Cost per mile
The single number that tells you whether a load is worth taking. The maintenance reserve line is the one that separates operators who survive their first in-frame from operators who do not.
Loaded and empty. Deadhead still costs you.
mi
Fixed — monthly
$
$
$
Parking, accounting, phone, subscriptions.
$
Variable
mpg
$/gal
Typically a low single-digit percentage of diesel burned; check your own fill records.
% of fuel
$/gal
$
mi
Your own last-12-months repair spend divided by miles is far better than any published average.
$/mi
Zero if you drive it yourself.
$/mi
All-in cost per mile
$1.31/mi
$131,044 a year at 100,000 miles.
- Fixed
- $0.50/mi
- Fuel
- $0.59/mi
- DEF
- $0.01/mi
- Tires
- $0.04/mi
- Maintenance
- $0.17/mi
- Total
- $1.31/mi
A load paying less than $1.31 per mile costs you money to haul. Add your margin on top of this, not on top of fuel.
What this assumes
- Fixed costs are annualised and spread across your annual miles — a low-mileage year raises your cost per mile even if you spent nothing extra.
- Deadhead miles count as miles run but earn nothing. If you do not track them, your real cost per mile is higher than the number this returns.
- The maintenance reserve is a provision, not a prediction. It is what you should be setting aside per mile, not what you will spend this month.
- Depreciation is excluded from the operating figure. It is real, but it is not cash out the door this week, and mixing the two is how operators talk themselves into bad rates.
- TODO(verify): publish a default maintenance-reserve figure per mile by truck class once the receipt dataset supports one. Until then the field starts empty rather than pre-filled with a number we cannot defend.
Estimates, not quotes. How we build our numbers.