Free Break-Even Tool
Trucking Cost Per Mile Calculator
Built for Owner-Operators
Add up your fixed and variable costs, set your weekly miles, and get your exact cost per mile — the break-even rate you should never haul below.
Weekly Operating Costs
Would you be happy with this cost per mile for the next 52 weeks?
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How to Calculate Cost Per Mile
To calculate cost per mile, add every fixed and variable cost for one period and divide that total by the miles you ran in the same period: (fixed costs + variable costs) ÷ total miles. A truck carrying $1,200 of weekly fixed costs and $2,800 of weekly variable costs that runs 2,500 miles has a cost per mile of $1.60.
(Fixed costs + Variable costs) ÷ Total miles = Cost per mile
Five steps to your true cost per mile
Pick one period and stay in it
A week is the easiest period to reason about because most carriers already settle, fuel, and dispatch weekly. Whatever you pick, both sides of the equation have to cover the same days — annual costs divided by weekly miles is the most common way this calculation goes wrong.
Add your fixed costs
Fixed costs are the ones that bill whether the truck rolls or sits: truck and trailer payments, physical damage and liability insurance, permits and licensing, IRP and UCR, ELD and TMS subscriptions, accounting, and parking. Take the annual figures, divide by 52, and you have the weekly number.
Add your variable costs
Variable costs scale with the miles: fuel, tires, maintenance and repairs, tolls and scales, IFTA fuel tax, driver or owner pay, and any dispatch or factoring fees on the loads you ran. Use a rolling three-month average for maintenance so one blown turbo does not distort the number.
Divide by the miles you actually ran
Use total miles from the odometer or the ELD, including deadhead and bobtail. Loaded miles alone will understate your cost per mile by 10 to 20 percent for most carriers, which is exactly the margin you are trying to protect.
Price every load against the result
The number that comes out is your break-even rate. Any load paying less than that costs you money to haul, no matter how good the miles look. Add your target profit per mile on top of break-even to set the rate you negotiate from.
Worked example: a 2,500-mile week
One truck, one week, dry van. The figures are representative industry numbers — swap in your own with the calculator above.
- Fixed costs — truck payment, trailer, insurance, permits, ELD
- $1,200
- Variable costs — fuel, maintenance, tolls, IFTA, pay
- $2,800
- Total weekly cost
- $4,000
- Miles run, including deadhead
- 2,500
At $1.60 per mile the truck breaks even. A load paying $2.20 per mile leaves $0.60 per mile, or $1,500 of margin across those 2,500 miles. A load paying $1.45 costs you $375 to haul — and it will still look busy on the dispatch board.
Three things carriers get wrong
- Leaving out deadhead. Empty miles burn fuel and wear tires but bill nothing. Excluding them is the single most common reason a carrier's real cost per mile is higher than the one they quote.
- Not paying yourself. If the owner's pay is not in the variable column, break-even is fiction — you are subsidizing every load with unpaid labor.
- Calculating it once. Fuel, insurance, and equipment costs move enough over a year to shift break-even by several cents a mile. Re-run this every quarter, and after any change to insurance or a truck payment.
Know your break-even? See what invoice factoring costs against it: Invoice factoring calculator