Fuel log for NEMT vans: gallons, cost, and miles per gallon by vehicle

How to use this log

Keep one page for each van each month and fill it at the pump. The driver writes the date, odometer, gallons, and price. The office adds the totals and the miles per gallon once a week. The aim is a number for every van that you can compare with its own past, which the guide to cutting NEMT fuel costs then helps you improve.

• Fill the tank completely whenever you can. Miles per gallon is only reliable from one full tank to the next. The government’s fuel economy site says its odometer method is valid only if the tank was filled completely for the current purchase and the one before it.
• Mark every partial fill. A top-up of 11 gallons on the way to a pickup is still a purchase. It gets its own line with Full tank marked No, and its gallons count toward the next full fill.
• Write the odometer, not the trip meter. Trip meters get reset and confused with the main reading. The odometer does not reset.
• Leave the card matching to the card log. Checking each purchase against the shift and the statement is the job of the key and fuel card log. This log supplies the gallons and miles that sheet checks against.
• Send repairs to the maintenance log. A low reading that a shop explains goes in the maintenance log with the work order.

The log

Part A: Van details (one per van, per month)

Part B: Fill-ups

Example (made-up numbers, for illustration only): a full-size lift van on regular gasoline with a baseline of 15.8 miles per gallon. The September 8 line only sets the starting point.

Part C: Summary by van

Fill this in at month end from the first full fill to the last full fill, and take the trip count from the trip log.

Example (same made-up van, September 8 to September 24, with 98 trips from the trip log):

Part D: Review notes

How to work out miles per gallon from the log

Divide the miles between two full fills by every gallon bought since the first of them. Use these steps for each full-tank line.

1. Subtract the odometer at the last full fill from the odometer at this one.
2. Add the gallons on this line and on any partial lines between the two full fills.
3. Divide the miles by those gallons.

On the September 18 line of the example, 62,075 minus 61,611 is 464 miles. The gallons are the 11.0 from the partial fill plus the 18.4 on this line, or 29.4. Dividing 464 by 29.4 gives 15.8. The first line counts for nothing in the arithmetic because its gallons refilled fuel burned before the log began.

Fuel cost per mile uses the same span: the cost of the same fills divided by the same miles. Fuel cost per trip divides that cost by the trips the van drove in the span, taken from the trip log.

When a van’s miles per gallon drops

A drop of about 10 percent against the van’s own baseline on two fills in a row deserves a look. That threshold is a suggestion, not a standard. One low reading often comes from a partial tank or a cold morning, and two in a row rarely do. Check these in order:

1. The fill itself. Look for a partial fill logged as full, a pump that clicked off early, or an odometer typed wrong. These cost nothing to rule out.
2. The driver. The Driver column shows whether the drop follows one person. Speeding, hard braking, and idling all cost fuel, and the guide to cutting NEMT fuel costs has the figures.
3. The season. The government’s fuel economy site says a gasoline vehicle’s mileage in city driving is roughly 15 percent lower at 20 degrees Fahrenheit than at 77, and up to 24 percent lower on trips of 3 to 4 miles. Air conditioning set to maximum can cut mileage roughly 5 to 25 percent. Compare January with last January, not with October.
4. Tire pressure. Check it against the sticker in the door jamb or glove box, not the maximum printed on the sidewall.
5. A warning light. The same site advises a mechanic’s inspection whenever the check engine light comes on. Record what the shop finds in the maintenance log with the work order.

If none of these explains a low reading, or a fill is larger than the tank can hold, treat it as a card question and take it to the weekly match in the card log.

Setting each van’s baseline

A van’s baseline is the average of its first three months of full-to-full readings. The EPA does not test cargo vans rated above 8,500 pounds or passenger vans rated at 10,000 pounds and up, so most full-size conversions have no official rating to start from. A lowered-floor minivan has one, but a conversion changes the vehicle, so your own readings still win. Keep each van’s baseline on its Part A page, and reset it after a change that alters the van’s weight or tires.

Price paid against the weekly benchmark

The Price per gallon column tells you whether you buy fuel at a fair price. The Energy Information Administration surveys retail pump prices every Monday morning, using the self-serve cash price with taxes included. In its survey for Monday, October 5, 2026, released October 6, regular gasoline averaged $4.354 a gallon nationally, from $3.911 on the Gulf Coast to $5.727 on the West Coast, and on-highway diesel averaged $6.199. A line that sits well above the figure for your region, week after week, points to the stations you use or the card you fuel with. Compare trends, not one fill, because EIA’s figure is a cash price and your card may price differently.

The fuel surcharge guide recommends indexing a surcharge to the same weekly series and shows the formula. Each van’s real miles per gallon from this log is one of the two numbers it needs.

What the IRS expects from fuel records

The log is your own record of what each van burned, and it feeds the fuel line of an actual-expense deduction. IRS Publication 463 says you cannot deduct amounts you approximate or estimate, and it treats a log kept weekly as a timely record. A business that runs five or more vehicles at once, as fleets do, cannot use the standard mileage rate for any of them and deducts actual expenses instead, which the mileage log and the guide to NEMT business taxes explain. A company that does use the standard rate cannot also deduct gasoline for that van, because the rate already includes it.

Where the numbers come from in HealthRide

A fuel cost per trip needs the trips and miles behind it. In HealthRide, the trip log lists every leg with its driver, vehicle, actual times, and GPS-recorded miles, and it downloads as a CSV file or a PDF from reports. Take a van’s legs for the period, set them beside Part C, and the fuel total becomes a cost per trip and a cost per mile you can compare from month to month.