The Independent Contractor Mileage Log That Holds Up

Short answer: An independent contractor mileage log records one line per trip: date, where you started, where you ended, the job or reason, and the miles. Driving between job sites counts. The first run from home to your first site usually does not, unless your home is your principal place of business. 2026 splits into two rates — 72.5 cents a mile through June 30, 76 cents from July 1 — so date every line.

You drive more than almost anyone who files a Schedule C, and most of it goes unrecorded because you are on a ladder when the trip ends. This is a working method for a contractor’s log: what counts, what does not, and what goes on each line. For the general format rules, IRS mileage log requirements covers them; if the commute question is what brought you here, is your commute tax deductible has the exceptions in detail.

Which of your trips actually count?

A trip counts when the driving serves the business, not when it merely happens on a workday. For a contractor running multiple sites, that produces a clear split.

These count:

• Job site to job site on the same day — the Miller kitchen in the morning, the Ortiz bath after lunch.
• Job site to the lumberyard, the supply house, or the plumbing wholesaler and back.
• Runs to the transfer station with demo debris, and tool rental pickups and returns.
• The permit office, the inspection you have to meet, the county records counter.
• Bid walk-throughs and estimate visits — including the jobs you did not win.
• Punch-list return trips and warranty callbacks.

These do not:

• The drive from home to your first site of the day, in most setups.
• The drive home from the last site.
• The lunch run, unless you are already between two business stops.
• The personal leg of an errand — dropping a kid off on the way does not ride along.

A bid visit that never turned into a job is still a business trip. Contractors leave those out constantly, and on a year with thirty walk-throughs it is real money.

Does the drive from home to the first job site count?

Usually not, and this is the single largest mistake in a contractor’s log. The IRS treats the first trip out and the last trip home as personal commuting, and stopping at the supply house on the way does not convert it. What does change the answer is structural, not clever.

Your setup	Home to first site	Site to site	Last site to home
No shop, no qualifying home office	Not deductible	Deductible	Not deductible
Home qualifies as principal place of business	Deductible	Deductible	Deductible
You keep a shop or yard away from home	Not deductible to the shop; generally deductible to a temporary job site	Deductible	Not deductible from the shop

The middle row is where most solo contractors belong and few of them sit. If your home is where you bid jobs, order material, invoice, and keep the books, and you have no other fixed business location, it can qualify as your principal place of business — and then every drive out to a site is business mileage instead of a commute. That single fact is often worth more than every supply run in the log combined.

What goes on every line?

Five fields, and the whole thing fits in one thumb-typed entry at the tailgate before you drive off.

Field	What you write	Why it matters
Date	07/14/2026	Sets which rate period the trip falls in
Start	118 Cedar (Miller kitchen)	Establishes it was a work location
End	Supply house, Route 9	Same
Purpose	Pick up 12 sheets of 1/2” rock	Ties the trip to a job, not a hunch
Miles	9	The number the deduction is built from

Add the job name. It costs two seconds and turns the mileage log into job-costing data — at year end you can see that the Ortiz bath ate 340 miles of windshield time you never priced into the bid. Per-line odometer readings are optional; the readings at the start and end of the year are not, because they establish your total mileage.

What does a real week look like?

Here is a framing and remodel week for someone with no shop and no qualifying home office. Note how much of the driving is deductible even though both ends of every day are not.

Day	Trip	Miles	Counts
Mon	Home to Miller kitchen	14	No
Mon	Miller kitchen to lumberyard and back	9	Yes
Mon	Miller kitchen to Ortiz bath	11	Yes
Mon	Ortiz bath to home	17	No
Tue	Home to Ortiz bath	17	No
Tue	Ortiz bath to transfer station and back	22	Yes
Tue	Ortiz bath to home	17	No
Wed	Home to bid walk-through, Sanders addition	26	No
Wed	Sanders addition to Miller kitchen	19	Yes
Wed	Miller kitchen to tool rental, return breaker	12	Yes
Wed	Miller kitchen to home	14	No

That is 73 deductible miles in three days, roughly 120 in a full week, about 5,800 in a working year. At the second-half 2026 rate that is a deduction near $4,400 — and it shrinks to nothing if the trips are never written down. Put a qualifying home office under the same week and every “No” in that table flips: the six home legs across Monday through Wednesday add another 105 miles, more than doubling the three-day total to 178.

Why does 2026 need two rate columns?

Because the IRS moved the rate mid-year, for the first time since 2022. Fuel prices drove it. Your log now has to be split at June 30.

