The price of gas rose 31.5 percent in 2007, which means that the average consumer (driving 10,000 miles a year) will spend between $5,510 and $9,095 to operate a 2008 model car. This figure is based on gas, oil, tires, and maintenance–parking or tolls are not included in these calculations.
As a full-time freelancer, I drove around 50,000 miles per year between 2000 and 2007 (when I “saw the light” and realized that doing all this driving was complete insanity). At these aforementioned rates, I would have been spending somewhere between $27,550 and $45,475 for vehicle operating expenses in 2008 if I had kept up this pace of gigging.
No wonder I never had any money!
The cost of operating various common vehicles
How much are you really spending on getting to that gig? Let’s see! Here is a list of operating costs per mile for a variety of common vehicles:
| Vehicle Model | Operating Cost Per Mile |
| Small Cars: Chevrolet Cobalt, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Nissan Sentra, Toyota Corolla | 55.1 cents per mile |
| Mid-Size Cars: Chevy Impala, Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, Nissan Altima, Toyota Camry | 71.9 cents per mile |
| Full-Size Cars: Buick Lucerne, Chrysler 300, Ford Five Hundred, Nissan Maxima, Toyota Avalon | 85.8 cents per mile |
| Minivans: Chevy Uplander, Dodge Grand Caravan, Kia Sedona, Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna | 74.9 cents per mile |
| Mid-Size SUVs: Chevy Trailblazer, Ford Explorer, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Nissan Pathfinder, Toyota 4Runner | 91 cents per mile |
Imagine if you kept a little jar on the passenger seat next to you, tossing in 55, 75, or 91 cents every time a mile ticked by on the odometer. Would it make you think about whether you really needed to get into the car for that particular trip?
What these costs mean for the freelance musician
This topic really gets interesting for me when I think of the implications it has for the freelance musician While these vehicle operating costs obviously affect all of us, even if we don’t drive at all (most goods in the United States are delivered by truck, and these costs have a huge impact on the overall economy), freelance musicians live and die by their cars, and the cost of commuting (usually either under-reimbursed or not reimbursed at all by employers) to various locations has a major impact of the livelihood of these road warriors.
Real commuting costs to various locations by vehicle type
Let’s take a few examples of common gig destinations for Chicago freelancers and the real cost associated with commuting to these various venues:
| Destination (and round-trip distance from Chicago) | Mid-Size Car Per-Trip Cost | Full-Size Car Per-Trip Cost | Mid-Size SUV Per-Trip Cost |
| Chicago Philharmonic Evanston, IL (28 miles) | $20.13 | $24.02 | $25.48 |
| Elgin Symphony Elgin, IL (84 miles) | $60.40 | $72.07 | $76.44 |
| Milwaukee Ballet Milwaukee, WI(168 miles) | $120.79 | $144.14 | $152.88 |
| Madison Symphony Madison, WI(320 miles) | $230.08 | $274.56 | $291.20 |
| Illinois Symphony Springfield, IL (480 miles) | $345.12 | $411.84 | $436.80 |
What are you actually making?
Because I don’t want to appear mean or vindictive toward any particular group (I’ve been accused of this with these table analyses in the past!), I will substitute real names and pay scales with imaginary ones for the following examples. Keep in mind, however, that these examples are right in line with what freelance groups actually pay, so feel free to substitute the group of your choice into the following table to determine if you should really be taking that gig.
| Gig and per-service pay (including mileage) | Profit After Mid-Size Car Commute | Profit After Full-Size Car Commute | Profit After Mid-Size SUV Commute |
| $100 gig in town (3 mi/RT) | $97.84 | $97.43 | $97.27 |
| $100 gig in nearby suburb (20 mi/RT) | $85.62 | $82.84 | $81.80 |
| $100 regional orchestra gig (80 mi/RT) | $42.48 | $31.36 | $27.20 |
| $100 moderate distance gig (180 mi/RT) | -$29.42 | -$54.44 | -$63.80 |
| $100 long-distance gig (320 mi/RT) | -$130.08 | -$174.56 | -$191.20 |
| $100 very long-distance gig (480 mi/RT) | -$245.12 | -$311.84 | -$336.80 |
Choose your gigs wisely!
