oh, the irony

[timwilky]

My company insist you use hire cars for journeys more than 15 miles. end of.

They think them cheap, but by the time you add delivery/collection charges etc. The £25/day they budget them at suddenly becomes more like £75.

Because it is away from my permanent place of work, I could claim, as others have said the mileage breaks at about 10,000 miles to the lower rate.

160/day is not difficult. I used to do 256/day. but that is the reason I got back on two wheels. after 9 months of it I woke up one day in hospital, my blood pressure through the roof. My brother visited me and said when out get back on a bike, you are too busy trying to stay alive to worry about work, family etc. so bought a bike and was taken out 6 days later. great advice!

The question of 160 a day, was to determine if that assumption was correct ie: every day? Not an exclamation of how much mileage it was. 1000-1200 miles a week has not been unusual at all for me at some stages in my career. Driving doesn't stress me particularly, it's just like sitting watching a boring wide-screen TV. 4-5 hours driving a day does take a hell of a lot of time out of your life though, early starts and late finishes, so that gets you down, and sitting still for that length of time on a regular basis causes problems for me, I always have knotted and spasmodic muscles in my back and shoulders.

I forgot about the 10,000 mile thing, but 20k over a 6 month stretch would still make you a couple of grand.

I had a Sierra 1.8td when I first met my wife, that I bought off my Uncle who runs a taxi firm, it had done 480,000 miles (2nd engine, 3rd gearbox). My wife lived in Northwich and I lived in Edinburgh, so I was doing that every Friday night & Monday morning, plus being on the road fixing computer systems the length and breadth Scotland during the week and claiming full mileage rate. I sold it with 520,000 a year later when I got my first company car, and calculated that I had driven to Northwich every weekend, not just for free, but I had made 500 quid, all costs taken into account (fuel, insurance, tax, etc). 40,000 miles of motoring for -£500 was pretty good going in my book.