California Mileage Reimbursement (2026)

If you drive your personal car for work in California, you are probably leaving money on the table. The state runs two very different mileage systems depending on how you are paid, and most drivers only know one of them.

If your boss puts you on a W-2, California Labor Code §2802 says your employer has to pay you back for every necessary mile. Period. It is not a tax deduction; it is a wage. The IRS’s standard mileage rate is just the most common way to measure what you are owed.

If you drive for yourself — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, freelance consulting, a Schedule C business — there is no employer to bill. Your remedy is the federal standard mileage deduction, which California broadly conforms to, with a few depreciation quirks we will get into.

This guide covers both. Skip to the section that fits you.

Which guide do you need?

Key takeaways

• California employers must fully reimburse employee mileage under Labor Code §2802. The IRS rate (72.5¢ per mile in 2026, per IRS Notice 2026-10) is a safe harbor, not a ceiling.
• §2802 cannot be waived. Any contract that tries to is void under Labor Code §2804 (Edwards v. Arthur Andersen LLP, 44 Cal. 4th 937 (2008)).
• Bundling a vehicle allowance into base salary or commission is allowed — but only if the reimbursement portion is separately identifiable and actually covers the employee’s costs (Gattuso v. Harte-Hanks Shoppers, Inc., 42 Cal. 4th 554 (2007)).
• Unreimbursed employees can recover the underpayment, 10% prejudgment interest from the date the expense was incurred, attorney’s fees, and (sometimes) PAGA penalties.
• Self-employed Californians deduct 72.5¢ per business mile in 2026 on federal Schedule C. California broadly conforms; the only common adjustments involve depreciation and §179.
• No mileage log, no deduction (or reimbursement claim). IRC §274(d) and Treas. Reg. §1.274-5T require contemporaneous records of time, place, business purpose, and miles. California courts apply a similar standard in §2802 wage claims.

Section A — W-2 employees and Labor Code §2802

The §2802 rule, plainly stated

California Labor Code §2802(a) reads:

“An employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer, even though unlawful, unless the employee, at the time of obeying the directions, believed them to be unlawful.”

That is the whole rule. “Necessary expenditures” includes mileage when you drive your personal car for work — to a client site, between job sites, for deliveries, to a training session out of town. It does not include your normal commute from home to your usual workplace.

Three subsections add teeth:

• §2802(b) — Awards “shall carry interest at the same rate as judgments in civil actions” (10% per year under Civil Code §3289 / CCP §685.010), accruing “from the date on which the employee incurred the necessary expenditure or loss.”
• §2802(c) — “Necessary expenditures or losses” includes “all reasonable costs, including, but not limited to, attorney’s fees incurred by the employee enforcing the rights granted by this section.” This is the fee-shifting provision that makes §2802 cases attractive to employment lawyers and dangerous to employers.
• §2802(d) — The Labor Commissioner can issue a citation for unpaid reimbursements, with procedures pulled from §1197.1.

You cannot sign these rights away. Labor Code §2804 voids “[a]ny contract or agreement, express or implied, made by any employee to waive the benefits of this article.” In Edwards v. Arthur Andersen LLP, 44 Cal. 4th 937 (2008), the California Supreme Court treated §2802 indemnity rights as nonwaivable as a matter of strong public policy.

What counts as a “necessary expenditure”

Mileage reimbursement in California is not just gas money. It is meant to cover the full cost of putting a personal vehicle on the road for the employer’s benefit — fuel, depreciation, insurance, registration, repairs, and maintenance. That is exactly what the IRS standard mileage rate is built to approximate. AAA’s Your Driving Costs study (released September 16, 2025) put the total cost of owning and operating a new vehicle at exactly $11,577 per year, or $964.78 per month, on a 15,000-mile basis — 77.18¢ per mile, higher than the 2026 IRS rate.

The “necessary” requirement gives employers some defenses: the cost has to be reasonable under the circumstances (Gattuso, 42 Cal. 4th at 568). An employee who buys an expensive luxury SUV and replaces it every two years is not entitled to be reimbursed for that level of depreciation. But the employer cannot use that argument to pay nothing, or to pay only fuel.

