Writing Off the Truck: Mileage, Actual Costs or Section 179

A truck is often the biggest check a trade business writes all year, and the question that follows it to the tax preparer is usually the same: can I write the whole thing off now? Sometimes, yes. Whether you should depends on three things you settle early (the method you start with, what the truck is rated to weigh, and how much of its driving is business) and one that arrives later, when you sell it.

First: which miles are business miles

Every method is multiplied by business use, so start there. Publication 463 draws the lines:

• Home to your shop is commuting. “You can’t deduct commuting expenses no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work.”
• With a shop or yard, home to a job site counts. If you have a regular work location away from home, the daily round trip between home and a temporary work location in the same business is deductible, regardless of distance.
• With a qualifying home office, home to any job counts. If your home office is your principal place of business, trips from home to other work locations in the same business are deductible.
• With neither, the first and last legs are commuting. Trips between home and temporary sites inside your metropolitan area are not deductible; driving from one customer to another is.
• Tools and lettering change nothing. Hauling tools does not make a commute deductible (only an extra cost, such as a rented trailer), and advertising on the truck does not turn personal driving into business driving.

Method one: the standard mileage rate

Multiply business miles by the IRS rate: 70 cents for 2025; for 2026, 72.5 cents through June 30 and 76 cents from July 1, after the IRS raised it mid-year because of fuel prices (Notice 2026-10 and Announcement 2026-11). Add business parking and tolls and, if you are self-employed, the business share of the truck loan’s interest. Nothing else goes on top: no gas, insurance, repairs or depreciation. The first year decides a lot:

• Choose it in year one or lose it. For a truck you own, you must choose the standard rate in the first year it is available for business. You can switch to actual costs later, but then you depreciate straight line over its remaining useful life.
• Fast write-offs close the door. Claim section 179, bonus depreciation or accelerated (MACRS) depreciation on the truck and the standard rate is gone for it.
• Five at once means actual costs. If you use five or more vehicles in the business at the same time, none of them can use the standard rate.
• Depreciation is built in. Notice 2026-10 treats 33 cents a mile for 2025 and 35 cents for 2026 as depreciation, which lowers the truck’s basis for when you sell.

Method two: actual costs

Add up gas, oil, tires, repairs, insurance, registration, licenses, garage rent, tolls and parking, plus depreciation, and multiply by the business share of your miles. Pub 463’s own example is a contractor who drives 20,000 miles, 12,000 of them for business, and claims 60% of the cost of operating the vehicle.

The 6,000-pound line

For depreciation, a truck or van rated at 6,000 pounds gross vehicle weight or less is a passenger automobile, and passenger automobiles have yearly caps, with section 179 and bonus depreciation counted inside them. For one placed in service in 2026, Rev. Proc. 2026-15 sets these:

The caps shrink with business use: at 80%, the first-year cap with bonus is $16,240. Above 6,000 pounds they do not apply; Pub 946’s example is a pickup whose gross vehicle weight was over 6,000 pounds, “so it was not subject to the passenger automobile limits.” Three more things to know:

• Heavy SUVs have their own cap. Section 179 on a vehicle designed or used mainly to carry passengers and rated over 6,000 and up to 14,000 pounds is capped at $32,000 for 2026 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32; $31,300 for 2025). Pub 946 lists the exceptions: a cargo area at least 6 feet long inside, not readily reached from the passenger compartment; seating for more than nine behind the driver; or a fully enclosed body with no seats behind the driver and nothing more than 30 inches ahead of the windshield.
• A van modified for work may not be a passenger automobile. Pub 946 excludes trucks and vans modified so they are unlikely to be used more than minimally for personal purposes, “such as by installation of permanent shelving and painting the vehicle to display advertising or the company’s name.”
• Read the door, not the brochure. Federal rules (49 CFR 567.4) generally put the manufacturer’s certification label, with its “Gross Vehicle Weight Rating” or “GVWR,” on the hinge pillar, door-latch post or door edge next to the driver’s seat.

Bonus depreciation and section 179 after the 2025 law

Public Law 119-21, enacted July 4, 2025, changed both fast write-offs. Its section 70301 made 100% first-year bonus depreciation permanent for qualified property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025 (Notice 2026-11). Pub 463 lists what a truck needs to qualify: no written binding contract to buy it before January 20, 2025; new or used; placed in service in your business; and more than 50% qualified business use. Bonus is the default. You can elect out for the year’s whole class of 5-year property by attaching a statement; if you do not, you reduce the truck’s basis by the allowance even if you never claim it.

Section 70306 raised the section 179 limit to $2,500,000 for 2025; for 2026 it is $2,560,000, reduced dollar for dollar once property placed in service passes $4,090,000 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32). Section 179 has conditions of its own. You elect it on Form 4562 for the year the truck goes into service, business use must be more than 50%, and the deduction cannot exceed your taxable income from actively running a trade or business that year; the rest carries forward (Pub 946). A truck first used for personal purposes and moved into the business later cannot take section 179 at all (Pub 463).

One truck, two ways

Say a remodeler buys a used three-quarter-ton pickup for $52,000 in March 2026. The door label shows a GVWR over 6,000 pounds. The log shows 20,000 miles for the year, 18,000 for business, split evenly before and after July 1: 90% business use.

Had the same truck been rated at 6,000 pounds or less, the first-year deduction would stop at 90% of $20,300, or $18,270, with the rest spread over later years at the capped amounts. Pub 463’s advice: if you qualify for both methods, figure the deduction both ways. Figure it over the years you expect to keep the truck, not just the first.

The log the IRS expects

Pub 463’s table of records lists what a vehicle record must show: the truck’s cost and any improvements, the date you started using it for business, the mileage for each business use and the total miles for the year, the date of each use, the destination and the business purpose. It should generally be written, and a record kept on a computer counts, and it should be made at or near the time; a log kept weekly qualifies. Pub 463 also allows sampling: an adequate record for part of the year can support the whole year if you show that part is representative.

Form 4562 asks the questions outright: “Do you have evidence to support the business/investment use claimed?” and “If ‘Yes,’ is the evidence written?” It wants commuting miles on a line of their own. The simplest log is the odometer reading on January 1 and December 31, then the date, job address, purpose and miles of each business trip. Keep it for every year of the recovery period.

The bill that comes later

A fast write-off moves the deduction forward; it does not make it disappear. Two events bring part of it back:

• Business use drops to 50% or less. The more-than-50% test applies in each year of the recovery period, which Pub 463 puts at 6 years. Fail it and you add the “excess depreciation” to income: what you deducted, section 179 and bonus included, minus what straight-line depreciation would have allowed. Pub 946 works the example on a pickup over 6,000 pounds.
• You sell or trade it. Pub 946: “any gain on the disposition is generally recaptured (included in income) as ordinary income up to the amount of the depreciation previously allowed or allowable,” section 179 included, and Pub 463 says the same of bonus. On a truck written off in year one, most of the business share of the sale price can come back as ordinary income the year you sell. The standard rate’s per-mile depreciation lowered basis too.

Before you sign at the dealer

1. Read the GVWR on the door label of the exact truck.
2. Estimate the business share honestly, and start the log the day you drive it home.
3. Run the first year both ways, then the years after, with your tax preparer.
4. If the standard rate might ever suit you, choose it in year one.
5. If you take bonus or section 179, plan to keep business use above 50% for the whole recovery period.

The truck is one line of Schedule C. The rest of the form, from materials to the home office, is in What Can You Deduct?

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.