Pricing a transfer needs a number almost nobody has to hand: what it costs to run one kilometre in that particular car. Without it, any rate is a copy of the one down the road with a rough adjustment, and the real margin stays unknown until the month's takings fail to add up.
This article is the method for getting it, class by class, plus an honest warning about which of these figures are measured and which are reasoned estimates.
Two figures, and they are not the same
They have to be kept apart or the sum comes out wrong:
- Vehicle cost per kilometre: fuel, maintenance, tyres, insurance, depreciation and overheads. Without the driver.
- Driver cost per hour: gross pay plus employer social security contributions, plus subsistence where it applies.
A short job with a long wait is expensive because of the driver, not the car. A long motorway run is the opposite. Mix the two into a single "cost per kilometre" and jobs with waiting time will always look cheap on the spreadsheet and turn out expensive in reality.
What is published, from an official source
For minibus and coach there is a public, official source updated quarterly: the Ministry of Transport's Observatory of Costs for Discretionary Passenger Transport by Coach. Edition 46 is from July 2026.
What matters about that source is that it doesn't give a round number, it gives the whole structure with its assumptions: kilometres a year, hours a year, consumption, purchase price, useful life, residual value, financing, driver cost including social security, subsistence, insurance, tyres, repairs and overheads. That lets you redo the calculation with your assumptions instead of accepting the national average.
One figure from it that surprises people and is worth keeping in mind: the annual driver cost is practically identical across all four vehicle sizes the Observatory covers, from the 10-seat microbus to the 55-plus-seat coach. What changes with size is the cost of the vehicle, not of the person driving it.
What isn't published: saloon, van, SUV and limousine
There's no observatory here. No official Spanish source exists for the cost of the classes a transfer operator uses most, and anyone giving you an exact figure for a premium saloon is giving you an estimate, whether they say so or not.
Our starting table, with each figure labelled:
| Class | Vehicle cost per km | Driver cost per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Standard saloon | €0.38 (estimated) | €16.00 (derived) |
| Premium saloon | €0.50 (estimated) | €17.60 (estimated) |
| MPV or van, 7-8 seats | €0.52 (estimated) | €16.50 (estimated) |
| Premium SUV | €0.58 (estimated) | €17.60 (estimated) |
| Minibus up to 16 | €0.53 (derived) | €25.44 (derived) |
| Coach, 39 to 55 seats | €0.86 (derived) | €25.44 (derived) |
| Limousine | €1.00 (estimated) | €19.00 (estimated) |
"Derived" means calculated from figures measured in the Observatory. "Estimated" means reasoned judgement from public sources, with no direct data. None of these come from a real operator's books, and you should know that before using them: they're a starting point so you don't begin at zero, not the truth about your fleet.
The detail behind the driver column: on minibus and coach the driver costs considerably more per hour than in private hire, because the discretionary transport agreement pays better than the private-hire one. It isn't a mistake in the table, it's the market.
How to turn this into your own figure
- Take each car's real purchase cost and subtract what you expect to get when you sell it. Divide by the kilometres it will do in its useful life with you, not the manufacturer's.
- Add up the actual fuel from the last three months, not the official consumption figure, and divide by that period's kilometres.
- Spread insurance, taxes and the roadworthiness test across the year's kilometres.
- Add maintenance and tyres using your real replacement mileage, not the manual's.
- Work out the driver separately, employer social security included, and over hours of availability, not just hours actually driving.
If the result is far from the table above, yours is the right one.
The mistake that invalidates the whole table
Working out cost per kilometre against billed kilometres instead of kilometres driven. The car spends the same running empty to the pickup as it does carrying the passenger, but only one of those legs shows up on the invoice.
If 40% of your kilometres are deadhead and you don't count them, your real cost per kilometre is nearly double what you calculated. That split is worked through, with a full numeric example from Malaga to Marbella, in how to price a transfer without losing money.
What to do next
Do the calculation for the vehicle class you bill most with, just that one, and compare it against the rate you have published today for your most common route. It's half an hour of work and it usually answers the question of why the month doesn't add up.
And if at the end you find the problem isn't the figure but keeping it current across fifty published routes, that's no longer a spreadsheet job: it's what a pricing engine does.