The IRS rate vs. “reasonable approximation” — Gattuso and Cochran

The two cases every California employee and employer should know:

Gattuso v. Harte-Hanks Shoppers, Inc., 42 Cal. 4th 554 (2007). The California Supreme Court held that §2802 does not lock employers into a specific reimbursement method. Three options are valid:

1. Actual expense method — the employee submits receipts and odometer readings; the employer pays exact costs.
2. Mileage reimbursement method — multiply business miles by a per-mile rate. The IRS standard mileage rate is presumptively reasonable but is not statutorily required.
3. Lump-sum method — a flat monthly amount, or enhanced compensation (higher base salary or commission rate).

The Gattuso catch — and this is what trips up most California employers: if the employer uses the lump-sum or enhanced-compensation method, “there must be some means or method to apportion the enhanced compensation to determine what amount is being paid for labor performed and what amount is reimbursement for business expenses” (id. at 559). In practice, this means the reimbursement portion has to appear separately on the pay stub or be calculable from a written policy. Burying it inside “we paid you a higher commission to cover that” violates §2802 every time, because there is no way for the employee to challenge whether the lump sum was enough.

And the employee always has the right to challenge it. “If the comparison reveals that the lump sum is inadequate, the employer must make up the difference” (Gattuso, 42 Cal. 4th at 571).

Cochran v. Schwan’s Home Service, Inc., 228 Cal. App. 4th 1137 (2014). A cell phone case that fenced in a key §2802 defense. Schwan’s argued that employees with unlimited cell phone plans incurred no extra cost when they made work calls, so there was nothing to reimburse. The Court of Appeal rejected that:

“If an employee is required to make work-related calls on a personal cell phone, then he or she is incurring an expense for purposes of section 2802. It does not matter whether the phone bill is paid for by a third person, or at all… To show liability under section 2802, an employee need only show that he or she was required to use a personal cell phone to make work-related calls, and he or she was not reimbursed.”

The court held the employer must reimburse “a reasonable percentage” of the bill. Applied to mileage, Cochran matters because employers sometimes argue, “You would have owned the car anyway.” Under Cochran, that does not matter; if the employer required the driving, the employer owes the reimbursement.

The most recent reinforcement is Thai v. International Business Machines Corp., 93 Cal. App. 5th 364 (2023) — a COVID-era remote-work case where the First District held that even when a government stay-at-home order (not the employer) caused the work-from-home expenses, the employer still owed §2802 reimbursement. The court was blunt: “the obligation does not turn on whether the employer’s order was the proximate cause of the expenses; it turns on whether the expenses were actually due to performance of the employee’s duties.” That same logic extends to mileage: if your job duties require the driving, your employer owes you for it.

When the IRS rate is enough — and when it isn’t

For 2026, IRS Notice 2026-10 (Dec. 29, 2025) sets the business standard mileage rate at 72.5¢ per mile, up 2.5¢ from 2025. California courts and the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) treat the IRS rate as presumptively reasonable — an employer paying 72.5¢ per business mile in 2026 is in the safe harbor.

But it is just a presumption. If your actual costs are higher — you drive a heavy-duty truck the employer requires you to use, you live in a high-insurance ZIP code, you pay California’s higher-than-average fuel and registration costs — you can still challenge the rate as inadequate. Conversely, if the employer pays less than 72.5¢ with no documented basis, that is presumptive evidence of underpayment.

The IRS rate is not adopted by California statute. It is a safe harbor created by case law (Gattuso) and DLSE practice. Employers who pay 70¢, 60¢, or some made-up “gas reimbursement” rate are exposed.

PAGA, statutes of limitations, and the 2024 reform

California has two enforcement systems for §2802 violations.

Individual or class action under §2802. The statute of limitations is three years (Cal. Civ. Proc. Code §338(a) — actions on a statutory liability). Many employees stretch this to four years by adding a claim under the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code §17200), which allows restitution. Damages include unpaid reimbursement, 10% interest from the date of each expense, and attorney’s fees under §2802(c).

Representative action under PAGA (Private Attorneys General Act, Lab. Code §2698 et seq.). PAGA lets one aggrieved employee sue on behalf of the state for civil penalties — historically $100 per pay period per employee for an initial violation, $200 for subsequent violations. PAGA’s statute of limitations is one year.

