Cost per mile calculator.

How the total is built

• Fuel: (loaded + deadhead) / mpg × price per gallon
• Driver: regular hours at wage, plus overtime hours at wage times the multiplier
• Running costs: maintenance and tyres charged per mile across every mile run
• Fixed costs: daily truck payment, insurance, licensing and overhead for the days the truck is committed to this load
• Extras: tolls, chassis or equipment fees, and accessorials

Deadhead is where the money goes

Empty miles burn fuel, use up the driver's hours, and wear the truck, and no customer pays for them. That is why this page shows two cost-per-mile figures. Cost per mile run is the one that looks good in a report. Cost per loaded mile is the one to quote against, because it makes the loaded miles carry the empty ones.

On a 420 mile load with 60 miles of deadhead, that difference is roughly 14 percent of your cost base. Price on the wrong one often enough and a busy month still ends flat.

Fixed costs do not pause between loads

The truck payment and the insurance are owed whether the truck moves or not. Allocating them by day is the simplest honest approach: take your annual fixed spend, divide by the days you actually run, and charge that to each load for the days it ties the truck up. Leave them out and every load looks profitable while the year does not.

Quote on today's fuel, not last week's

The fuel sensitivity figure exists because this is where margin quietly disappears. A rate agreed on Monday against a fuel price from the previous Thursday is already wrong, and on a long move the gap can be larger than the margin. If your rate sheet is a spreadsheet somebody updates every couple of weeks, that gap is running on every quote in between.

What this calculator will not do

It does not know what the market is paying. It prices your cost so you can judge a quote against it. Anyone showing you a live market rate is reading a rate feed, and that is a different question from whether this particular load clears your own costs.