depending on its age, its value, all those different things. So if you're already driving a lot of miles, you know, chances are you're not paying income tax. And so it's only the self-employment tax. And so what that means is all you're saving for each mile is nine cents a mile, because that's what that fifty seven and a half cent deduction knocks off your taxes. OK. The single greatest thing that you can do as a delivery driver to increase your profits is drive less. The single greatest thing I mean that that's even more important than taking more higher paying offers. It honestly comes down to that. And I really had this driven home to me when starting to deliver more with Uber Eats. And at first, you know, you'd go after those higher paying offers. And I figured out that higher paying on Uber Eats just means you drive a lot further and it takes a lot longer. And the reality of it is now Uber Eats is different because you don't know the tip amount on top of it. But you know, the reality of it is that I just started finding out that when I was focusing instead on distance, when I decided I'm just going to take shorter deliveries, I made a lot more money. I might not have made as much on the delivery itself. But when it came to profit per hour, I made a lot more money. And that's because of this is very simple. You drive fewer miles and one you get less gas. But fewer miles also mean less wear and tear, less depreciation on your vehicle. And so there's there's all those hidden costs that credit card on wheels that I often talk about. There's less of that going on here. Shorter drives mean that there's less time for the delivery. Now, of course, depending on the restaurant, I know, but usually a shorter drive means it's going to take less time to do that delivery. And if it takes less time to do that delivery, there's more deliveries you can do per hour. And if you can do more deliveries per hour, you get paid for more deliveries. So there's more income. So all of that stuff adds up to say drive less. And I spend a little bit more time on this one than anything else I'm talking about here because it really is. By far, I think, the most important thing, it's the biggest thing you can do to cut your gas costs down. I know that sounds great, right? But how do I drive less? Because it's easy to say easier said than done right because you can go out and you got to do these deliveries, and if you don't drive and you don't make any money. That's true to a point, but only to a point. You are an independent contractor. You get to make choices, you get to choose where you're going to deliver, you get to choose what offers you accept and what offers you reject. You get that choice and it's really your responsibility, I think, as a business owner to make good choices. So with that in mind, here's a couple of thoughts. One. Take money out of your paycheck each week for each mile you drive. How does that save money? I guess it doesn't, but it does. I mean, what it does is it gives you motivation. Here's here's my thinking with this. This is something that I recommend everybody anyway, that you if your car cost you 25 cents a mile, figure out what it costs at the very minimum 25 cents a mile. If your car cost you 25 cents a mile, take that out when you get paid, once you get all your money from everybody and stuff like that before you touch that money. You take money out for your taxes, you take money out for your miles and you take money out for giving yourself some paid time off. Twenty five cents a mile. And then you put that into a different fund. And out of that, that's where you pay your gas, your maintenance, any kind of repairs that come up. But what that will do to is it'll kind of build up a fund for either major repairs that come up or helping to replace that car. You'll kind of offset that difference when you've got to trade that car for a lot less money. Well, all that makes sense from that standpoint, but how does that apply to saving gas? Well, here's the benefit I hadn't really thought about, but it's the psychological impact you get paid by everybody for the week you take that money out of your check, and all of a sudden you realize you don't have as much money left. And I know because I've talked, I've told people to do that. A lot of times they say, but then I don't have enough money to live on. Well, that is your understand that that's kind of your wow moment that says, Holy crap, I'm not making enough money. Folks, that 25 to 50 cents a mile. That is real, that is very real. You just pay it later. I call it a credit card on wheels that all of those miles mean you're going to end up having more maintenance, more repairs, more replacement. You're going to have less money when you sell or trade in that car afterwards because of those miles. So it's real. So take that money out now so that you've got it when you've got to pay that bill. And but the thing about that is that tells you how real those miles are. That tells you how expensive it is to keep driving. So do that. And what it's going to do is that's going to give you the motivation to say I got to find ways to drive less. Second thing I would say about that is make distance a major the major factor in your decisions on which offers you're accepting or rejecting. If you want a real simple one factor test on whether or not to take the offer. Distance, the shorter the distance, the more likely you're going to take it, the longer the distance, the less likely you're going to take it. Now I usually advise something a little more complex than that. I'll get into that in a second, but I would say if you had to pick one thing. Distance means a lot more than the dollar amount on the delivery. Very few people are going to agree with me on that one. But the problem, the thing is, is distance is usually the biggest indicator of how long a delivery is going to take. You know, you've got to drive that to the restaurant, you've got to drive to