I like quoting these statistics to my fellow freelancers (especially now that I’m not doing all the long-haul driving that I used to do!), and I frequently get defensive replies, with claims that it doesn’t cost them that much to commute. Call me foolish, but I don’t see how you can find a way to make these trips cost less… besides not making them! A trip to Springfield, Illinois in a certain car costs a certain amount of money to undertake, and if you’re only getting paid $100 a service (this gig actually pays less than that, though there is a little mileage that bumps it up to around the $100 per-service mark), you’re actually losing between $245 and $336 per trip.
Think about that for a moment.
In what alternate universe do people pay tens of thousands of dollars (hundreds of thousands in many cases) to go to music school only to fight for a job that pays -$336 a service? Has the world gone crazy?
I was recently called to play a gig in southern Wisconsin that pays $55 per service (with no mileage or cartage).
If I’d accepted that, I would have made -$39.64 per service, or -$198.20 for the week. Not finding many reasons to pay (both up front in gas and later in maintenance) almost $200 for the “privilege” of playing with this ensemble, I said no.
Add in the hours spent driving to long-haul gigs, and you’ve got a whopper of an equation staring you in the face.
A typical service for an orchestra I belong to in Milwaukee averages around $90 per service, with no cartage or mileage. Let’s break this little bugger down… as if I’m not depressed enough already!
| Distance to gig (round-trip): | 150 miles |
| Per-service pay: | $90 |
| Operating cost of vehicle for each service: | $136.50 |
| Tolls per trip: | $5 |
| Parking costs: | $8 |
| Total profit per-service: | -$59.50 |
| Hours spent on road (could be greater if traffic is heavy): | 3.5 hours |
| Hours spent at gig: | 3 hours |
| Total hours devoted to gig (1/2 hour cushion built in to allow enough time to park & get inside venue): | 7 hours |
| Services per week: | 7 services |
| Trips to Milwaukee per week: | 6 trips |
| Hours devoted to gig per week: | 45.5 hours |
| Profit per week: | -$267 |
You know, it really is like some eerie alternate universe, isn’t it? Working for 45.5 hours at a minimum wage job would garner a person around $267 profit for that week. In the world of music, however, that money is in negative dollars!
The loss per week would actually be greater that -$267, but thankfully there’s one double built into the schedule, which actually allows for a little profit that day! This is a valuable lesson–if one’s doing out-of-town commutes, the more doubles the better!
Drawing Conclusions from this Study
If I can find one lesson to take away from this analysis, it would be this:
Work close to home!
Unless you’re being compensated accordingly, try your utmost to build something up in your community. If opportunities don’t exist, create them for yourself (see my article Musical Entrepreneurship for my suggestions and a more elaborate discussion of this topic).
While there’s something to be said for getting opportunity and cutting your teeth (remember, I’ve driven all over Creation for the past seven years, so I’m speaking from personal experience), there’s also something to be said for not committing your time, money, heart, and spirit to something that actually costs you money, sucks away your life expectancy (through icy commutes and hair-raising overnight drives) while resulting in a negative income stream. After all, freelancers are independent contractors, small businesses unto themselves, and what small business would continue to operate in the red week after week and year after year without re-evaluating their business practices?
Why not just pull your checkbook out, write out a donation of a few hundred bucks to your state highway commission, and hunker down in the practice room to try to win a gig that is in one location? Either that, or use all the contacts you’ve built up in music school and the professional circuit to start your own organization and enrich your own community in the process?
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I’d be interested to see how paying for a crappy hotel on the outskirts of town could bring your profit up, or at least break even. I mean, say you packed a cooler full of food and didn’t eat out too much, could you somehow break even?
Great article. Depressing, but great.
L.
Another great article, Jason.
