A broker offers you two dollars and forty cents a mile. Is that good?
You cannot answer that. Nobody can answer that for you, and every person in a Facebook group who tells you what rate to hold out for is talking about their truck, their payment, their insurance and their lane.
The only number that makes that question answerable is your own cost per mile.
Why the number is usually wrong
Most owner operators have a cost per mile somewhere in their head. It is almost always too low, for four specific reasons.
Deadhead is not counted. You ran twelve hundred miles this week. Nine hundred were loaded. If you divide your costs by nine hundred you get a number that has nothing to do with your bank account.
Maintenance is counted only when it happens. Tires are not a surprise. Brakes are not a surprise. A major service at a known interval is not a surprise. If those only show up in the month they get paid, your cost per mile looks great eleven months a year and terrible in the twelfth.
The owner works for free. Whatever is left over is the pay. That is not pay, that is residue, and it means the truck can be losing money for a long time without anybody noticing.
Fixed costs get forgotten in a good month. When you run hard, fixed costs spread thin and everything looks fine. Then you sit for ten days with a repair and discover that the payment, the insurance and the permits did not care.
Work out what a mile actually costs you
Fixed costs, variable costs and the miles you actually run. The tool splits it the way it needs splitting so you can see what an empty mile costs as well as a loaded one.
Your numbers
What that means
If you are not charging at least $34.55 of travel on a typical job, the truck is being paid for out of your profit.
What this assumed
- Fixed costs are spread over the annual miles you enter. Drive fewer miles and the per mile number goes up.
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This is an estimate
This tool returns an estimate based on the numbers you entered. Your real result depends on your own costs, rates and conditions. Check it against your own records before you make a decision with it.
How to run it, step by step
- 1List fixed costs first. Truck and trailer payments, insurance, permits, plates, ELD subscription, accounting, parking. Everything you pay in a month whether the wheels turn or not. These are the ones that punish a slow month.
- 2Then variable, per mile. Fuel, tires, oil and maintenance, tolls, def. Use a real average from your own records, not a manufacturer number and not what you paid the one good week.
- 3Use total miles, including deadhead. This is the one people get wrong. Deadhead miles cost the same fuel and the same wear as loaded miles and earn nothing. If you divide by loaded miles only, your cost per mile is fiction.
- 4Pay yourself in the math. Put your own pay in as a cost. A truck that only breaks even after the owner works for free is not a business, and you will not find that out until something expensive breaks.
How to read what it gives you
- The number that comes out is your floor. Any load under it loses money, no matter how good the rate per mile sounds against what somebody else got.
- Look at the fixed portion on its own. That is what a week off costs you, and it is why sitting is more expensive than most owner operators think.
- Run it again with fewer total miles, like a slow month. Cost per mile goes up when miles go down, which is exactly when rates are usually worst. That is the squeeze that ends most one-truck operations.
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What to do with it
Set a floor and hold it. Below your cost per mile you are paying to work. Not "making less", paying. There is no volume argument that fixes a load below cost, because more of them makes it worse.
Quote on total miles. When a load comes up, the miles that matter are the miles from where you are to where it ends, not the miles the freight moves. A load at a great rate per loaded mile that requires two hundred deadhead miles to get to might be worse than a mediocre one out your back door.
Watch what sitting costs. Take your monthly fixed costs and divide by thirty. That is what a day of not moving costs before you burn a gallon of fuel. Owner operators who see that number get a lot more decisive about repairs and a lot less romantic about waiting for a better rate.
Recalculate quarterly. Fuel moves. Insurance renews. A new payment changes everything. A cost per mile from last year is a fact about a truck you do not operate anymore.
The one nobody wants to hear
If you run the honest version, including your pay, including deadhead, including maintenance you have not been billed for, and the number says the truck does not clear a living, that is not a reason to run harder.
Running harder is how the number gets worse, because more miles on the same equipment pulls maintenance forward and you have already spent the money you were going to fix it with.
The answer is either better freight, lower fixed costs, or a different setup. All three of those are decisions, and you cannot make any of them without the number.
The back office part
The other thing that quietly eats one-truck operations is the paperwork. Rate cons in a text thread, invoices sent late, detention never billed, factoring fees nobody checks.
That is a systems problem, not a trucking problem, and it has the same shape as every other unpaid invoice problem. The money is earned. It is just not collected.
Questions people actually ask
Should deadhead miles be in the calculation?
Yes. They burn fuel and wear tires and earn nothing. Divide total costs by total miles run, then when you quote a load, look at the total miles that load requires including getting to it. Rate per loaded mile is a broker's framing, not yours.
Do I include my own pay as a cost?
Yes, if you want a real number. If your pay is whatever is left over, then your cost per mile will always look fine and you will never know you are underpricing until a transmission goes out.
How often should I recalculate?
Quarterly at minimum, and any time fuel moves hard or you take on a new payment. A cost per mile from eighteen months ago is a number about a truck you no longer operate.
What about maintenance I have not paid for yet?
Set an amount per mile aside for it even if nothing is broken right now. Tires, brakes and a major service are not surprises, they are scheduled expenses you have not been billed for yet. Owner operators who skip this line are the ones a breakdown takes out.