the customer and that takes time. Now, if I can get three short Low-paying, but short distance orders done in the same amount of time as a higher paying order, generally it's going to add up to the same amount of money. But guess what? My costs are lower because I didn't have to drive as much. So the bottom line is, here's the thing, you know, I've talked about my 40 cent rule in other episodes in the past. I'll have a link to it in the show notes and everything like that. But I really pushed this 40 cent rule that says when you're looking at a delivery, you've got to decide if it's going to pay you 40 cents a minute or not. You've got to do a little more thought to do that because now you've got to calculate how much time it's going to take. And then, you know, figure out if it's comes up to 40 cents a minute, if it's going to pay you 40 cents or more per minute. It's a good delivery. Take it and if it's not passed. But here's the thing that I found is over the two years now doing this delivery and following this rule that I have found that the shorter the distance of the delivery, the far more likely it is to meet that 40 cent. And when I do it and I sort all my deliveries and everything like that, I find that the shorter deliveries have averaged an awful lot more. Per minute than the larger ones, and in the end, they are more profitable. The other thing you do is you can choose delivery areas that have got shorter distances downtown for me, used to be it intimidated the crack crap out of me because I hated it. The parking, the traffic and the streets are wonky in Denver. And when you get downtown, it's just confusing. But the crazy thing is, I started tracking where I was earning the most profit per hour and downtown was far and away the most profitable. And most of that was because I could get deliveries done downtown quickly. They're short, they were fast and even with the traffic. Even with the parking, it was still a lot faster. Now I always thought that I was making more money in the suburbs and because the traffic was easier, getting in and out was easier. It just felt like you're going faster. But when I started tracking it, I realized I'm making less because it took longer, and a lot of that had to do with the extra drive time you drew drove further to the restaurant. You drove further to the customer. So pay attention to how far you're driving in different parts of town and start choosing areas where you don't have to drive as far. And like I said, spending more time on this one, just because it is that important, but. I've talked to drivers who, you know, they drove a Prius, you know, and and making about the same amount of money as I'm making and but it turns out that I'm spending less on gas with my 20 mile an hour or 20 mile a gallon equinox than they are in their 50 mile a gallon Prius. And my overall cost and are a lot lower because of all that just depreciation, different things like that, but the reason for that is because you're putting three times as many miles on their cars as I was for the same amount of money. So don't do that. It's great to have a fuel efficient vehicle, but don't defeat the purpose by driving too many miles with it. So here's one that's going to sound a little odd by a lot of groceries. OK, don't buy a lot of groceries if you don't already buy a lot of groceries, but here's here's the deal. Here's what I'm getting at with that. One of the biggest fuel cost savings for me has been the fuel points that I get at our grocery store. You know, for for every $100 we get at 10 points, sometimes 20 or 30 points, depending on when it is. And every 10 points you get equals 10 cents a gallon off at the gas pump. And you can combine all of those to up to a dollar a gallon off of the gas over there. And the gas is usually pretty low price prices competitive anyway. Now there was a time when we had 10 kids in the house that, yeah, that was that was a lot of savings because we spent a lot of money on groceries, but not as much on gas because of that program. And now we're down to three grown kids, but they're still in the house while they're going to school and even things like that. So there's still a lot of food that goes through the house. And so that gives us some savings from time to time. So if you've got a grocery store nearby that has that fuel points type of thing and you haven't been taking advantage of it, that is a big one that could really maybe help you out there. OK, so my second tip is you want to look into some of the different cost saving tools that are out there and especially there's a couple of apps and there's a couple of things that I want to throw out real quick. The first one is going to be, you want to look at the getupside, getupside is a cash back app and it's like it kind of creates a little account and they kind of pile up cash credit when you buy gas. What you do is you see a map of the participating gas stations that are, you know, on get up side and it'll tell you how much cash back you're getting. And it'll tell you how much the gas costs after you apply that cash back. So like, I'm looking at a screenshot that I posted on the web page. I put a link to that on the in the show notes. Or you can go to entrecourier.com/77. But I'm looking at this in the top right. It shows the circle K. So it says 2.22 regular and then it says .21 cents a gallon cash back. Now what that means is the actual price for the gas is $2.43 cents, and that's their normal price. You're still going to pay that normal price, but after you get your 21 cents cash back, it equals out to $2.22 cents a gallon. Now, as I look through the Denver area right now on the map, I'm seeing between 11 and 21 cents a gallon cash back, depending on where it's at. And so generally it's it's generally pretty close to about 20 cents a gallon overall. The process for signing up is pretty easy. I've got a referral link if you want to use that. If you use that link, you can get