[Closed] £ per Mile/KM Ratio

Don't know, don't care.... Whatever the cost is, it's 100% worth it.

No idea.

But, in terms of up front bike costs, my gravel bike is by far the best value. £1300 new, 3 years ago, and 14500 km. I make that 9p per km!

My most recent bike (MTB) cost me about £1200 to put together, mostly used parts and some new. Have only done 200km on that so far, so running at £6 per km! Guess that will go down over time.

Maybe £:elevation would be better for MTBs.

No idea, if I need or fancy it I just get it. Yes I look for a bargain/best price etc.. as prices can vary a lot.

But as above it's 100% worth however much it is.

Impossible to calculate. But it probably does into the -ve compared to how much diesel I would've used if I hadn't ridden.

Great idea for a thread. I've always thought about this myself and a good few years back when I had a decent disposable income and a serious case of upgrade-itis I did sit down and put some figures into a spreadsheet.

The results did make some disconcerting reading and basically suggested that it would have been far, far cheaper for me to hire a bike every time I was getting out riding. However, that was when I was living in rainy old Yorkshire, in a job that required me to work most weekends and I only ever seemed to get out on the bike once a month.

Just as a very quick calculation over the past 3 years then;

New bike - £2200
Upgraded wheels - £450
Change stem / bars - £100
Pedals - £70
Fork and shock service x 1 - £200
New front tyre - £35
New dropper - £100
Wolf Tooth Remote - £65
Replace frame bearings + tool - £150
Upgraded shifter - £35
General wear and tear, chains / oils, fluids and chain lubes / change cables etc - £350 (guestimate)
Riding Clothes - ??? no idea ??? (£300 estimate?)
Replaced Grips - £25
Timber Bell - £25

Total - £4,105

That is probably a low estimate and the figure could be closer to £4,500.

I've only recently kept track of my rides with a Garmin Edge but I've probably done around 1,000 miles in the past 3 years so works out at £4.50 a mile with the conservative estimate.

So an average (for me) ride of 20 miles has costed me £90 every time.

When I had my road bike, and occasionally rode it to work (40mile r/t, and refused to do it in the dark) the fuel savings covered the cost of the bike purchase minus sale price. So all those recreational road rides were free!

MTB no chance of getting near that. Sometimes I try to work out the cost per ride of individual consumable items, such as shoes or a tyre. I've never tried to add it all up.

I always like to think what I would do with my time instead. Socioeconomic-typical recreational activities, plus a gym membership can get eye wateringly epensive if my colleagues are anything to go by.

in 2020 i spent about £4k on new bikes and parts, sold around £1500 of old parts so Im into about £2.5k for the year
I dont envisage any new bikes, significant upgrades or parts replacements in 2021 other than new chains, brake pads, tyre sealant. say £200.
I do 4k km a year so thats about 33p / km
Seems reasonable for the joy those kms bring

So an average (for me) ride of 20 miles has costed me £90 every time.

Whilst I don’t think my costs will be that high, it makes you think about the relative costs of all the other things like bike hire (apparently not that expensive by comparison), car parking, uplift tickets etc.

well, not really... cos you're not going to have NOTHING left at the end of riding your own bike, are you?
You may be able to sell the bike for a degree of the original purchase price..

Bikes are expensive.
Shoes are expensive.
Cars are expensive..

Meh... let people have their fun 😀

DrP

So an average (for me) ride of 20 miles has costed me £90 every time.

My Dad bought a recumbent bike once, he kind of got talked into it and as he had a bad back and couldn't ride a proper bike, it seemed like the right idea.

So he found this bike which he paid about £1800 for. Used it a couple of times but it was a total pain to put in/on the car to transport anywhere, it was unsafe to ride from his home due to traffic, the few cycle paths near him had anti-motorbike gates all over them and were impossible to lift the bike over (it weighed nearly 50lb and was incredibly unwieldy).

He finally sold it after years of it lying around his basement, my house, a bike storage facility at my workplace (he'd moved house and "didn't have room to store it") and got about £350 for it - by the time it was sold it was 2 model generations out if date. So he lost about £1500 on it and in that time if be surprised if he'd done more than 100 miles in total. £15/mile at best.

Who said bikes were good value for money?!

Unnnnggghhh...

All these new Golfers obsessed with quantifying their enjoyment in financial terms, it a sad reflection of the world we live in...

Ride the bastard bicycles you can afford, buy the things you need/want/can afford stop worrying about keeping up with the monetary arms race of the carpark-bitches and well heeled chain-gang tossers..

Keeping an expenditure spreadsheet, calculating a £/mile number, bashing one out over images of gratuitously expensive bikes, it's all just missing the point...

I was going to do a quick calc on this, new bike depreciation, a knackered tyre, consumables, new shoes, lights, a few tools and stuff but then....

