Trucking cost per mile calculator: find your break-even and your floor
Enter your monthly fixed costs, miles and per-mile costs. The trucking cost per mile calculator gives your break-even per mile, per load, and a floor rate that includes profit.
Trucking cost per mile calculator
EXAMPLE VALUES, REPLACE WITH YOURSFixed costs per month
Variable costs
COST PER MILE
Red line: break-even. Bar end: your floor with profit.
$2.34
break-even per mile
$2.64
floor rate with profit
- Fixed cost per mile
- $0.46
- Fuel per mile
- $0.95
- All variable per mile
- $1.88
- Break-even on a 550 mile load
- $1,289
- Floor on that load
- $1,454
- Monthly cost
- $23,438
Your break-even is $2.34/mi. We counter every offer from your floor, and you approve every load.
By Edwin Horton · Updated
How the cost per mile calculator works
Every cost goes into one of two buckets.
Fixed costs are monthly bills that don't care how far the truck drives: truck and trailer payments, insurance, permits and plates, ELD and phone, office and overhead. The calculator spreads them over your monthly miles.
Variable costs grow with every mile: fuel, driver pay per mile, repairs and maintenance, tires, and other per-mile costs like unrecovered tolls.
- Fixed cost per mile = fixed monthly costs ÷ miles per month
- Fuel per mile = diesel price ÷ miles per gallon
- Break-even per mile = fixed per mile + fuel per mile + driver + maintenance + tires + other
- Floor rate = break-even + the profit you want per mile
- Break-even per load = break-even per mile × typical loaded miles
EXAMPLE Fixed costs of $4,600 a month over 10,000 miles add $0.46 a mile. Diesel at $6.20 and 6.5 mpg is $0.95 a mile. Driver pay $0.62, maintenance $0.22, tires $0.05 and other $0.04. Break-even: $2.34 a mile. With $0.30 of profit on top, the floor is $2.64 a mile, or about $1,454 on a 550 mile load.
For a reference point, the 2025 industry average was $2.336/miAverage operating cost per mile, 2025$2.336/miATRI's 2026 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: industry average for 2025, up from $2.260 in 2024. Fuel about $0.482/mi; non-fuel $1.854/mi; driver wages and benefits $1.028/mi.ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking (2026 edition), 2025Checked Oct 2026, and repair and maintenance alone averaged $0.215/miRepair and maintenance cost per mile, 2025$0.215/miATRI's 2026 Operational Costs of Trucking: repair and maintenance (parts, labor, roadside service; tires counted separately at about $0.05/mi) averaged $0.215 per mile in 2025, up 8.6% from 2024. Truckload fleets under 5 trucks averaged $0.275 per mile, against $0.169 for fleets over 1,000 trucks. By region: Midwest 21.4, Northeast 22.1, Southeast 19.8, South Central 19.4 and West 21.9 cents per mile.ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking (2026 edition), 2025Checked Oct 2026. The U.S. average diesel price was $6.199/gal (week of Oct 5, 2026)U.S. on-highway diesel, average$6.199/gal (week of Oct 5, 2026)EIA weekly retail on-highway diesel price, U.S. average, week of October 5, 2026: $6.199 per gallon, down $0.183 from the prior week and up $2.488 from a year earlier. Updated every Monday.EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, 2026Checked Oct 2026 when this page was updated. Replace every number with yours.
High fixed cost, high running cost
High fixed cost per mile: the truck isn't running enough miles for its payment and insurance. More loaded miles lowers the number faster than any cost cut.
High variable cost per mile: look at fuel economy, idle time, routing and tire wear. A few cents per mile across 120,000 miles a year is real money.
Floor above what your lanes pay: either the lanes are wrong for this truck or the truck is too expensive for the lanes. The rate per mile calculator shows what an offer really pays all-in, and the small fleet cost per truck calculator shows which unit in a fleet drags the average up.
Use it to plan
Startup owners should run this before buying a truck; our guide to how much it costs to start a trucking company covers the fixed costs in detail. The fleet benchmark report shows where small fleets typically land. Running several trucks? The small fleet dispatch page explains how each unit gets its own floor rate.
Use the result as each truck's floor rate on every offer, then revisit it monthly. Owners who quote from a current cost per mile negotiate with confidence, because they know exactly which loads lose money. Owners who quote from habit tend to find out at tax time. If you run several trucks, calculate it per unit; one expensive truck can hide behind a good fleet average.
Average three months of bills
- Total fixed bills from the last three months and average them
- Use miles from ELD or odometer records, loaded and empty
- Use mpg from fuel receipts
- Recalculate after any big cost change
Cost per mile questions
01What is the average cost per mile for a truck?
ATRI's latest operational costs report put the industry average at $2.336 per mile for 2025. Your own number can be well above or below that, depending on your truck payment, fuel economy, driver pay and how many miles you run.
02Should cost per mile include empty miles?
Yes. Divide costs by all miles, loaded and empty. Then compare loads using the all-in rate (rate divided by loaded plus deadhead miles). Mixing the two is one of the most common pricing mistakes.
03What's the difference between break-even and floor rate?
Break-even covers every cost and leaves nothing. A floor rate adds the profit you need on top. Book below break-even only with a clear reason, like a reload that more than makes up for it.
04How often should I recalculate?
Monthly at least, and whenever something big changes: fuel prices, an insurance renewal, a new truck payment, or a driver pay change. A floor based on last year's fuel price is a floor on sand.
05Why do fixed costs per mile change?
Because they're spread over miles. A truck that runs 12,000 miles a month carries its payment and insurance more cheaply per mile than one that runs 8,000. More loaded miles is often the fastest way to lower cost per mile.
Your floor, on every offer
We counter every load from your number, and you approve each one before it's booked.
4% for 2+ trucks, 5% for one, 7% while your MC is new