like a 50 cent a gallon bonus extra cash back the first time you fill up. And so it is a referral link. I get some, I get a little bit of a bonus when you use it. But if you go to Andre Courier dot com slash get up side, you can take advantage of that 15 cent bonus there. What happens is you set up, you get it all set up and you see you see an offer for this is, you know, you find the gas station that you're going to buy your gas from you click on claim the offer for that. When you arrive at the gas station, you click that you've arrived and then what you do is you, you know, whatever payment card you're using in the setup process, you're going to enter like the first couple of digits of your your card and your last four digits or whatever. And that's enough for it to recognize if that card was used at that gas station. So now you sit there and you say, OK, I've arrived and you fill up, you buy your gas and then they can recognize then because they've got that relationship with the gas stations that they can recognize, OK, you bought that gas. And so within about two days or so, it took about it usually takes about two three days for me. Now, all of a sudden, that cash back shows up in your account. With that cash back that accumulates. You can then cash out with gift cards at, you know, there's I think some grocery stores, there's Wal-Mart. There's I think Amazon, there's there all sorts of different restaurants you can cash out, buy by pay pal to get the cash direct. You can even have them send and have them send you a check. I think it's is like a $1 fee for them to do that, just to cover the time to just print that out and set it off. But they've also got the referral program. So with the referral program, if somebody you refer buys gas, they get an extra 15 cents a gallon off their first purchase. But you also get a bonus of 15 cents a gallon cash back based on their purchase for every gallon they buy. Afterwards, you get a penny. Yeah, that doesn't seem like much, but if you got a handful of people that are doing that, it just kind of builds up a little bit. So, you know, full disclosure, like I said, I've got a referral link and so I get that same kind of bonus there, but you really want to look into that because that can be a real good way to save some money. GasBuddy is another app that's very popular. They've got a couple of versions, they've got a free version and a paid version. Now the one thing I like about GasBuddy and it's on either one. I have not tried the paid version. I probably won't. But they are. They've got a much more comprehensive map of your area that shows gas prices from all sorts of places. You get a map like that on get up side, but it's only of the partnered gas stations. Well, this is kind of a crowdsourced map that tells you how much everybody is charging for gas, so that's a good thing. But then you can save money by paying for your gas at that place. You don't have to check in, so it's a little simpler. You pay for your gas with a debit card that they provide, and that debit card is attached to your bank account. And then just depending on what kind of program you're on, whether you're on the page or whatever, you save a little bit of money for for each gallon that you buy. The thing is is like, you know, the higher savings you've got to get their premier subscription, which is like $10 a month, 9.99 a month. And you know, you just got to determine whether you buy enough gas and save enough gas to make it worthwhile. They've got a couple of nice things on the app as well that I like, and it's on the free app and that is, you know, one is that there is a a fuel log. So and if you're using the app already, it's like you're already there. So it's not that big of a hassle to enter your stuff, but you can kind of keep track, you know how much gas you're buying and you know how much you know how many miles you drive, so it'll track all that stuff for you. But they also have a little feature on there that will kind of evaluate the way you're driving. You know it can. It can work off of the sensors in your phone, and it'll tell you some different things you can do that might make you a little more self, you know, fuel efficient, and that'll help you save money that way. One last thing that they've got is called a gas backed program because because it's a debit card, if you make purchases from some partner stores, you get kind of like, it's kind of like a cash back from them, but it's cash back that you can use to apply to your gas purchases so you can go to GasBuddy.com to find out more about them. That's not an affiliate program or anything like that. I don't make any money off of that one. I wish they had one, but you know, so that's another option. Here's one that you can use if you're already on UberEats doing Uber Eats and that is their go bank card. They've got a card that they give out to people, and most people kind of look at it as that's what they use. If they need the instant cash, you know, if they go out and deliver for a couple of deliveries and then they want the money right away. They can just click on it and put it on this debit card. Well, this card also has a cashback feature when you buy gas. And it starts at one and a half percent. It's not a huge amount, but, you know, every little bit helps. But if you do a lot of deliveries with Uber Eats because like right now, I've been doing an awful lot with them. And so I'm at their diamond level on their pro program. And so I can get five percent cash back on any gas that I buy with that card. Six and a half percent if it's a Mobil or Exxon station. And the beauty of that card is you can stack it up with the other program, so if I say when we were on vacation, we went and we filled both my wife's car and mine up spent $50 on that. Well, I got $5 cash back using get up side, but I use the Uber Eats card and that gave me another five percent cash back. So that's another two dollars and fifty cents. So