Free tool
Med Sync Anchor Day Load Planner
Spread your sync patients across your anchor days and see the call hours, fill hours and delivery stops a single workday has to absorb.
Free tool, no sign up
Pharmacy Delivery Cost Per Stop Calculator
Enter your driver hours, wage, mileage and stop count to see what a single prescription delivery costs your pharmacy this week.
Almost every independent owner who delivers has a number in their head for what a stop costs, and almost every one of those numbers is low. The usual reason is mileage, which stays invisible until a transmission goes, and driver hours that get charged to the counter instead of to delivery.
This calculator asks for four things you can pull from payroll and the vehicle log, plus the courier fee you would pay to hand the same stop to somebody else. The result is a per stop cost you can defend in a conversation about whether to keep the van, add a second run, or tighten the delivery zone.
Your result
Weekly cost of your own driver
$635
Labor plus vehicle cost for one delivery week.
Your cost per delivery stop
$5.29
What one door costs you once the van and the driver are paid.
Same week bought from a courier
$1,080
The identical stop count priced at your quoted courier fee.
Monthly difference between the two
$1,927
A positive number means your own van is the cheaper model at this volume.
These figures cover the drive itself, so packaging, cold packs and the technician minutes spent staging bags sit on top of the per stop number.
What belongs in the cost of a stop
The three numbers independents underestimate are mileage, idle time and staging. Mileage is more than fuel, which is why a full cost per mile figure exists at all: vehicles wear out on county roads and apartment lots. Idle time is the driver waiting at a door, hunting for building C, or calling a patient who is in the back yard.
This calculator deliberately stays with driver hours, wage and mileage, because those come off a payroll report and an odometer in five minutes. Add packaging and staging separately if you want the complete picture. In most stores they move the per stop figure less than the order of the stops does.
Reading the comparison against a courier fee
The courier column is not there to declare a winner. It is there to find the crossover. Below a certain number of stops per week, a paid driver is expensive per delivery because the hours are fixed no matter how many doors get reached. Above that point, the owned van almost always wins on cost.
Run the calculator twice: once at this week and once at the stop count you would hit if every med sync patient in your store took delivery. Owners are usually surprised by how much the second run moves the answer, which is the real argument for synchronizing the refills before deciding anything about the vehicle.
Questions about this calculator
What cost per mile should I use?
Use the current IRS business mileage rate if you want a figure that covers fuel, maintenance and depreciation. Use your fuel cost per mile if you only want cash out of pocket this month. Whichever you pick, use the same rate every time you compare models.
Should I include the technician who packs the bags?
Not in this calculator. It measures the drive so it can sit next to a per stop courier fee fairly. Staging time belongs in your sync workload instead, which is what the anchor day load planner on this site covers.
My driver also runs errands. Does that break the math?
Split the hours honestly. Enter only the hours and miles spent on deliveries, and leave bank runs and returns in another cost center. Entering a full shift when half of it is other work will make every delivery look far more expensive than it is.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The Med Sync Patient Onboarding Checklist
Every step from choosing the patient to the first synchronized pickup or delivery, in the order a busy counter can actually run them.
Take this figure into a real sync week
The number on this page reflects the way your refill cycle and your route run today. PillRoute is what moves it: chronic prescriptions anchored to one date, renewal requests batched by prescriber, and a stop order that brings the last signature back before four. Book a demo and we will work from the inputs you just entered instead of a sample pharmacy.