PAGA was significantly rewritten in 2024. AB 2288 and SB 92 (signed July 1, 2024, effective for PAGA notices filed on or after June 19, 2024) tightened standing (the plaintiff must have “personally suffered” the violation), capped penalties at 15% if the employer took “all reasonable steps” to comply before notice and 30% if it cured within 60 days after notice, increased the aggrieved-employees’ share of penalties from 25% to 35%, and — importantly — explicitly added §2802 violations to the list of items that can be cured. The practical effect: PAGA is still a meaningful threat on systematic mileage violations, but employers who fix the problem and pay back wages plus 7% interest can sometimes wipe out the penalties.

What employers commonly get wrong

After almost two decades of Gattuso, the same mistakes show up over and over:

• Paying less than the IRS rate with no documented basis. Default failure mode. If you pay 55¢ a mile because that is what the policy says, and an employee can show their actual costs are higher, you owe the difference.
• Bundling mileage into base salary or commission without identifying the reimbursement portion. This is the Gattuso identifiability failure. A “$300/month car allowance” rolled into a paycheck without a separate line item, or “we paid you a higher commission to cover driving,” is essentially a Gattuso violation per se.
• Not reimbursing for outside-sales miles or job-to-job travel. The commute is not reimbursable, but everything after the first stop usually is. For the federal-tax version of this question, see our Commuting Rule explainer.
• Misclassifying drivers as 1099 contractors. Estrada v. FedEx Ground Package System, Inc., 154 Cal. App. 4th 1 (2007), is the foundation case — FedEx Ground was forced to pay California “independent contractor” drivers tens of millions in unreimbursed expenses after the court held they were really employees. Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, 4 Cal. 5th 903 (2018), and AB 5 (now codified at Lab. Code §§2775–2787) tightened the ABC test even further. The carve-out for app-based rideshare and delivery drivers under Prop 22 — discussed in Section B — is real but narrow.

Workers who commonly get burned

• Outside sales reps (the original Gattuso fact pattern)
• Field service technicians and installers
• Home health workers and visiting nurses
• Real estate agents employed by brokerages (statutorily allowed to be independent contractors under Bus. & Prof. Code §10032 and Lab. Code §2778, but some are mislabeled — see Bararsani v. Coldwell Banker litigation)
• Delivery drivers misclassified as 1099 (post-Dynamex, this is hard for the employer to defend outside of Prop 22)
• Auto dealership salespeople driving demos and to off-site auctions

What to do if your employer is not reimbursing you

The mechanical steps, in order:

1. Document everything. Calendar, mileage log, business-purpose notes for each trip, receipts where you have them. Without contemporaneous records you will lose on damages, even if the employer concedes liability.
2. Send a written demand. A simple email to HR identifying the dates, miles, and policy gap. This often resolves the issue and starts your interest running clean.
3. File a wage claim with the DLSE (Division of Labor Standards Enforcement), the agency inside the Labor Commissioner’s Office that adjudicates wage claims. Form DLSE 1, no filing fee. The DLSE will hold a settlement conference, then a hearing if needed. Cases are usually resolved in 6–18 months.
4. Or file a civil suit. §2802(c) attorney’s fees are a powerful magnet for employment lawyers; many will take the case on contingency for individual claims, and almost any plaintiff’s firm will take a class or PAGA case with multiple drivers.

Worked example: Maria, the outside sales rep

Maria works for a SaaS company headquartered in San Francisco. Her offer letter says her base salary is “inclusive of a $300/month vehicle allowance.” There is no separate line on her pay stub identifying mileage reimbursement. She drives 18,000 business miles in 2026 visiting customers across Northern California.

What does she actually have a claim to?

