Every candidate, priced in three brackets, run against a real 200-mile-a-day route in Davis County — plus the tax analysis that flips the standard "write off the whole truck" advice on its head at high mileage.
Each bracket has one pick that actually fits the job: 200 miles a day, Utah winters, all day in the seat, and a bed that has to hold sealed drums of dog waste in July heat.
37–40 mpg real. Lowest cash out the door, lowest risk if Turd Cowboy is still proving itself. FWD is genuinely fine on plowed Davis County roads with real winter tires — they out-brake AWD on all-seasons. The 4.5-ft bed is the compromise.
The lowest-drama tool in the field: ~37 mpg, AWD, warranty, no range math, resale that holds. Combined with the mileage-deduction play below, this is the highest after-tax cash position of anything here. Overall winner.
Biggest, quietest cabin to live in all day, full 5.5-ft bed, standard AWD, ~$3,000/yr in electricity, Pro Power Onboard runs your equipment. Buy Extended Range only — the 240-mi trucks can't hold 200 miles in a Farmington January.
Mid-2026 pricing. Tap a bracket. Each card is scored against this specific job, not against "is it a good truck."
Drag the sliders to your real route. Everything below recalculates — energy, maintenance, insurance, and the five-year cash picture including what you get back at tax time.
| Truck | Price | Energy/yr | Ins+Maint/yr | Total run/yr | ¢ / mile | 5-yr cash out | GVWR |
|---|
Cold cuts EV range roughly 25–35%. Bars show realistic deep-cold range; the line is your daily requirement. Anything below the line needs a midday top-up — which is fine on a route that circles home, but you should know it going in.
A deduction is not a credit. It doesn't hand you money — it lowers the income you're taxed on. So the only question that matters is: how much tax were you going to pay anyway?
Married filing jointly, Utah resident, 2026 rates. "Other household income" is W-2 wages — yours at the Foundation plus Ali's.
Tax saved year one: —
Five-year deductions: —
Five-year tax saved: —
Tax saved year one: —
Five-year deductions: —
Five-year tax saved: —
76¢/mile Jul–Dec 2026 (72.5¢ Jan–Jun). Covers fuel, depreciation, insurance, maintenance, tires. You still deduct loan interest, parking and tolls on top.
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Crossover point: — — after that, mileage is ahead and never looks back.
| Turd Cowboy profit | No other income | + $75K household W-2 | + $120K household W-2 | What's happening |
|---|
Tax saved on a $50,000 deduction. Notice the shape: the first dollars of profit are worth the most to shelter, because self-employment tax (15.3%) hits from dollar one and never stops. And notice the top-left cell — $0 profit, $0 other income, $0 saved.
| Class | Examples | Year-1 cap | Reality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 6,000 lbs GVWR | Maverick, Santa Cruz, most cars | ≈ $20,300 | IRS "luxury auto" limits (§280F). Doesn't matter what it cost — this is your ceiling. Rest drags out over years. |
| 6,001–14,000 lbs, pickup w/ 6-ft+ bed | F-150 8-ft / long-bed Silverado, cargo vans | Full price | No SUV cap at all. Cleanest full write-off in the code. |
| 6,001–14,000 lbs, "heavy SUV" incl. short-bed crew cabs | Lightning, R1T, Cybertruck, most crew-cab 5.5-ft-bed trucks | $32,000 §179 + 100% bonus | §179 caps at $32,000, then 100% bonus depreciation covers the remainder with no cap. Net effect: still the whole truck. |
| Over 14,000 lbs GVWR | Box trucks, medium duty | Full price | Treated as equipment. But — no longer an "automobile," so standard mileage is off the table entirely. |
GVWR is on the driver's door jamb sticker — not curb weight, and it varies by trim. Verify before you buy if the write-off is load-bearing in your decision.
In order. This is the sequence that ends with the most money in your pocket, assuming you confirm it with an accountant first — which you should, because step 1 is irreversible.
You must elect standard mileage the first year the truck is in service. If you take §179 or bonus depreciation on it, standard mileage is gone for that vehicle forever. This is the single highest-stakes, least-reversible decision in the whole exercise. Do not let a dealer's "write off the whole truck!" pitch make it for you.
If your home is the principal place of business — you dispatch, invoice, and store equipment there — then the drive to your first client is business miles, not commuting. That single fact is the difference between deducting 50,000 miles and deducting maybe 35,000. Dedicated space, used regularly and exclusively.
At 50,000 miles a year you are claiming a ~$38,000 deduction off a logbook. That log is the entire audit defense. Use an app that runs on GPS automatically — reconstructing a year of routes from memory in an audit is a losing position.
Sole prop / single-member LLC pays 15.3% self-employment tax on every dollar of profit. Once profit clears roughly $50–60K, an S-corp election can cut that meaningfully by splitting reasonable salary from distributions. Worth a real conversation once you know what the business actually earns.
Business-use percentage prorates everything. Drop below 50% and depreciation gets recaptured as ordinary income in that year. A dedicated route truck that never does grocery runs is the cleanest position you can hold — and this business gives you that naturally.
The heavy-truck write-off is only better if you sell inside ~20 months. If you're keeping the truck three-plus years, mileage wins by roughly $100,000 of deductions. The write-off is a timing advantage dressed up as free money.
No truck solves this. Containers solve this. But bed length decides which containers you can run, and that's a real constraint on the small trucks.
Double-bag into leak-proof liners, then into a lidded drum or commercial tote with a rubber-gasketed locking lid. Heat accelerates bacterial breakdown — odor is a chemistry problem and the seal is the whole answer. A 20–30 gal drum standing upright fits a Maverick; a 55-gal drum lying down needs a full-size bed.
Layer baking soda in the drum bottom, hang activated-charcoal sachets or run a carbon-filter lid. In summer, empty daily — 24 to 48 hours is the outside limit before you're driving a problem around.
Spray-in, not a drop-in. Drop-ins trap liquid underneath and the bed rots from below. Spray-in hoses out in two minutes and doesn't hold smell. Non-negotiable on day one, roughly $500–$700.
Keeps the drum out of direct sun — a closed bed in the shade runs meaningfully cooler than an open one baking at 100°F — and keeps your load out of sight at a client's house. The Cybertruck's powered hard tonneau is the best factory version of this in the field; a folding hard cover on anything else does the same job for ~$900.
The Lightning's frunk and the Rivian's gear tunnel are sealed, insulated, near-cabin storage. That is exactly where waste should never go. Use them for clean supplies, spare bags, tools and your lunch — genuinely useful, just not for this.
The Maverick's 54.4-inch bed is the real compromise in this whole analysis. It works with upright totes and daily dumps. The Lightning / F-150 / Silverado 5.5-ft bed lets you run a proper drum, a second drum as capacity grows, and still carry equipment. If the business scales, bed length is what you'll outgrow first.
Tap to check. State is not saved — this is a print-and-carry list.