How much wear does DoorDash or Uber put on your car?

Delivery and rideshare driving wears a car in two ways: it adds kilometres quickly, and those kilometres are the hard kind. Short hops, idling at the curb and stop-and-go traffic are exactly what carmakers mean by severe service.

Is gig driving "severe service"?

Most owner's manuals have two schedules: a normal one and one for harder use, sometimes called severe or special operating conditions. Delivery and taxi work is often named outright:

• GM. The 2025 Chevrolet Equinox manual puts vehicles "used for taxi, police, or delivery service" on its severe schedule, alongside heavy city traffic in hot weather and frequent towing (GM).
• Kia. The 2024 Sportage manual for Canada lists severe conditions that read like a delivery shift (Kia Canada):
  • "extensive engine idling or low speed driving for long distances";
  • "driving in heavy traffic area";
  • "frequently driving in stop-and-go conditions";
  • driving as "a patrol car, taxi, other commercial use".
• Ford. Ford counts idle time toward oil changes. Its 2020 Super Duty manual treats each hour of idling as about 40 km (25 miles) of driving for oil-change purposes (Ford).

Wording differs by maker, model and year, so read the list in your own manual. If any condition describes your shifts, the severe schedule is the one to follow.

What changes on the severe schedule?

Some examples from the makers' own schedules:

The pattern is consistent: the fluids that break down with heat and idling get changed sooner, and the parts that wear with stopping and rough use get checked more often.

Which parts wear fastest?

• Brakes. Every order ends in a stop, often several. Delivery work in a city is close to continuous braking (our inference), which is why makers shorten brake inspections under stop-and-go use.
• Engine oil. Idling and short trips are hard on oil, which is why makers list them among severe conditions. Many newer cars estimate oil life from how they're driven. Kia's manual says its Oil Life Management System "predicts engine oil life based on the driver's driving history," so trust the monitor, or the severe interval, over a sticker based on normal use.
• Tires. They wear with distance. A driver doing 30 hours a week at an average 25 km/h drives about 750 km a week, or around 39,000 km a year (our arithmetic, example figures), several times what many private cars cover.
• Transmission fluid. Several makers leave it off the normal schedule but change it under severe or commercial use, as Kia does above.

Does the platform pay for any of it?

No. The CRA says commercial rideshare and delivery drivers are generally self-employed (CRA tax tip). The car's maintenance and repairs are the driver's costs, which is also why they are deductible for the business share of kilometres. Keep every invoice. They count twice: once on your tax return, and again in working out what a kilometre really costs you.

How do you put a number on wear?

Divide a year of maintenance, repair and tire bills by the kilometres the odometer moved in that year. For example, $1,800 of servicing, brakes and tires over 30,000 km is 6 cents a kilometre (our arithmetic). Count it against every shift alongside fuel, as in our guide to real pay after gas. It won't capture the car losing value with every kilometre, which is real but harder to pin down until you sell.