Trucking cost per mile calculator

Your cost per mile is the one number that tells you whether a load is worth taking. Type in your own numbers below to see what every mile really costs you, what you keep per mile, and what that adds up to in a month.

Plans start at $5 a month per truck, 30-day free trial, no card needed.

How cost per mile is figured

Cost per mile is everything it costs to run the truck, divided by the miles it drives. The calculator splits it into three parts:

• Fixed costs per mile: the bills you pay whether the truck moves or not, like the truck payment, insurance, plates and permits, your ELD and phone. $4,000 a month ÷ 8,000 miles = $0.50 a mile.
• Fuel per mile: fuel price ÷ miles per gallon. $3.80 ÷ 6.5 MPG = about $0.58 a mile.
• Other per-mile costs: things that wear out as you drive, like tires, oil changes and repairs, plus tolls. If you're not sure, add up last year's repairs and tires and divide by last year's miles.

Add them up and you get your cost per mile: $0.50 + $0.58 + $0.20 = about $1.28 in the example. Profit per mile is your pay per mile minus that cost. Monthly profit is profit per mile times your miles for the month.

Don't forget your empty miles

Deadhead miles burn fuel and wear tires just like loaded miles, but usually nobody pays for them. That's why the calculator uses all the miles you drive, and why the pay per mile should be your average over all of them. If a load pays $2.60 a loaded mile but you drive 20% of your miles empty, you're really earning about $2.08 a mile across everything you drove.

Fewer miles in a month also pushes your cost per mile up, because the same fixed bills are spread over fewer miles. A slow month can turn a good rate into a losing one.

Know your number before you take the load

Once you know your cost per mile, you can check a rate in seconds: if the pay per mile for the trip, empty miles included, doesn't clear your cost per mile, the load loses money no matter how good the gross looks. Keep your driver pay in mind too. If you pay yourself or a driver by the mile, add it to your other per-mile costs.

How 10-4 Hauler tracks it for you

A calculator is only as good as the numbers you guess. 10-4 Hauler figures your real cost per mile from what actually happened:

• Add loaded miles and empty (deadhead) miles to each job. For long haul and hot shot work, type the starting and ending odometer and total miles are figured for you.
• Log fuel with its gallons, and snap receipts for everything else. Set up bills that repeat, like insurance and the truck payment, once.
• The dashboard then shows your cost per mile, revenue per mile, profit per mile and miles per gallon for this month and this year so far, plus how much of your driving was empty.

In the app, cost per mile counts every expense, repeating bills included, plus driver pay, divided by all miles, loaded and empty. The Fleet tab shows miles for each truck, and the job form shows what each job paid per mile, so you can spot the loads that aren't worth it.