Trucking cost per mile calculator: find your floor rate

How the cost per mile calculator works

Costs fall into two groups. Fixed costs come every month whether the truck moves or not: payments, insurance, permits, your phone and ELD, and the pay you need to take home. Running costs grow with every mile: fuel, maintenance, tires and tolls.

• Fuel = miles ÷ MPG × diesel price
• Maintenance and tires = cost per mile × miles
• Cost per mile = all monthly costs ÷ all monthly miles
• Fixed per mile = fixed costs ÷ miles, and the same for running costs

Count all your miles, loaded and empty. Empty miles cost the same as loaded ones, so leaving them out makes your cost per mile look lower than it is.

A worked example

An owner-operator with a dry van runs 10,000 miles a month. Payments are $2,800, insurance $1,300, other fixed costs $450, and they need $5,000 a month in pay. Fuel at 6.5 MPG and $3.90 a gallon, maintenance at 18 cents a mile, tires at 4 cents and $150 in tolls.

At 7,000 miles in a slow month, the same costs come to about $2.21 a mile, because the fixed part is spread over fewer miles. That gap is why miles matter as much as rates.

How your number compares

For reference, the American Transportation Research Institute's cost study found an industry average of $2.336 per mile in 2025, the highest in the report's history and 3.4% above 2024, and $1.854 per mile excluding fuel in 2025.

Source: ATRI, An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking (2026 update, 2025 data), as reported by Transport Topics, July 17, 2026; data from for-hire fleets, October 2026

Those figures come from for-hire fleets, with driver wages and benefits built in, so they're not a target for a single owner-operator. Your own costs are what decide your floor.

Cost per mile by truck

Every truck carries different costs. A reefer adds unit fuel and unit maintenance; pick reefer in the calculator to add the unit fuel line. A flatbed carries tarps, straps and chains. A 26 ft box truck usually has lower payments and better fuel economy but fewer miles a month, so its fixed costs weigh more per mile. A hotshot's costs are lower, but so are its loads. Use your own truck's numbers, not someone else's.

Costs people forget

• Empty miles in the miles total, which push the real cost per mile up.
• Yearly bills like registration, IRP plates and permits, divided by 12.
• Factoring and dispatch fees, if you use them, as a share of gross.
• Parking, scales, truck washes and lumper fees you aren't reimbursed for.
• A repair reserve: money set aside each month for the breakdown that will come.

Where to find your numbers

The best source is your own paperwork from the last three months, averaged. Payments and insurance come from your statements. Fuel comes from fuel card reports or receipts, and miles from your ELD or fuel tax records, which already list miles by month. Maintenance and tires are easiest as a cost per mile: total what you spent over the last year and divide by the miles you drove in that time. If you're new and have no history yet, use quotes and estimates, then replace them with real numbers after your first few months.

Lowering your cost per mile

There are only two levers: spend less per month, or run more paid miles over the same fixed costs. The second is usually bigger. Cutting empty miles, shortening the wait between loads and planning reloads before you deliver all spread your payments and insurance over more paid miles. On the spending side, fuel economy, tire care and shopping your insurance at renewal make the biggest difference.

Using your cost per mile

Add a margin for bad weeks and repairs, and you have your floor: the lowest all-in rate you'll run for. Take it to the rate per mile calculator to check any load against it. Revisit it every few months, or whenever fuel, insurance or your payments change.

If you work with a dispatcher, give them this number. Our desk uses your floor to decide which offers to counter and which to pass on before a load reaches you, and you still say yes or no to every one. See pricing.