Thrift RoutesNotes from the racks

After the haul

Was the thrift run worth it?

5 min read

A good find and a good trip are different stories. The jacket is the story you tell. The trip is whether the day paid.

A car trunk holding bags of thrifted clothes, a lamp and boots

Ask how the morning went and you will hear about the jacket. Four dollars. Looks like ninety. Ask what the morning cost and the room gets quiet. People remember the register. They forget the miles, the listing night, and the six things that will never leave the maybe pile.

Four numbers. Three of them are easy to skip.

Trip profit is expected net sales minus the cash you spent minus the miles you drove at a full per-mile rate. Divide that by every hour, listing included, and you have profit per hour.

The four numbers I write down

  1. Cash spent. What left your wallet at the register. You already have this one.
  2. Miles driven. Converted to money. Not fuel only. Tires, brakes, the repair you will pay for later. Vehicles wear out by the mile.
  3. Hours spent. Driving, shopping, and listing. An unlisted haul is a pile of clothes on a table.
  4. Realistic resale. Not the sum of the best sold comps. What you expect to net after fees and shipping, times the share you expect to sell.

Why fuel-only mileage flatters every route

Gas is the cost you can see at the pump, so it is the cost people count. The honest cost of a mile is higher. The IRS publishes a standard mileage rate for business use that it bases on the fixed and variable costs of operating a car, and if you treat this as a business, you may be able to deduct your business miles at that rate. The rate can change during the year, and it did in 2026. Look up the current figure on the IRS standard mileage rates page and use it as your per-mile input. Do not copy an old number into a notebook and leave it there.

How do you work out your real cost per item?

Cost per item is cash plus mileage, divided by the number of items you will list. Not the number you bought. The number that survives the kitchen-table condition check, under the real lights, when you are no longer in the store. That figure is your cost basis. It is always higher than the tag.

Same haul, counted two ways. Worked example, not a target.
LineTag-price viewAll-in view
Cash spent$68$68
Mileage (54 miles)not countedmiles × your per-mile rate
Items bought2222
Items that survive the home check2217
Cost per listable item$3.09cash plus miles, divided by 17

The $68 / 54 miles / 22 bought / 17 kept figures above are the defaults in the sourcing trip calculator. Plug yours. The gap between tag-price and all-in is the point. Your buy ceiling at the rack should sit against the all-in number.

What is break-even sell-through?

Break-even sell-through is the share of your haul you need to sell to get the trip back. You will not sell everything. Some of it sits. Some of it was nicer under store lighting, so 'is my haul worth more than I paid' is the wrong question.

Break-even sell-through = total trip cost ÷ (expected net per sold item × items listed).

Worked example with those same defaults, at the calculator's example rate of 70 cents a mile. The trip costs $68 + (54 × $0.70) = $105.80 all-in, 17 listed, you net $22 on a typical sale: 105.80 ÷ (22 × 17) = 28%. About five of the seventeen get you even. Above that is profit. If that percentage climbs past about 60%, the trip is thin. Normal attrition will eat it. Sixty is a rule of thumb I use, not a law.

Break-even sell-through is about your own haul. It is a different number from the market sell-through rate for one eBay search, which tells you how fast that kind of item moves. How to check eBay sell-through rate covers that one, and why a market share under your break-even makes the trip a bet.

Profit per hour is what changes Saturday

Cost per item tells you what to pay. Profit per hour tells you whether to leave the house. Count every hour the trip ate: drive, shop, wash, photograph, list, pack. The listing tail can be longer than the sourcing. That is why how fast you can list quietly caps how far you can drive.

Run it for a couple of months. The stores that carry the route show up in the numbers. So do the stops that are nostalgia.

The same four numbers decide an estate sale Saturday. The early alarm and the queue go in the hours column, and estate sale sourcing for eBay walks through that version.

How do I calculate profit per hour on a sourcing trip?
Take expected net proceeds (resale minus platform fees and shipping, times your realistic sell-through), subtract cash and mileage, then divide by every hour including cleaning, photos, and listing. Listing is the block people drop. It can be the largest one.
What mileage rate should a reseller use?
Use the current IRS standard mileage rate for business use, not a fuel-only guess. It is meant to cover depreciation, maintenance and repairs, and fuel together. The rate can change during the year, so check the IRS page each time you run the numbers.
What is a good sell-through rate for thrifted inventory?
There is no universal figure. Category and pricing decide it. Work out the sell-through a trip needs to break even, then compare that to what your last few hauls did. If a trip needs more than about 60% to break even, I treat it as thin.
Should I count my own time as a cost?
Count the hours, always. Putting a dollar wage on them is your call. You cannot compare two routes, or decide to stay home and list, without knowing what each hour returned.

Disclosure Thrift Routes is published by the team behind FlowLister. FlowLister is AI eBay listing software that turns item photos into complete eBay listings. It writes the title, description, category, item specifics, price and shipping for an eBay listing in about 30 seconds, and it prices each item from recent eBay sold comps and shows the sold listings behind the number. It is AI, so it misses things. We built it, so treat this as a disclosure, not a review. The guides and calculator work the same if you never open it.

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