The shoebox on the garage workbench has a rubber band around it that broke in August, so now it has two. Inside are nineteen months of receipts: oil, filters, brake pads, shop invoices, insurance statements, registration renewals. On Saturday I finally typed the last of them into the spreadsheet, next to every fill-up from the spiral notebook in the truck's door pocket.
I started this blog on March 1, 2025, with the idea of writing down what it really costs to keep old vehicles running. March 2025 through September 2026 is nineteen months. Here's the whole bill.
I counted four things for each vehicle: gas, repairs and maintenance (shop bills and my own parts), insurance and registration. I split our insurance by month, pro-rated, using the per-vehicle lines on the declarations pages.
I left out a few things on purpose. The $6,400 we paid for the Civic and the sales tax on it are buying costs, not running costs. Garrett's $640 parking-lot scrape went in his column, not the car's, since he's paying half of it. The deer damage on the truck isn't here either, except my $500 deductible, because our insurer paid the rest. And the tow from Cameron in July was covered by the roadside add-on, which is part of the insurance line.
The totals
- 2014 Silverado: 19,200 miles. Gas $3,728, repairs $1,971, insurance $2,240, registration $86. Total $8,025, or 41.8 cents a mile.
- 2011 Sienna: 17,600 miles. Gas $2,983, repairs $1,996, insurance $2,040, registration $68. Total $7,087, or 40.3 cents a mile.
- 2012 Civic (since December 6): 8,300 miles. Gas $808, repairs $1,471, insurance $808, registration $60. Total $3,147, or 37.9 cents a mile.
All three together: 45,100 miles and $18,259. That's $7,519 in gas, $5,438 in repairs, $5,088 in insurance and $214 in registration. Over nineteen months it averages $961 a month, or 40.5 cents for every mile anybody in this family drove.
Where the money went
The truck's repairs were four oil changes I did myself at about $46 each, the water pump in August 2025 ($612), the deer deductible ($500), the four-wheel-drive actuator after the January ice ($386) and the transmission fluid exchange in June ($289). Nothing I'd call a surprise except the deer.
The van's were front brakes I did with my dad supervising from a lawn chair ($142), the AC compressor on a 93-degree day ($1,140), the sliding door cable ($86), a battery after the January cold snap ($164), the starter in Cameron ($312) and oil changes at about $38 each.
The Civic's were the first-weekend checklist ($74), struts and an alignment ($918), Garrett's first oil change ($32) and rear brakes with sway bar links last month ($447).
Insurance is the line that moved the most. It ran about $218 a month for two cars in mid-2025. It's about $336 a month now for three cars and a 16-year-old driver. The switch to a new insurer last November helped, and so did the good-student discount, dropping collision on the van and the driving-score discount. Without those, we'd be well past $400 a month.
The surprise
I expected the truck to be the most expensive per mile, and it was. A V8 commuter at 16 mpg is never going to win this contest.
I expected the Civic to be cheapest, and it was, but not by as much as I thought. The struts and alignment were a big bill against only 8,300 miles. The Civic's insurance line is the smallest of the three, because it carries no collision coverage, but it isn't small anymore. Once a teenager is on the policy, the cost shows up on every car.
The real surprise was the van. I've thought of the Sienna as the cheap one for years: paid for, worth about $4,800, a V6 that gets 19. It came in at 40.3 cents a mile, a cent and a half behind my truck. The AC compressor and the starter did most of that. Its gas wasn't much less than the truck's either, because it drives so many short, slow in-town miles. I wrote this down in January when the 2025 gas bill came out nearly even between the two, and the rest of the receipts just confirmed it.
That doesn't mean the van has to go. 40 cents a mile for a vehicle that carries five with room to spare is still cheap transportation. It means the van is no longer the bargain I've been calling it, and it's another reason we're keeping it through this winter while the car fund builds. That fund gets $250 a month now, toward a $15,000 next van, and the $80-a-month repair fund we started in July covers the small stuff in between.
The thing I like most about this exercise is that it settles arguments. Tina and I have had the "is the van worth fixing" discussion a dozen times. Now we have a number. When the van's cost per mile passes what a newer van would cost us, we'll know. Until then, we'll run it till it tells us otherwise.
The shoebox is empty and the rubber bands are in the trash. A new shoebox is already on the bench. Garrett asked if he could see the Civic's column. I printed it for him, and he put it on his bedroom wall.