Cost Per Mile Calculator
Calculate your true operating cost per mile, profit margin, and breakeven point. Essential for owner-operators.
Enter Your Numbers
Results
Enter your operating costs and revenue to see your cost per mile breakdown.
Know Your Numbers, Grow Your Business
Understanding your cost per mile is the foundation of a profitable trucking operation.
What does this calculator actually work out?
It works out what one mile costs you to run, what one mile earns you, and how many miles you have to turn before the year breaks even.
It is for owner-operators and lease-purchase drivers carrying the truck payment, the insurance and the maintenance themselves — the people for whom a good rate per mile and a good year are not the same thing.
The alternative is judging loads on the rate alone. Cost per mile is the number that tells you whether a $2.20 load is profitable, and it is different for every truck.
How is the number worked out?
cost per mile = (annual fuel + insurance + truck payment + maintenance + everything else) ÷ annual miles · profit per mile = revenue per mile − cost per mile · break-even miles = total cost ÷ revenue per mile
The arithmetic is shown so you can check the answer against your own settlement statement rather than take it on trust.
What does the result leave out?
- Fixed costs are spread evenly across the miles you enter. Run fewer miles than planned and every fixed cost per mile rises — that is why a slow month hurts more than the lost revenue suggests.
- Maintenance is what you set aside, not what you spent this month. A tyre and a clutch in the same quarter is a normal year, not a bad one.
- No owner's wage. What comes out is the profit the business makes before you pay yourself.
- No income or self-employment tax. Set aside for those out of the profit figure, not out of what is left after.
What is a realistic cost per mile for an owner-operator?
There is no single right answer, and any site quoting one is guessing at your truck. What matters is that yours is built from your own numbers: your payment, your insurance premium, your fuel economy, your annual miles. Run it once with real figures and you will have something you can hold a rate up against, which a national average can never do.
Why do my costs per mile go up when I run fewer miles?
Because the truck payment and the insurance premium do not care how far you drove. They are the same in a 6,000-mile month as in a 12,000-mile month, so halving the miles doubles what each of them costs per mile. It is the reason a week sitting waiting for a load is more expensive than it looks.
Should I include my own pay in the costs?
Not in this calculation — leave it out so the profit line shows what the business generates, then decide what you draw from it. If you would rather see it as a cost, add your target weekly pay into the other-monthly-costs box and read the profit line as what is left over after you are paid.