What we sell ↗Free tool
What does a mile actually cost you?
Most owner-operators cannot say. That is not a criticism—nobody hands you the number and working it out by hand on a Sunday is its own job. This does it in about ninety seconds, counts the empty miles, and tells you the loaded rate you have to beat.
Prefilled with ordinary figures for one truck. Change the ones you know—it recalculates as you type. Nothing is sent anywhere.
What that means at a given rate, over a year:
| Loaded rate | Per loaded mile | Over a year |
|---|---|---|
| $1.80 | −$0.434 | −$36,885 |
| $2.00 | −$0.234 | −$19,885 |
| $2.25 | +$0.016 | +$1,365 |
| $2.50 | +$0.266 | +$22,615 |
| $2.75 | +$0.516 | +$43,865 |
Your deadhead is why these two numbers differ. You pay for every mile and you only get paid for 85% of them.
How this is worked out
- Fixed costs are what the truck costs whether it moves or not—payment, insurance, permits, software, and what you take home. Spread across the miles you run.
- Running costs are fuel and maintenance, charged on every mile including the empty ones.
- Breakeven divides the whole year by loaded miles only, because that is all anybody pays you for. It is the honest number and it is always higher than the one people quote.
Questions
Why is the breakeven higher than the cost per mile?
Because you only get paid for loaded miles. If fifteen per cent of your miles are empty, the eighty-five per cent that pay have to carry the cost of all one hundred. Calculators that ignore deadhead flatter the number and that is how a lane quietly loses money for a year.
Should I include my own pay?
Yes. If you leave yourself out, the truck looks profitable while you work for nothing. Put in what you actually need to live on and see whether the rates support it.
What about the loads I take below breakeven to get home?
They are a real business decision, not a mistake. The point is knowing what they cost so you take them deliberately instead of finding out in March.
Where do the default numbers come from?
They are ordinary figures for a one-truck operation, with maintenance and insurance in line with ATRI's operational-cost work. They are a starting point so the page shows something sensible before you touch it. Replace them with yours.
Worth knowing: cost per mile, deadhead, breakeven, backhaul.
This is a snapshot from figures you typed. The version that matters runs off loads you actually hauled—real fuel, real maintenance, real detention, per lane—and tells you which lane to stop taking before the quarter ends.
See how it works ↗