How Do You Calculate Cost per Mile for a Trucking Company?

Total miles or loaded miles: which to divide by

Divide by total miles first, because fuel, tires and wear accrue on every mile a truck runs, paid or empty. The ELD already counts them: under 49 CFR 395.26 it automatically records “vehicle miles” and “engine hours,” with the date, time, location and vehicle. Take total miles per truck from the ELD or from odometer readings, not from rate confirmations, which show only the miles someone paid for.

Then divide the same total cost by loaded miles alone. That cost per loaded mile carries the empty miles inside it, so it is the number to hold against a rate quoted per loaded mile, at the fleet’s usual empty share. Four mileage figures feed the two numbers:

• Total miles per truck: the ELD or odometer, by unit, for the whole period.
• Loaded miles: dispatch or the TMS, as the miles each load actually ran with freight aboard.
• Billed miles: the miles each rate confirmation paid on. Where billed miles run below loaded miles, the difference is distance the fleet drove and did not bill.
• Empty share: total miles minus loaded miles, divided by total miles.

The costly mistake is mixing the two. Illustrative example, using the hypothetical fleet below: cost is $2.56 per total mile and 15 percent of its miles are empty, so cost per loaded mile is $2.56 divided by 0.85, about $3.01. A load offered at $2.90 per loaded mile looks like 34 cents of margin against the first number and loses 11 cents a mile against the second. The guide to profit per load prices the deadhead on a single load; this is the fleet-wide version.

Build cost per mile from the fleet’s own books: a worked example

The calculation takes one period, one profit and loss statement and one mileage report. Use the last full quarter, or the last 12 months for a small fleet, so one tire order or engine repair does not swing the result. The bookkeeper pulls the cost lines, the safety or dispatch lead pulls miles per truck from the ELD and dispatch, and the owner checks that every truck appears in both and nothing is counted twice.

Two choices are made once and kept. For the trucks, use each unit’s payment or lease, and for a paid-off truck a set monthly amount toward its replacement, or the paid-off trucks look cheap until one has to be replaced. For the owner, put a fair salary for the dispatching, selling and safety work into overhead. Keep the factoring fee, which follows revenue, and one-time events such as an accident deductible on lines of their own.

Illustrative example, not a client: a hypothetical fleet of 20 tractors with company drivers paid by the mile on all dispatched miles ran 600,000 total miles last quarter, 30,000 per truck, of which 510,000 were loaded and 90,000 empty. Its quarter, every cost figure invented except the diesel price:

• Fuel: $516,000, or 86 cents a mile: diesel at $5.56 a gallon, the average of EIA’s 13 weekly U.S. on-highway prices for July through September 2026, burned at about 6.5 miles per gallon.
• Driver wages at 62 cents a mile, plus payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and benefits: $450,000, or 75 cents a mile.
• Maintenance, repairs and tires: $120,000, or 20 cents a mile.
• Tolls and scales: $12,000, or 2 cents a mile.
• Truck and trailer payments: $180,000, or $3,000 per truck per month.
• Insurance: $96,000, or $1,600 per truck per month.
• Plates, permits, the Form 2290 tax, ELD subscriptions and parking: $18,000, or $300 per truck per month.
• Overhead, from dispatch and billing salaries to the owner’s: $144,000, or $2,400 per truck per month.

Variable costs total $1,098,000, or $1.83 a mile. Fixed costs total $294,000, or $4,900 per truck per month, and overhead adds $2,400, so each truck carries $7,300 a month before it turns a wheel. All of it together is $1,536,000: $2.56 per total mile over 600,000 miles, and $3.01 per loaded mile over 510,000. Without fuel, cost per total mile is $1.70, the figure to hold against linehaul revenue per total mile when the fuel surcharge is billed separately. The fleet’s own books replace every invented number.

What a truck earns per month after its costs

Profit per truck is the truck’s revenue minus its own costs: its miles times the variable cost per mile, its own payment, insurance and permits, and its share of overhead. This guide found no government or other primary source that publishes what a trucking company makes per truck, so the number worth having is the fleet’s own, by unit, by month.

In the example, the fleet billed $1,608,000 for the quarter, linehaul and fuel surcharge together, or $2.68 per total mile. Against $1,536,000 of cost, that leaves $72,000, or $1,200 per truck per month. Because the truck payments stand in for the trucks’ cost, that figure is closer to what each truck leaves the owner before any factoring fee and income taxes than to an accounting profit.