• IRS rate × business miles: 18,000 × $0.725 = $13,050
• “Allowance” actually received in 2026: $300 × 12 = $3,600
• Shortfall: $9,450

That is the base damages. On top of that:

• Interest under §2802(b) / Civ. Code §3289. 10% per year from the date each mile was driven. On a $9,450 underpayment averaging mid-2026 driving, by the time Maria files in late 2027 she is owed roughly another $1,400 in interest. The interest keeps running until paid.
• Attorney’s fees under §2802(c). If her lawyer’s lodestar is $50,000 by the end of the case (entirely realistic for a contested §2802 matter), the employer pays it.
• Possible PAGA penalties if Maria has other affected coworkers and files a PAGA notice. Under the 2024 reform, the per-pay-period penalty is no longer a flat $100/$200 — it depends on whether the employer cured, whether the conduct was malicious, and whether the employer took “reasonable steps” pre-notice.
• Gattuso violation per se. Because the $300 allowance was bundled into base salary without separate identification on the pay stub, the employer cannot use it to defeat liability — the Gattuso identifiability requirement is not met.

The total exposure on Maria’s individual claim alone, when fees and interest are stacked, comfortably exceeds $60,000 for what looked like a $300-a-month policy. That asymmetry is exactly why §2802 cases settle.

Section B — Self-employed Californians

If you drive for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Amazon Flex, or any other 1099 platform — or if you run a freelance or consulting business with a Schedule C — §2802 does not apply to you. You are your own employer. Your remedy is the federal mileage deduction, claimed on Schedule C, and California broadly follows along.

California conformity to federal mileage rules

California’s Personal Income Tax Law generally conforms to IRC §162 (ordinary and necessary business expenses) and to the standard mileage rate concept. There is no separate California state mileage rate. Whatever the IRS publishes for federal purposes is what California uses by reference.

For 2026, that means 72.5¢ per business mile on Schedule C (per IRS Notice 2026-10) — and effectively the same 72.5¢ on your California Form 540.

Two areas of non-conformity are worth flagging for vehicle taxpayers:

For the vast majority of gig drivers using the standard mileage rate, there is no Schedule CA adjustment. You take 72.5¢ × business miles federally; California accepts that number.

AB 5, the ABC test, and Prop 22 — does any of this affect your deduction?

Worker classification under AB 5 (codified at Lab. Code §§2775–2787) determines whether you are an employee or an independent contractor under California labor law. It does not directly change how the IRS or California’s Franchise Tax Board treats you for income tax purposes, but it affects whether you have a 1099 and a Schedule C in the first place.

The ABC test (Cal. Lab. Code §2775(b)(1)) presumes every worker is an employee unless the hiring entity proves all three:

• A. The worker is free from the hiring entity’s control and direction in performing the work.
• B. The worker performs work outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.
• C. The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade or business of the same nature.

For rideshare and delivery drivers, prong B is fatal — driving is exactly what Uber and Lyft do for a living. That is what prompted Prop 22.

Prop 22 (Bus. & Prof. Code §§7448–7467) carves out app-based drivers from AB 5 and lets companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart classify them as independent contractors so long as certain conditions are met (no scheduled shifts, no required acceptance of specific trips, etc.). In Castellanos v. State of California (2024) 16 Cal. 5th 588, the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 22 as constitutional.

Practical translation for your taxes:

• If you drive for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, or any Prop 22-covered platform, you are an independent contractor. You get a 1099-NEC or 1099-K. You file a federal Schedule C. You take the 72.5¢/mile deduction. You owe federal self-employment tax. California accepts the Schedule C number.
• If you do non-Prop-22 gig work (TaskRabbit, dog walking, freelance consulting, content creation), the ABC test still applies. You might be an employee under California law — in which case you should not be getting a 1099 at all, and your remedy is §2802 reimbursement, not a Schedule C deduction. The FTB has been explicit that AB 5 classification and federal 1099 issuance are separate questions; see FTB’s “Worker classification and AB 5 frequently asked questions.”
• Real estate salespeople are statutorily allowed to be independent contractors under Bus. & Prof. Code §10032 and Lab. Code §2778. They file Schedule C and deduct mileage like any other 1099 worker.

CA-specific tax mechanics

For self-employed Californians, the basic flow is:

1. Federal Schedule C — enter total business miles on Part IV, multiply by 72.5¢, deduct on Line 9 (Car and truck expenses).
2. Federal Schedule SE — net Schedule C profit (after the mileage deduction) flows here for self-employment tax (15.3% on the first $184,500 of 2026 net self-employment income, per the SSA’s 2026 COLA Fact Sheet released October 24, 2025; the Medicare portion continues above that with no cap).
3. California Form 540 — your federal AGI comes over directly. The Schedule C profit is in there. There is no California self-employment tax (California does not impose one).
4. Schedule CA (540) — only used if you have non-conforming items (bonus depreciation add-back, §179 above $25K, etc.). For most standard-mileage filers, no adjustments needed for the mileage deduction itself.

