How to get your state mileage

Remember that the IFTA authority requires that you report all IFTA and Non-IFTA miles that an eligible commercial truck drives in every jurisdiction (states and provinces.) This includes out-of-route miles and bob-tail miles as well as personal miles.  For example, when the IFTA return is completed, the amount of total miles for a truck should match the truck odometer miles driven in that period.

With that said, there are basically 4 ways to do this.

  1. The driver logs his or her odometers.  This requires that the driver keep either a clipboard, or a voice recorder handy and writes (or speaks) the odometer reading of the truck as a border is crossed.  Another way the driver can do it is to document the route that he took so that it can be recreated using a mapping program later.
    ADVANTAGE:  it’s free
    DISADVANTAGE:  getting the drivers to do it consistently
  2. Using a trucker’s GPS (like a Rand McNally TND730) to record the miles.
    ADVANTAGE:  the driver doesn’t have to write them down
    DISADVANTAGE:  they aren’t free
    DISADVANTAGE:  you or the driver has to plug it into a computer to extract the mileage file from it.
    DISADVANTAGE:  it only records while powered on.  So if it breaks or is not turned on, then it isn’t recording those miles.
  3. An on-board GPS truck tracking unit.
    ADVANTAGE:  on all the time (no driver interaction needed.)  This is by far the most convenient and easy way.
    ADVANTAGE:  you can see where the truck is, how fast it’s going, when it arrived and departed locations using your computer or cell phone
    ADVANTAGE:  you can pull a state mileage report from your computer without having the truck or device near you
    ADVANTAGE:  tracks all miles or kilometers
    DISADVANTAGE:  they aren’t free.
  4. A mapping program that calculates the state mileage on truck routes.
    ADVANTAGE:  you can recreate the state mileage on your computer
    DISADVANTAGE:  not free.
    DISADVANTAGE:  technically, you still need to know the out of route miles that the driver may have taken.

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