Cost per kilometre in a minibus transport service: what a kilometre really costs

The number that comes up most often in conversations about cost per kilometre originates in travel expenses law. Section 5 subsection 1 of the Bundesreisekostengesetz sets it out in these words.

Where there is a substantial official interest in using a car, subsection 2 raises it to thirty cents, to be established before the trip begins. Through section 9 subsection 1 sentence 3 number 4a of the Einkommensteuergesetz (the German Income Tax Act) the same maximum rate reaches into tax law. That is why so many people carry the 30 cents around as the one valid rate per kilometre.

The purpose of these rates is narrow. They reimburse a private individual for putting their own vehicle to official use, and they contain no margin. Translating them into a commercial quotation leaves out five items:

• Staff costs for drivers, dispatch and invoicing, the largest block of all
• Depreciation and financing of a vehicle converted for wheelchair transport
• Standby costs for reserve and replacement vehicles that only cover distance when something goes wrong
• Inspection, training and record-keeping obligations that arise regardless of mileage
• Entrepreneurial risk and profit, the only item that pays for the next vehicle purchase

The costing logic used in the taxi, private hire and bus trades sorts costs by their reference unit rather than by the accounting code. What matters is what a block actually depends on, whether that is time, distance covered or an hour of staff time on duty.

This separation answers a question that keeps coming up in dispatch. A caseworker at the social services office rings on Thursday afternoon and asks about an additional journey starting Monday. Is it worth taking? As long as vehicle and driver are on duty anyway, the journey only has to cover the variable costs and the extra duty time it ties up. If it needs another vehicle or another shift, the whole fixed cost block comes with it, and the very same journey turns into a loss.

Anyone who knows both rates can work that out. Anyone carrying only a blended rate per kilometre is deciding on instinct.

How heavily staff costs govern passenger transport can be read off the BW index for road-based local public transport, which the Baden-Württemberg transport ministry publishes every year. It rolls the cost trend forward across five groups, namely staff costs under the Manteltarifvertrag (the framework collective agreement) of the private bus trade, diesel or electricity, new vehicles, spare parts and other costs tracked by the inflation rate. According to the trade publication Omnibusrevue, the proposed weighting puts staff costs at 55 per cent in first place; the local Aufgabenträger (the public bodies responsible for local transport) may depart from it.

For your own costing this means that every wage increase feeds through to the price per kilometre almost undamped. Part of that increase is already scheduled. Under section 1 of the Fünfte Mindestlohnanpassungsverordnung (the fifth German minimum wage adjustment ordinance), the statutory minimum wage has been 13.90 euros gross per hour since 1 January 2026 and rises to 14.60 euros on 1 January 2027. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs puts the two steps at 8.42 and 5.04 per cent, 13.88 per cent in total. Where collective agreements apply, the rates sit above that. The minimum wage is the floor, not the planning figure.

The part of the staff block in which nobody covers a billable kilometre gets underestimated again and again. It is still paid working time.

• Preparation time before the shift starts, meaning the walk-around check, taking over the vehicle, cleaning and testing the restraint systems
• Standing time between the outward and the return journey, for instance in school transport or between two dialysis appointments
• Waiting time at the passenger when a hospital discharge runs 40 minutes late
• The run out to the first passenger and the run back from the last one
• Breaks and rest periods, in so far as they are paid

Whether a minibus falls under the EU social rules or under the Arbeitszeitgesetz (the German Working Time Act) is anything but trivial; the article on driving and rest times in minibus transport services covers where the line runs in detail. For costing purposes it remains true that a substantial share of the paid hours drops out of the calculation if you allocate staff costs to occupied kilometres alone.

Fuel is the item that moves most within the period a quotation has to cover. Spring 2026 provides an unusually clear illustration. According to the ADAC price analysis, April was the most expensive month at the pump since records began.

In January 2026 the same analysis had the diesel price more than 57 cents per litre below the April level. Within a single quarter the most important variable cost item moved by more than a quarter. An annual average does not capture a spread like that. It smooths away precisely the movement you are trying to protect yourself against.