basically, when it was all said and done, that $50 was, you know, 42 and a half dollars. And so, you know, things like, let's say, to lower gas prices at the grocery stores or the Costco's or things like that. Well, if you're using your gas card from or you're using your Go bank card from Uber Eats, you know you still get your five percent off of already low prices. I'll have a link if you're not on. Uber Eats and if you thought about trying it because I've got a referral code there, and so you know, depending on where you are, what their need is for drivers, they sometimes have some bonuses for when you sign up using the referral code. And sometimes I receive a referral fee depending on how badly they need drivers where you're at, you know, just just to let you know on that. But if you've not thought about it or you not tried it, I have actually found lately that I'm actually doing more Uber Eats deliveries and anybody else right now that'll pay, but I'm sure it always does. But, you know, check them out. Another thing you can look at is loyalty programs. Now I mentioned the grocery stores earlier and and honestly, the loyalty programs are that that's what that is. This is a loyalty program with the grocery store. But if you've got a gas station that you frequent a lot, if there's a certain brand that is in a lot of places where you go, buy, check out, there are fewer rewards programs. A lot of them will give you like five cents off a gallon. And if you buy very much gas, they'll give you even more. And so you like the grocery stores that I mentioned above. Like I said, does fit into that category. You've got Shell has probably one of the best known. They call it fuel rewards, and most of your major chains have something like that. So if there is a certain chain or a certain brand that you buy a lot of gas of, just naturally check out the loyalty programs because you can save a little bit per gallon on top of that. And then if you are on the gas buddy card or the Uber Eats card, you're savings from those go on top of those. The last one, the last tool that I would mention is probably like the warehouse memberships and I'm talking in particular Costco and Sam's, you know, usually Costco at $60 a year right now. And a lot of times their gas prices are really low, and I've had times where their gas prices are significantly lower than anybody else. So, you know, keep an eye on those types of things because sometimes that money you spent for the membership makes a difference. Now I find that it fluctuates. There are times that Costco is a lot cheaper than anybody else, and there are times where they're right there at the same price as everybody else. And it's it's like anything you got to pay money for. You got to evaluate whether the savings are worth what you pay. My fourth tip, last tip is focus on being fuel efficient. Now I am a lot different than a lot of people because I don't put that much emphasis on fuel efficiency. You'll see a lot of people say, go out and get a Prius, go out and get a hybrid. And I'm not going to tell you to do that because usually the cost of going out and do that is going to be higher than what you save by doing that. So you've got to kind of keep an eye on that. You know what? What does that cost really saving you, you know? Good gas mileage, though, I'm not going to say it's a bad thing, and if you are looking at cars, that's something that you really want to think about is what that mileage is going to be and what that's going to save you and different things like that. But I will say that if you're going to take out a loan and get a newer car, you're going to lose a hell of a lot more money than what you save. So and I have found two. The other thing that I've thought about when it comes to talking about a smaller car, if you gave me a Prius. I'd probably still lose money because of using it. And that is because for me, I'm a taller guy and getting in and out how those little things is not an easy thing. It's a pain. And yeah, I've got arthritis in my knee now. Just a lot of things like that. It's just the deal is that I don't see myself being able to do 40 hours a day in the car in something like that. I'm just not going to feel like continuing to keep driving. And if I'm not driving that, I'm not making money. And so there's opportunity cost with something like that. If you got a car that's not comfortable, you know that's an issue. But but definitely, if you're, I would not tell you to go out and change cars, and I especially wouldn't tell you to go out and spend a lot more money on a car to get fuel savings because you're also losing more money when you get a little more expensive car because you're wearing it out. But the other thing you can do is you can look at the ways you're driving, you can think about things, are you driving around between deliveries that gets back to that drive less thing? Are you idling when you get out, you're burning a lot of extra gas there? Are you doing really quick starts or you doing really hard breaking? And that's where, you know, gas. But it could be a useful thing because you can check out, you can you can do that drive analysis thing, and it can kind of tell you whether or not you know, some of the starting and stopping that you're doing in a way as you're turning or something like that or costing you money on gas. So there are some thoughts about some different things you can do to try and cut back on your gas costs and or to get some extra cash because of your your gas purchases. But here's a few things that I want to kind of wrap up on and talk about all this. And the most important thing is always be taking a look at the big picture. Don't get so caught up in the potential savings that you cost yourself money. You want to think about what it costs you to get the savings that you're pursuing because you'd be surprised how often the cost is greater than the savings. You know, we talked about, you know, say, Costco, if I went out and I got a Costco membership for $60 just so that I could get cheaper gas, I wouldn't save enough money to make up for that $60 investment. Part of it is because sometimes they're not that much cheaper. And part of it is sometimes it's just that they're out of the way. Another example is going to be the the gas buddy. You save 20 cents a gallon more, maybe because of your premier subscription. And that sounds awesome. 