The fleet average hides the spread. Each truck carries $7,300 a month whether it runs or not, and each mile adds $1.83 of cost against $2.68 of revenue, 85 cents of contribution. Three trucks from the same hypothetical fleet, same lanes, same rates, one month:

• Truck A ran 12,000 miles: $2.44 per mile in cost, $32,160 of revenue, $2,900 of profit.
• Truck B ran 10,000 miles, the fleet average: $2.56 per mile, $26,800 of revenue, $1,200 of profit.
• Truck C ran 6,000 miles after a week in the shop and a week without a driver: $3.05 per mile, $16,080 of revenue, a loss of $2,200.

At these rates, any truck below about 8,600 miles a month loses money: $7,300 divided by 85 cents. Read profit per truck in that order: miles per truck first, then revenue per total mile, then variable cost per mile, then the fixed costs. A truck that loses money on low miles needs a driver, a shop plan or freight; a truck that loses money on full miles needs better rates or a different lane. Before deciding whether to add trucks, count how many of the current ones clear their own costs.

How often to recalculate cost per mile, and what moves it

Recalculate the whole figure monthly when the books close, rebuild it from scratch each quarter with every truck checked against the ELD, and update the fuel line weekly. Diesel has not held still in 2026: the Energy Information Administration’s weekly U.S. on-highway average, all taxes included, was $3.897 a gallon on March 2 and $4.859 on March 9, reached $5.643 on April 6, fell to $4.578 on July 6, climbed to $6.529 on September 21 and stood at $6.276 on October 19.

At 6.5 miles per gallon, every 10 cents on a gallon is about 1.5 cents a mile. In the example, fuel at the October 19 price is about 97 cents a mile instead of 86, roughly $1,100 more per truck per month at 10,000 miles, nearly all of the $1,200 the average truck cleared. A fuel surcharge recovers part of that only where the rate confirmation or contract pays one, and only on the miles it is paid on, so keep fuel per mile on its own line, next to fuel surcharge collected per mile.

The other things that move cost per mile, and where each shows up first:

• Miles per truck. Fixed cost and overhead are spread over them, so a truck that sits raises its own cost per mile. Hours of service set the ceiling: under 49 CFR 395.3 a driver may drive 11 hours inside a 14-hour window that follows 10 hours off duty, and may not drive after 60 hours on duty in 7 days, or 70 in 8 for a carrier that runs every day. Dwell, idle days and unseated trucks decide how close each truck gets to it.
• The empty share. More deadhead raises cost per loaded mile even when cost per total mile holds still.
• Fuel economy. Each truck’s own miles per gallon, from fuel purchases and ELD miles by unit, moves fuel per mile as surely as the pump price.
• Maintenance by unit. Under 49 CFR 396.3 the carrier keeps, for each vehicle it controls for 30 consecutive days, a record of inspection, repairs and maintenance “indicating their date and nature.” The rule does not ask for the cost, so put the unit number on every repair invoice and in the books, or maintenance cost per truck cannot be pulled.
• Renewals and changes: the insurance renewal, a new truck payment, a pay plan change, a truck added or sold. Each one moves the fixed line in the month it starts.

Each week, the dispatch or safety lead reads five numbers per truck: total miles, loaded miles and the empty share, gallons bought and miles per gallon, days without a driver or in the shop, and repair invoices posted. When the books close, the bookkeeper adds the month’s cost lines, and the owner reads cost per mile next to revenue per total mile, truck by truck.

When this is not the problem, and where the Review fits

If the fleet already knows its cost per mile by truck and prices loads against it, the next gain is in acting on that view, not in another measurement. For an owner-operator or a fleet of a few trucks, a spreadsheet and last quarter’s books are the whole job. And if cash is short this week, the first calls are to the factor, the lender and the slowest-paying brokers.

For a fleet of about 20 power units and up, the Revenue Review counts this under the Payment → Margin hand-off. From read-only exports of the books, the ELD, fuel cards, dispatch and settlements, it builds cost per mile by truck and puts a monthly dollar figure on miles run but not billed, trucks below their own break-even and fuel the surcharge did not recover, where the records support one. It sets no rates and gives no legal or tax advice. It takes two weeks and ends in a written report the fleet keeps. The team behind the Review has run its own trucking company for seven years, and a client’s data never touches our own fleet.

If the per-truck margin turns out to be the gap, the next step is a free 20-minute call, where we say whether the arithmetic above, done in-house, covers it, which may well be the honest answer.