How to Calculate Cost Per Mile for a Truck

The formula

Cost per mile = (fixed costs + variable costs) ÷ total miles run, over the same period. Use a full month at minimum; a single week distorts everything. Count total miles including deadhead, not just loaded miles — you paid for those miles whether or not the load did.

Fixed costs — the ones that hit whether you roll or not

• Truck and trailer payment
• Insurance: liability, cargo, physical damage, occupational accident or health
• Permits, plates, IRP, IFTA decals, UCR, and the heavy vehicle use tax
• ELD subscription, accounting, and phone
• Parking, and any shop or storage rent

Variable costs — the ones that move with the miles

• Fuel and DEF
• Tires, spread across their expected life in miles
• Preventive maintenance and repairs, budgeted per mile rather than per event
• Tolls, scales, lumpers, and washouts
• Meals and motels on the road

Worked example

Say fixed costs total $4,800 a month and variable costs total $7,900 in a month you ran 9,500 total miles. That is $12,700 ÷ 9,500 = $1.34 per mile before you have paid yourself a dime. If you want $75,000 a year in take-home on 110,000 miles, add roughly $0.68 per mile. Your break-even freight rate is about $2.02 per mile, all miles counted.

The costs people leave out

• Downtime. A truck in the shop still owes a payment and an insurance premium.
• Deadhead miles. Dividing by loaded miles only makes your number look better than it is.
• Major component reserve — engine, transmission, and aftertreatment work does not fit in a maintenance line item, it needs its own per-mile set-aside.
• Quarterly taxes. Set aside a percentage of every settlement.

Use it on every load

Once you have the number, running a load offer is arithmetic: total pay ÷ total miles including deadhead, compared with your cost per mile. Anything under it loses money no matter how good the rate per loaded mile looks.