A monthly external reference is more useful. The Bundesverband Güterkraftverkehr Logistik und Entsorgung (the German road haulage, logistics and waste disposal association) publishes diesel price information for large-volume buyers, based on deliveries to the point of consumption and maintained as an index series. The association prepares the data expressly for cost-element clauses in longer-term contracts. Both parties to the contract then read the same independently collected figure, and what it reflects is the bulk purchase price rather than the forecourt price.

Empty kilometres are kilometres driven with no passenger on board. They cause full consumption, full wear and full driver time. They never appear on an invoice to a Kostenträger (the public payer covering the transport), and that is exactly why they are overlooked so reliably.

• The run from the depot or from the driver home address to the first passenger
• The run back after the last passenger
• Repositioning between individual jobs that do not fit together geographically
• Return trips after cancellations, abortive journeys and passengers who were not there
• Trips to the workshop, the filling station and the wash

The effect on the cost rate is pure arithmetic. If 30 per cent of total distance is empty running, the variable costs of 100 kilometres driven have to be recovered from only 70 billable ones, which puts the rate per billable kilometre roughly 43 per cent above the rate per kilometre driven. If you do not know your empty share, you do not know your cost base.

That share can certainly be moved. The town of Olfen switched to a demand-responsive school bus system in 2013, documented in the Mobilikon of the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development. Instead of a fixed line, the route is calculated from the pupils actually travelling, and stops with no passengers are dropped. School bus mileage fell by roughly 40 per cent and one complete vehicle was taken out of service.

The cost blocks turn into a quotation once they are translated into a price structure that fits the contract.

1. Work out fixed costs per operating day. Divide annual fixed costs per vehicle by the operating days actually achieved, not by 365 and not by the days you planned.
2. Work out variable costs per kilometre. From actual consumption plus the workshop, tyre and wear costs of the previous year, rolled forward with a fuel assumption you can justify.
3. Set staff costs per hour on duty. As full costs including employer contributions, premiums and non-productive time, related to the productive hours.
4. Build in empty kilometres and standing time. Spread the measured empty share across the billable kilometres and assign unproductive duty time to the job that causes it.
5. Add the risk and profit mark-up. A percentage mark-up for utilisation risk, bad debt and reinvestment. Without it the operator funds the next vehicle purchase out of its own substance.
6. Translate it into a quotation structure. A base charge per journey or operating day, a defined kilometre allowance, a rate for additional kilometres and separately itemised surcharges.

Surcharges only survive scrutiny by a payer when there is a measurable additional service behind them. Wheelchair or carry-chair transport, because of the conversion, the restraint systems and the extra duty time. A second person on board, because that creates a complete second line of staff costs. Waiting time beyond a defined grace period, because it ties up vehicle and driver. A flat mark-up without that kind of justification is the first thing to fall in a review.

For terms longer than twelve months, a price adjustment clause belongs in the contract. It should be tied to an external reference, such as a published cost index for bus services, collective wage developments or a fuel index, and it should state the adjustment date unambiguously. With public contracting authorities the room for later adjustments is further limited by procurement law; which procedure applies at all depends on the contract value and the EU thresholds for 2026 in transport service procurement.

Which actual figures the calculation needs

The calculation itself is not complicated. What is missing are the actual figures. Estimated kilometres, rounded duty times and the manufacturer consumption figure from the brochure produce a costing that looks tidy and is wrong all the same.

• Actual kilometres per tour, split into occupied and empty
• Driving time, standing time and total duty time per driver and day
• Actual fuel or energy consumption per vehicle instead of the manufacturer figure
• Workshop, tyre and damage costs per vehicle and year
• Operating days actually achieved per vehicle, including days lost
• Waiting times, additional services and abortive journeys per job, with timestamps

These figures arise in a dispatching operation anyway. Every planned tour, every status message from the vehicle and every invoice line contains them. They only get lost when planning, vehicle data and invoicing sit in separate systems. Where dispatch, driver app and invoicing work on the same set of data, as they do in Vermo, the full-cost calculation at year end is a report rather than a project.