How do I do this problem?

Question

Abdul rented a truck for one day. There was a base fee of $18.99, And there was an additional charge of $.89 for each mile driven. Abdul had to pay $196.10 when he returned the truck. For how many miles did he drive the truck?

Answer 1

This problem is what many students know as the slope-intercept form of a line.

y = mx + b

The base fee is the rate if you rented the truck and drove the truck 0 miles (y-intercept). Therefore from the information, we have b = $18.99, while $0.89 per mile is the slope of the line (each additional mile (x) increases total cost (y) by $0.89). The final value given is the total cost (y) equal to $196.10. Therefore, we have every value but x so we set up the equation as follows:

$196.10 = $0.89x + $18.99 and we need to solve for x.

We do this first by subtracting $18.99 from both sides to get $177.11 = $0.89x

We then divide both sides by $0.89 to get x = 199 miles.

To check our work we can set x =199 miles into the equation above to find out if we drove 119 miles and paid the miles and base fee, we would get $196.10.