Keeping an expenditure spreadsheet, calculating a £/mile number, bashing one out over images of gratuitously expensive bikes, it’s all just missing the point…

👍 Doesn't really matter what it costs does it.

I have spent less than a hundred pounds in the last year and ridden many thousand miles

Hmm..

My Niner RLT9 cost me £2200 when I built it in 2015. I sold it for £1200 in 2020. In that time I rode just under 30000km. I bought 4 rear tyres and one front, 3 sets of pads, 1 chainring, 1 sprocket and 3 lots of bar tape. So ~ £250.

Net cost to ride 30000km was £1250...so 4.2p/km

My Carbonda cost around the same £2250 and I've ridden 4000km on it and it has so far cost me 1 chain at £31, so 57p/km.

I'm in the who cares camp, mainly because my bike cost far too much and I've only done 1500 miles on it... 😥

Don't know and not going to work it out, between mine and the kids bikes it seems a constant stream or outgoing cash.

It is bloody worth it though, I work hard for my money and if I cant do something I enjoy with it then it is not worth bothering.

I bet you could get close to £1 per mile just in wear and tear if you've got expensive tyres and drivetrain, add on fork/shock servicing, bearings, chain lube, tyre sealant. Probably closer to £2 per mile....

This year due to the amount I'm working at least £100 per mile.......
I did get a new bike and fully upgrade the MTB though.

To clarify, I'm very much in the 'who cares' camp too. Personally it's more hitting home that I don't ride the damn things enough!

I buy all this gear and 'upgrades' convincing myself I'll rid more because of it > don't ride more > decide I need a new upgrade so I feel like riding more > repeat.

End up very pleased with my bikes though, while I stare at them lovingly in the garage...

Not sure total, but per bike:

Salsa - est mileage 5k, acquisition cost about £600
Trek - est mileage 2k acquisition cost £700
Old road bike - est mileage 20k cost £1400
Patriot - est mileage 1k, cost £3k
New road bike - 16 miles, cost £1800

£4 per mile across two bikes for the life of both of them. Nowhere near enough mileage on the MTB, but the commuter is the workhorse and gets dragged out in all weathers.

I've never used it as a justification for spending, but I always like to keep a track of things like mileage and how much per bike/component, mostly for no other reason than I do like a good spreadsheet!

I wont get into willy waiving though, it doesn't matter if its a £4k bike and 1k miles or £400 bike and 100 miles, it's an investment not a cost.

I bought my commuter for £280 and have spent about £140 on it. I've ridden it 8,174.8 km so that's 5p per km or 8p per mile. Not too shabby.

My newest bike was built from bits, but about £1000 all in. I've only ridden that 250 km, so about £4 per km. That's currently my worst value bike, but will only improve over time.

I imagine supercar owners get a better £/mile than I do from bikes.

Patriot – est mileage 1k, cost £3k

1000km on a Patriot? That's some hard-earned pedalling!

It's 14 years old. 70 miles a year? It's probably more than that, maybe 150 miles a year on average, I dunno.

It appears that some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing!

I use man-logic to justify it....its expensive on the day you buy it, but every moment you use it you are having wholesome fun. As long as you can afford it during its lifetime with you, then all is peachy.

Ian

Probably about £2 per mile. I tend to do about 6000 miles over 3 different bikes. My full sus had a £700 service this year. Winter road bike was a cheap service at £150, but it got new wheels for this winter and I bought a new best bike which will totally skew my figures....
I spend a fair amount on winter clothing....gets cold zwifting in my garage over winter 🥶
I tend to buy a new bike every year...but I also sell my old bikes. I sold a 2 year old Aeroad earlier this year and only lost £700 on it.

I bet you could get close to £1 per mile just in wear and tear if you’ve got expensive tyres and drivetrain, add on fork/shock servicing, bearings, chain lube, tyre sealant. Probably closer to £2 per mile….

Only if you are profligate. I think this years riding is in the 2p a mile sort of area ( excluding the ebike kit I got for a specific commute and even that is under £1 a mile)

I did forget the ebike kit in my post above but usually its pennies per mile for me.

I would have no clue of my overall cost per mile but I've owned 9 mountain bikes since buying my first in 1999 .The overall balance of the cost of these ,taking into account their sold/would sell for prices would be around £7000 - which is about £6.41 per week in bikes alone over the 21 years.It's been a fun ,bargain of a pastime so far and long may it continue .

My current mtb bought in March for just over £2000 has done 1000km. Plus I think I've spent £100 on a few bits. £2 per km or £3 per mile. But I remain optimistic as the last mtb and the one before that were used for 10 years each.

