Free Trucking Calculators
Twelve free trucking calculators and checklists for owner-operators and small fleets. No signup, no email, no app — every one runs in your browser.
These are twelve free trucking calculators covering the numbers owner-operators actually have to work out: cost per mile, quarterly IFTA fuel tax, fuel cost, deadhead miles, profit per load, rate per mile, weekly revenue, truck payments, new-authority startup cost, dispatch ROI, DOT compliance and broker vetting. Nothing is gated. There is no account, no email capture and no app to install — they run in the browser on a phone in the cab or a laptop at the house.
A calculator on its own only gives you a number. To know whether that number is any good you need a yardstick, so every benchmark on this page is attributed: the industry-average cost to operate a truck was $2.336 per mile in 2025, the highest in the report's history, according to the American Transportation Research Institute's Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update. Diesel is at $5.257 per gallon on the EIA weekly U.S. on-highway average for the week ending August 10, 2026. Start with the routing block below, or run the cost per mile calculator right here on this page.
Which Calculator Do You Need?
Find the situation you are actually in. Each one takes under two minutes.
Cost Per Mile Calculator
The one number every other number depends on. It is pre-filled with plausible figures so you get an answer without typing anything — then replace them with yours. For the full version with a fixed and variable cost breakdown, open the complete cost per mile calculator.
Fixed Costs (Monthly)
Costs you pay whether the truck moves or not. Divide any annual bill by 12 before entering it.
Leave at 0 if you pull a company trailer.
Liability, cargo, physical damage, bobtail, occ-acc, health.
IRP plates, UCR, Form 2290, ELD subscription, state permits ÷ 12.
What you pay yourself. Leave at 0 for a pure breakeven number.
Accounting, software, phone, quarterly tax set-aside.
Variable Costs
Costs that scale with every mile you turn, loaded or empty.
Include a reserve for the repair you have not had yet.
Scales, lodging, meals, washes, lumpers.
Monthly Miles & Profit Target
Loaded miles are the only miles a broker pays you for. Empty miles still cost you fuel and wear, so they belong in the cost base.
All Twelve Free Trucking Tools
Ten calculators and two checklists. Every one is free and needs no account.
What Your Numbers Should Look Like in 2026
Three figures worth memorising before you run any of the calculators above. Each one names its source so you can check it.
$2.336
Industry-average cost to operate a truck per mile in 2025 — up 3.4% and the highest on record.
ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update
$0.26
More per mile earned by owner-operators who knew their cost of operations than by those who did not. One in five still did not know.
OOIDA Foundation Freight Rate Survey, January 2025
$5.257
U.S. average retail on-highway diesel per gallon, week ending August 10, 2026.
EIA Weekly Retail On-Highway Diesel Prices
The middle figure is the one that pays for itself. Knowing your cost of operations is not bookkeeping hygiene — the OOIDA Foundation has found the same gap in survey after survey, and it is the reason our guide to why owner-operators fail starts with the numbers rather than the freight. If diesel is the line you are worried about, our diesel price outlook for 2026 tracks the same EIA series this page quotes.
Worked Example: Is This 850-Mile Load Actually Profitable?
Every figure below is either an assumption, labelled as one, or derived from the two above it. Fuel is priced at the EIA weekly U.S. on-highway diesel average of $5.257 per gallon for the week ending August 10, 2026.