There is no separate California Schedule C — you use the federal one. There is no California state mileage rate. The FTB has published guidance in Pub. 984 (Common Business Expenses) consistent with federal treatment for ordinary and necessary business mileage.

1099 thresholds in 2026 — the OBBBA change

The federal 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC threshold jumped from $600 to $2,000 for payments made in 2026, under §70433 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025). California conforms.

This does not change what you owe. All self-employment income is taxable from dollar one under IRC §61, and SE tax kicks in at $400 of net earnings under IRC §1402(a). It just means you may receive fewer 1099s for small platforms. Track every dollar anyway.

The 1099-K threshold (for payment processors like PayPal, Cash App, Stripe, Uber, DoorDash) returns to the pre-2022 rule: $20,000 and 200 transactions, both required (OBBBA §70432).

Multi-state freelancers with California nexus

If you live in California and freelance for clients elsewhere, all your business income is California-source and gets reported on Form 540. Mileage you drive for business — wherever you drive it — is deductible on Schedule C.

If you live outside California but have California-source self-employment income, you file Form 540NR (nonresident). Apportionment is generally based on where the services were performed, not where the client is located.

California does not apply the New York-style “convenience of the employer” test, so if you are a remote freelancer working from outside California for a California client, you generally do not owe California tax.

Worked example: Devon, the rideshare/delivery hybrid

Devon lives in Los Angeles. He drives for Lyft and DoorDash, both Prop 22-covered. In 2026, he logs 30,000 business miles (verified by his mileage app).

His federal Schedule C mileage deduction:

• 30,000 × $0.725 = $21,750

Assume Devon’s gross 1099 income is $55,000. After the mileage deduction (and assume $1,500 of other expenses — phone, tolls, the EveryLastMile subscription), his Schedule C profit is $31,750.

Tax savings from the mileage deduction alone (ballpark):

• Federal income tax at a 22% marginal rate: $21,750 × 22% ≈ $4,785
• Self-employment tax at the effective 14.13% (15.3% × 92.35%): $21,750 × 14.13% ≈ $3,073
• California income tax at a 9.3% marginal rate: $21,750 × 9.3% ≈ $2,023
• Total cash tax savings: ≈ $9,881

That is real money. It is also entirely dependent on Devon being able to substantiate every one of those 30,000 miles under IRC §274(d). If he cannot, the IRS will disallow the deduction in an audit, and California will follow. The deduction goes from $21,750 to $0, and Devon owes back tax plus a 20% accuracy-related penalty under IRC §6662 plus interest. Without a §274(d)-compliant log, all of the savings disappear.

Recordkeeping (both audiences)

This is where most claims and deductions actually win or lose.

Federal substantiation: IRC §274(d) and Treas. Reg. §1.274-5T(c)(2). For each business use of a vehicle, you must establish four elements:

• Amount — miles driven.
• Time — date of the trip.
• Place — origin and destination.
• Business purpose — why you drove (client name, errand description, etc.).

IRS Publication 463 makes the point directly: “You should record the elements of an expense or of a business use at or near the time of the expense or use and support it with sufficient documentary evidence. A timely kept record has more value than a statement prepared later when generally there is a lack of accurate recall.” Reconstructed logs done at audit time get scrutinized hard and frequently fail.

The Tax Court has confirmed this repeatedly:

• Velez v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2018-46 — deduction disallowed for a reconstructed log because the petitioner could not show the records were contemporaneous; a 20% §6662 accuracy-related penalty was sustained on top.
• Patitz v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2022-99 — electronic logs and bookkeeping records accepted because they were contemporaneous and corroborated; favorable for app-based tracking.

California substantiation. California conforms in substance — the FTB recommends contemporaneous logs and applies the same standard to Schedule C deductions on a Form 540. For §2802 wage claims, the DLSE and courts expect the same kind of evidence: dates, destinations, business purpose, and miles. Spreadsheets done after the fact look weak. App-based GPS logs with timestamps are the strongest evidence.