20 cents a gallon sounds great, but. When you buy, you know, they say you bought 100 gallons of gas for the year. That's about what I bought. Now if you got a Prius that we talked about earlier, something you bought even less and so you save even less. But let's say you bought twelve hundred gallons of gas and it averaged two dollars and fifty cents a gallon. So now that's $3000 of gas for the year. At that rate, okay. Well, GasBuddy is saving you 20 cents a gallon, so you're saving two hundred and forty bucks. That's nice that two hundred forty bucks is nice, but you paid $120 for the subscription to be able to do that. So now you've only saved $120. Well, here's here's another idea because that five percent cash back on your Uber card if you do a lot of Uber deliveries. Well, you can't get that savings because you've got to use the gas card, right? And so you can't get that savings that well, if you do the Uber savings, that $3000 that you spent in gas, five percent cash back is one hundred and eighty. You actually saving more money? Are you getting more back in cash back because of using the Uber? Then what's your cost is after all that stuff, so you've got to weigh those costs? Here's another way to think about it to. Let's say that you got a gas station that is six miles away, but it's a 15 cents a gallon cheaper than anybody else I can I can tell you about a couple of places around here that are that way. Well, they're out of the way for me if I'm going to go out and drive out of the way to get that. There's there's two dollars and twenty five cents that you're saving at, you know, on a 15 gallon tank, 15 gallon tank, 15 cents a gallon, you save two dollars and 25 cents a gallon. Let's say that gas station is six miles away. You know, at minimum, you're probably looking at your overall cost when you throw everything into it. About 25 cents a mile to drive your car out there. So you drove six miles. Twenty five cents a gallon, there's a buck and a half. And oh, by the way, you got to return. There's three dollars that you spent in car cost to save $2 and 25 cents a gallon. Does that make sense? Well, now here's the other side of it. Think about the time that it takes to do that, driving out of the way. And let's say that for the 12 miles that you're driving, it took you about 20 miles or 20 minutes here. Well, let's use that 40 cent rule where if you're making twenty four bucks an hour, it's 40 cents a minute. And so if you're taking 20 minutes to go out of the way to get that gas, that's 20 minutes you can't be delivering and that's costing you like eight dollars because of that lost. That opportunity cost that 40 cents a minute that you're losing because of that time. So now you just paid, you basically lost $11 so that you could save $2 and 25 cents. It doesn't make sense. You got to think about that big picture. A second thought with that is you want to look at how you can stack saving options, and I already talked about that a little bit with that UberEats card. How I could add that to the get up side bonus. And and that can be a big deal. You know, you can combine a couple of those tools. So think about ways that you can actually save with more than one option. And then I would wrap up by saying, don't get too distracted by trying to save savings are great. Don't get me wrong there. But the bottom line is that, you know, gas costs are actually a small part of what you earn. And in fact, when you look at the overall cost of your vehicle, gas is a small part of your vehicle expense overall. My 20 mile and a gallon. Equinox is costing me less than a lot of people's 50 mile a gallon Priuses, because their depreciation and their other costs related to driving a newer car and the interest costs that they're paying on that car are a lot more than what I'd be saving. You know what I'm saying? And so you really want to be careful about not going so much after savings that you cost yourself more than what you saved? You know, I recently updated my vehicle to the Equinox, I had an older Buick. And so when I finally settled on something, I got this older Chevy Equinox. We're not quite as old as the Buick. And when I was doing that, there were a lot of smaller, more economical cars that I could have gotten. But as I mentioned, I could say with a Prius, comfort is an important thing. I'm going to be spending 40 hours or more a week in the car. And so I got to get something that I can spend that time in. And in the other side of it is, you know, all the other costs that are involved with that. You just got to think of everything, not just that one little area of savings, but look at the big picture and more than anything. Like I said before, focus on driving less. See tip number one. Save money. That's always good, but sometimes it's just it's good to make sure that you're actually making more money. And if you can do both, that is the idea. Folks, thank you again for joining me once again and hard to believe it's almost a year now. But folks, I want to ask you if this website, if this podcast, if anything, is helping you out, if it's helping you out, let other people know that are doing deliveries. Because if I'm helping you out, I'd love to be able to help somebody else out. And the more people we can reach that way, the more people we can help them to become the boss, to make good business decisions. And it's part I want to ask you to do right now is go out there, make those good business decisions, think like a business owner, go out there and be the boss.