My club is helping to sponsor an out of town event where at the place of the event, local enthusiasts will be manning the sag. We want to fairly compensate them for their efforts plus some. This is a multiday event (3 days) with 2 of the days taking including climbing of mountains in overall routes. The sag will be stocked with food, drinks and supplements for the participants along with the standard emergency first aid and road repair equipment. The locals that are manning the sag are quite humble and would normally not take contributions since our participants give their bike shop a great deal of business while we're there. We feel a strong need to show our gratitude for their energy and time spent.

Is there an established formula or system for determining the expense of operating such a sag vehicle in an event such as this?

Take them out for a meal after the event (maybe find a local rib joint to sponsor it???). Here in the Boston area there is a great rib place that is very bike friendly (they have valet parking for bikes), and we have a dinner for our biggest fund raisers there every fall.

I have been reading a fair bit on randonneuring, and evidently they get into that a bit. You might check in the "Long Distance" forum and see if they have ideas.

I have never organized an event, but I do recall reading somewhere that at least one event rode in had a special ride for the volunteers.

You could basically have two sets of volunteers, one set would ride in your main event for free in exchange for doing support for the ride to reward the volunteers that made the main ride a success.

The secondary ride could be before or after, and would definitely be smaller scale, but if your volunteers are cyclists, it seems like a worthy benefit... although it adds to the organizational load.

Redbones? I used to live around the corner from them.

I was 25 lbs heavier too.