I have one contention, though – A player (of any style, really) who has no experience other than music school is very unlikely to be able to “move up” to higher-quality gigs wthout first having “paid dues” on a regional or small-time circuit. You are able to do what you do now in large part **because of** the work you did previously schlepping to small orchestras in and around the region.
To the student dedicated to being a full-time player, I guess this could be considered something along the lines of an internship/residency, like that required of doctors.
Unless you can land a full-time position in a major orchestra at the age of eighteen, that is . . .
I think there is a bright side to Jason’s analysis. The current rise in fuel prices should force everyone to take into consideration and evaluate the real costs involved in getting what they want It will take time, but in the end I think local opportunities will increase and everyone will be better off. Local standards might be sacrificed short-term. Long-term: more opportunity.
In addition to the silver lining John Schultz pointed out, I would add that ensembles which rely on a substantial number of commuter musicians (regular and/or substitute) to perform with the ensemble are going to find themselves in an environment of increased competition for quality musicians. Offering additional compensation for high caliber musicians in the form of tiered flat-rate travel pay or mileage is something ensembles are going to have to adopt as a necessity as opposed to excess budget fat or employee perks.
I think most players who perform in small to mid size budget groups have a tale to tell when it comes to having gas mileage or travel pay reduced/cut so I hope this starts to reverse the trend.
Who’s up for convincing the state of illinois to extend the chicago el trains to all the suburbs? 🙂
I am a fellow bassist. I have felt this since I began a free-lancer as well. The life of the ronin is not for everyone, having good friends and carpooling can help so many things. I wish us all the best of luck on getting to and from gigs safely. As for the financial part of it. We all need more than just luck…
Akili
Hi,
How can I find Mr. Schultz contact information?
Thank you,
Marcos
Jason, I know this article was from a long time ago now, but I thought of a factor that should be considered. I don’t know how these costs were figured, but I would imagine they were based on a new car purchase price, and an estimated total number of miles you will drive while owning it (in addition to MPGs). I wouldn’t be surprised if the article considered a new car and a total mileage of 80k. Most freelancers drive older used cars or cars handed down from their parents, so wouldn’t the cost per mile depend on each players situation? If you aren’t making payments and you keep your car maintained, isn’t your cost per mile much closer to how much your paying at the pump (many of my colleagues have gone past 300k miles!)? Let say you put 200k additional miles on car that you bought used for $10k…that’s only 5 cents per mile on top of gas and maintenance. If I’m getting paid $130 for a service (including mileage compensation), it costs me $50 in gas, and I own my car outright…I still figure I basically made $80 that day (minus a cheap meal, and the original cost of car plus all maintenance divided by miles driven since purchase)…ok, so maybe $50 or $60. I’m not getting rich, but it’s not nearly the grim picture that this article paints. It’s better than taking out a mountain of more debt for a DMA…and I’d bet a musician would learn more too!
Hi, Jason. I am a professional oboist based in London, Ontario, Canada, and I commute a LOT to work throughout the year. I have thought a lot about this issue, i.e. the *real* cost of owning a car and being a commuting musician. One thing I was surprised by, though, is the idea that you would be making a round trip for every single service. In almost any orchestra I play in, most days are doubles, which, at the very least, means a profit on that day. Furthermore, though I think it is important to consider worst-case scenarios, it is important to note that a lot of gigs pay quite a bit more per service than what you mentioned in your post, and there is also the fact that with a bit of asking around, it is often possible to find a place to stay with someone local so that you don’t have to be commuting constantly (or, as musicians that I know have done, find an AirB&B to split so that staying overnight is a lot less expensive than commuting back and forth). Between these factors, as well as the possibility of carpooling which cuts the cost in half or less, as long as your driving-mates are willing to pitch in, I don’t think the picture is quite as bleak as you paint it. However, it is a great conversation to have, and I do know that there are many musicians who don’t look past the cost of gas when figuring out how expensive it will be to do a gig, and that’s a problem.
All true! In fact, I rarely go from home to gig and back. It’s just those endless hours in the car that get me down, even if I’m tying gigs together. Smart idea about AirB&Bing instead of driving back and forth!