The contemporaneous log is the single most important piece of paper in a mileage case, on either side of the W-2/1099 line. It is what wins audits for self-employed drivers and what wins §2802 demand letters for employees. Our Mileage Audit Defense Playbook covers the response-letter mechanics if you ever receive a Form 4564 IDR.

Why app-based tracking wins for both audiences

Manual logs work in theory; almost no one keeps them well in practice. Apps that automatically detect drives via your phone’s sensors (GPS, accelerometer) and log them with timestamps solve the contemporaneousness problem cleanly.

For self-employed drivers, the app-generated log is your audit defense. For W-2 employees, the same log is your demand-letter exhibit. When a §2802 case goes to the DLSE or to court, the employee with timestamped, GPS-backed trip records wins. The employee with a Google Sheet they filled out from memory loses on damages even when the employer concedes liability.

That is exactly what EveryLastMile, an iOS mileage tracking app, is built for. It runs on-device using sensor fusion, detects drives automatically (no manual start/stop, no battery drain from constantly polling location), and produces logs that satisfy §274(d) for taxes and that work as evidence in a §2802 wage claim. $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year.

For the 72.5¢ rate and how it applies, see our 2026 IRS Mileage Rate deep dive. For the rideshare and delivery angles on Devon’s Section B fact pattern, see the Uber & Lyft Driver Mileage Tax Guide 2026 and the Delivery Driver Mileage Tax Guide 2026 — plus the platform-specific breakdowns: Does Uber Track Miles?, Does Lyft Track Miles?, and Does DoorDash Track Miles?.

Frequently asked questions

Is my employer legally required to reimburse my mileage in California?

Yes, under Labor Code §2802(a), if you drove your personal car as a necessary part of your job duties. Federal law doesn't require it; California does.

Does my employer have to use the IRS rate of 72.5¢?

No. §2802 requires full reimbursement of actual necessary costs, not a specific rate. The IRS rate is a presumptively reasonable safe harbor. An employer can pay more, less, or use actual expenses — but if it pays less, it must be able to prove the lower rate fully covers your costs.

My commute isn't reimbursed, right?

Right. Commuting from home to your usual workplace is personal, not necessary expenditures in the discharge of your duties. But the second you leave your home for a client, between job sites, or to an off-site assignment, that mileage is reimbursable.

My employer gives me a $400/month car allowance. Is that enough?

Maybe, maybe not. Under Gattuso, it has to be (a) identifiable on your pay stub or in policy as a vehicle reimbursement (not buried in base pay), and (b) sufficient to cover your actual necessary costs. Multiply your business miles by 72.5¢. If $400/month doesn't cover that, you have a §2802 claim for the shortfall.

I'm a rideshare driver. Am I a §2802 employee or a Schedule C contractor?

Under Prop 22 (Bus. & Prof. Code §§7448–7467), app-based rideshare and delivery drivers are independent contractors as long as the platform meets Prop 22's conditions. You file Schedule C, deduct 72.5¢ per business mile, and pay SE tax. §2802 doesn't apply to you because you're not an employee.

I drive for DoorDash and I have a W-2 day job where I'm sometimes asked to make supply runs. How do I handle both?

Two streams. The DoorDash miles go on your Schedule C as a federal deduction. The W-2 employer's required supply runs are reimbursable under §2802 — bill your employer (in writing) at the IRS rate. One mileage app, two reports.

How far back can I claim unreimbursed mileage?

Three years for §2802 claims (CCP §338(a)). Often four years if you add a Business & Professions Code §17200 unfair-competition claim seeking restitution. PAGA penalties have a one-year statute. The clock runs from the date you incurred the expense, not the date you complained.

What if I never kept a mileage log?

You lose, mostly. The IRS routinely disallows mileage deductions for taxpayers with no contemporaneous records (see Velez v. Commissioner). And in a §2802 claim, an employee who can't prove how many miles they drove will usually settle for a fraction of true damages — or lose at hearing. Start tracking today, even if you've been driving for months. Going forward is better than nothing.