David rented a truck for one day. base fee of $16.95 additional charge of .88 for each mile pay $126.07 how many miles did he drive the truck?

Question

help with solution

 

Answer 1

Hi Holly.  Here is the information you are given.  It's always a good idea to rewrite it using mathematical notation.  I like to create variables that are short named but meaningful.

 

Total Cost: TC = $126.07

Base fee: B = $16.95

Rate per mile: r = $0.88/mile

Distance (miles) : d -->this is what we need to find

 

The general formula is:

 

TC = B + r*d

 

In this problem:

 

$126.07 = $16.95 + ($0.88/mile)*d

126.07 - 16.95 = 0.88d    (I dropped the units starting here)

d = (126.07 - 16.95)/0.88 = 124 miles  (notice the parentheses. subtraction has a lower precedence than division.  If you omitted them when using a graphing calculator you would get an incorrect answer)

 

So the answer is 124 miles.

 

If you have any questions about what I did please feel free to ask.

 

Christian