Period	2026 business rate	4,500 miles at that rate
Jan 1 – Jun 30, 2026	72.5 cents per mile	$3,262.50
Jul 1 – Dec 31, 2026	76 cents per mile	$3,420.00

A contractor who drove 9,000 business miles, 4,200 before July and 4,800 after, deducts $3,045 plus $3,648, for $6,693. Run the whole year at 72.5 cents and you leave $168 on the table; run it all at 76 cents and you are overstating. This is why the date column is not decoration. Confirm both figures on the standard mileage rates page at IRS.gov, and see the 2026 IRS mileage rate for the rest. The deduction lands on the car and truck expenses line of Schedule C, where it cuts income tax and self-employment tax both — Schedule C line items explained covers the neighboring lines.

What about the trailer, the second truck, and the subs?

Three questions that come up on every contractor’s log and have short answers.

• The dump trailer changes nothing. The rate is per mile of the vehicle, not per load. Towing 4,000 pounds of shingles pays the same 76 cents as driving empty. If that feels wrong, it is an argument for the actual expense method, not for padding miles.
• A second truck is fine, five is not. The standard rate works on more than one vehicle, but not if you operate five or more at the same time — that is a fleet, and fleets use actual expenses. Track each vehicle separately.
• The rate covers cars, vans, pickups, and panel trucks. A one-ton dually qualifies. A dump truck or a class-6 rig does not, and its costs run through actual expenses instead, with every fuel and repair receipt kept for the year.
• Your subs’ miles are their miles. A subcontractor driving his own truck to your site logs it on his own Schedule C. What you owe him is a payment record and a 1099-NEC, not his windshield time.

Why does the same-day habit beat a good memory?

Because the miles that get lost are the small ones, and the small ones are most of the total. Eight forgotten 11-mile supply runs a month is 1,056 miles a year — roughly $800 of deduction gone, from trips you actually drove.

The other reason is evidentiary. The IRS wants a contemporaneous log, written at or near the time of the trip. A spreadsheet built in April from memory is the weakest position available, because vehicle expenses sit under strict substantiation rules with very little room to estimate.

The practical version for someone who works with his hands: log the trip before you start the truck. Not at the end of the day, not Sunday night. Before you pull out.

How do you keep this log from the truck?

Keel: Invoice Maker & Receipts is an on-device app for exactly this — a mileage log you can fill in with dusty hands in fifteen seconds, plus the invoice and receipt side of the same business. Every trip carries its own date and distance, so first-half and second-half 2026 miles stay separated instead of averaging into one wrong number. Entries go into an append-only, hash-chained ledger, which is what makes a log read as a record kept in the ordinary course of business.

There is no account, no bank connection, and no cloud. Your job addresses and client names stay encrypted on your iPhone, which is why the App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected.” The same app photographs your material receipts — read on-device with Apple Intelligence — and cuts the invoice when the job is done, so the drive to the supply house, the $412 of rock, and the bill to the homeowner sit in one file. At year end you export the year as a single file, or as an Accountant Pack with a CSV and a one-page summary.

Keel is free with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage. Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Log the supply run before you start the truck — get Keel on the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

Does driving from home to the job site count as business mileage? Generally no. The first trip out and the last trip home are commuting, which is personal even for a 1099 contractor. Two things change it: a home office that qualifies as your principal place of business, which makes every drive out to a site deductible, or a shop away from home, which makes drives to temporary job sites deductible.

Can I deduct the trip to the lumberyard? Yes, when it starts or ends at a work location. A run from the Miller kitchen to the supply house and back is business mileage, and so is the return trip on a rented tool. What does not work is treating a stop at the lumberyard as a way to convert your morning commute — the drive from home is still personal unless one of the home-office or temporary-site rules applies.

What mileage rate do I use for a trip in 2026? It depends on the date. Business miles driven January 1 through June 30, 2026 use 72.5 cents per mile. Miles from July 1 through December 31 use 76 cents, after the IRS raised the rate mid-year on fuel costs. Total the two halves separately rather than applying one rate to the whole year, and confirm the figures on IRS.gov before filing.

Do I have to log the miles my subcontractors drive? No. A subcontractor is running his own business, so his truck miles go on his own return and his own log. What you owe on that relationship is a clean record of what you paid him and a Form 1099-NEC if the total hit the reporting threshold for the year. Keep his invoices and your payment records with your job files.

Can I use the standard mileage rate on a work truck? Yes, for cars, vans, pickups, and panel trucks — a three-quarter-ton or one-ton pickup qualifies. Heavier equipment like a dump truck does not, and its costs go through the actual expense method instead. You also cannot use the standard rate if you run five or more vehicles at the same time, which the IRS treats as a fleet.

What if I only wrote down some of my trips this year? Rebuild what you can from records that already carry a date and an address: signed change orders, material invoices, inspection notices, dump tickets, and your calendar. Note where each reconstructed entry came from. That is supporting evidence, not a compliant log, and an examiner can still cut the deduction — so start a real log this week and keep the reconstruction separate.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.