The gravel bike cost £710. It had a major refit costing £500 then maybe £100 on other bits. But it's done 7200 km. So maybe 20p per km. No plans to change it. My 22km ride this morning cost £4.50 ish? Not far out from going swimming. longer rides are like going to the climbing wall in cost.

edit - deleted as the numbers are too inexact but including the cost of buying plus the running cost minus what value i have now then 10p a mile looks in the right ballpark

I'm firmly in the smiles per mile camp rather than the £'s per mile... Quantifying the cost of something as you use it, kind've makes it a tool for a job, rather than an object to be enjoyed IMO. Absolutely rational for a commuter bike, or my work van, but for my mountain bikes or my posh road bike...? Meh! 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yeah, cycling isn't a cheap hobby... Sitting on the sofa and watching TV is arguably much cheaper for those involved, in purely financial terms. But then the cost on your health and well being would be far greater in my view, and then there's the monetary cost involved for the system footing the bill to fix your premature ill health for a sedentary lifestyle!

I'll stick to my expensive hobby thank you... 😉

Should be normalised against average speed as I reckon I'm close to twice as fast on road vs MTB, but my road bikes are sitting at around 20p/mile and MTBs between £1-£3/mile. I have a bit of a fleet though and they all have at least 2-3 times that life left in them before I'd expect to spend much on them other than chains and maybe cassettes. My 30 year old Cannondale is still in service round town, although it's very much Trigger's Broom it's probably sitting at 2-3p / mile now and very close to retirement.

I'm very much in the couldn't care less what it's cost camp though.

cycling can be a very cheap hobby - it is for me!

Buy secondhand, only replace consumables and keep bikes a long time

Unfortunately I don't measure distance. My hardtail cost £700 and has been ridden 597 times, so not much over £1 per ride. New drive train every 150 rides which adds to the cost.

A quick estimate of purchase cost, repair cost and mileage over the years:
3 1/2 year old Mtb around 50p/mile
3 year old Winter road bike around 13p/mile
13 year old road bike probably less than 0.1p/mile
1 1/2 year old road bike (dry weather use only) around £2/mile
However the most expensive per mile has to be my 2nd hand £40 BMX, which will be around £10/mile

But the smiles per miles that my bikes give me means whatever the cost, my bikes are certainly worth it.

I wonder what some bikes £ per hour's use cost would be by the point they're moved on (re-sale value / replacement not factored in).

I think across cycling generally you'd have the old audaxer's bike at one end at 30p an hour and the E-FS trail centre rig at the other at £30 an hour.

Another way of thinking about it.

My bikes cost me nothing when not used, my wife's horse costs her +£100pw (and probably nearer £150pw) BEFORE any riding.

So an average (for me) ride of 20 miles has costed me £90 every time.

First of all well done for being honest

Not that much more than a days rental. Less than a days skiing. Track days are £250 and a new set of tyres. I think a friend did £800 damage to a landcover in one off road day

Not that much more than a days rental. Less than a days skiing. Track days are £250 and a new set of tyres. I think a friend did £800 damage to a landcover in one off road day

That’s a good set of comparisons. Not things I do, but interesting to make the comparisons.

Makes the road bike look good value - quick reckoning makes me somewhere between 1p/mile and 1p/km for tyres alone on the road bike. Probably 2p/mile in chains rings and cassettes.
The purchase price spilt per km is a bit high right now, as it’s only a year old, but the last road bike only got replace after ten years and that was to switch to discs. This bikes around for a good while yet! Be down to a few pennies per km by the time I’m done.

Still makes a hundred mile ride cost more than you think, but less than a day out trashing a landrover!

Now, for those who drive to a ride, add the cost of fuel and wear&tear on any car/van used to get to/from rides.

I worked it out a few years ago as my then-girlfriend was a horserider so we did it to compare the costs of her horse against my bikes. Both numbers were just cost per year as mileage wasn't a good barometer but did work out my cost per mile compared to my car. The horse was more expensive than my bikes but the bikes were cheaper than my car. Think the bikes averaged out at roughly £1.50/mile, with the commuter bike down in the £0.30 area and the Enduro bike up in the £2 zone as it was new then and is pretty high maintenance. Either way we both looked at what the annual cost was and agreed that it was worth every penny for the rewards we got out of it.

Can't say I have ever thought of cost per mile but it costs me a lot more than I would have guess at around 16p per mile for the 3,000 miles I have ridden this year.

Over the past 7 years I think I’m at around £1/hour.

I don’t know how far, or for how long, I’ve ridden in that time but I’m not really bothered.

Over the past 7 years I think I’m at around £1/hour.

I don’t know how far, or for how long, I’ve ridden in that time but I’m not really bothered.

£1 / hr? I ride a lot and at £1 / hr it take me most of the year to pay off just those trickstuff brakes you bought 🙂
But yeah, who cares really. Enjoy it. Nice bikes are great things.

I have a Ti gravel paid 3300€.
In 3 years did less than 1500miles.

Well of course it's still in good condition and I believe I can sell it for no less than 2300€.

£1 / hr? I ride a lot and at £1 / hr it take me most of the year to pay off just those trickstuff brakes you bought 🙂

I’m not talking about riding hours.