| Line | Figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Line-haul rate (assumption) | $2,550 | What the broker offered |
| Loaded miles | 850 | Pickup to delivery |
| Deadhead to pickup (assumption) | 120 | Empty miles you still pay for |
| Total miles | 970 | 850 loaded + 120 empty |
| Deadhead share | 12.4% | 120 ÷ 970 |
| Gross rate per loaded mile | $3.00 | $2,550 ÷ 850 |
| Gross rate per total mile | $2.63 | $2,550 ÷ 970 — the honest number |
| Fuel at 6.5 MPG | −$785 | 970 ÷ 6.5 = 149.2 gal × $5.257 (EIA, w/e Aug 10, 2026) |
| Dispatch fee at 6% | −$153 | Our published semi-truck rate |
| Factoring at 3% (assumption) | −$77 | Advance fee on the invoice |
| Tolls (assumption) | −$60 | Route dependent |
| Lumper (assumption) | −$150 | Reimbursable on some loads |
| Left after fuel and fees | $1,325 | Still has to cover truck, insurance, maintenance and your pay |
The headline looked like $3.00 a mile. Across total miles it is $2.63 — the 120 empty miles cost 37 cents a mile before anything else came out. Measured against ATRI's $2.336 industry-average cost across all miles, this load clears about $0.29 per mile, or roughly $284 over 970 miles. That is an operating margin, not take-home: ATRI's average is a for-hire fleet figure that already counts driver wages and benefits as a cost.
The $1,325 left after fuel and fees is not profit either. It still has to cover the truck payment, insurance, maintenance, tires and your own pay. That is exactly why the comparison against a cost-per-mile benchmark matters more than the cash that lands in the account. Run your own version in the profit per load calculator, and if the lumper line surprised you, our explainer on lumper fees covers when they are reimbursable. Factoring at 3% is an assumption — compare advance rates and recourse terms in the freight factoring guide.
Percentage Fee vs Flat Weekly Dispatch Fee
This is the decision the Dispatch ROI Calculator exists to serve, and it is pure arithmetic. A percentage of gross scales with your revenue; a flat weekly fee does not. Using our own published dispatch pricing of 6% per load or $250 per week flat for a semi truck, the two cost the same when 6% of your weekly gross equals $250 — a weekly gross of about $4,167. Below that, percentage is cheaper. Above it, the flat rate is, and the gap widens the better you run.
| Weekly gross | At 6% | Flat weekly | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3,000 | $180 | $250 | Percentage saves $70 |
| $4,167 | $250 | $250 | Break-even |
| $5,000 | $300 | $250 | Flat saves $50 |
| $6,500 | $390 | $250 | Flat saves $140 |
| $8,000 | $480 | $250 | Flat saves $230 |
Run the numbers over a year and the gap gets concrete. A truck grossing $6,500 a week over 50 working weeks pays $19,500 on a 6% model against $12,500 on a flat $250 — a $7,000 difference for identical work. The trade-off is real in the other direction too: in a slow week with one load, percentage pricing costs you almost nothing while a flat fee still bills.
Put your own volume through the dispatch ROI calculator. For what the wider market charges rather than what we charge, see our survey of truck dispatch rates, and if you are weighing whether to book your own freight at all, read dispatch vs self-dispatch.
What Counts as Normal: Deadhead, Margin and Cost Benchmarks
Deadhead
Published reality first: ATRI's 2026 operational costs report found empty mileage averaged 16.5% in 2025, excluding tanker fleets, and noted that deadhead mileage remained elevated through the freight downturn. Advice telling you to keep deadhead under 10% is describing a strong, dispatch-managed outcome, not the industry norm.
Use those bands honestly. Under 10% is very good and usually means someone is planning your lanes rather than reacting to load boards. The mid-teens is ordinary. Sustained running above 25% is a lane problem, not a bad week — you are repeatedly delivering into places that do not ship back out. Our guide to avoiding deadhead covers the lane-pairing side; the deadhead miles calculator prices a specific empty run.
What an empty mile costs is arithmetic, not opinion. At 6.5 MPG and the EIA weekly diesel average of $5.257 per gallon for the week ending August 10, 2026, fuel alone is about $0.81 per empty mile. Tires, maintenance and the fixed costs those miles absorb push the real figure higher. An empty mile is close to a loaded mile in cost and produces no revenue — that is the whole reason deadhead is worth measuring.
Margin
ATRI reported 2025 operating margins below 1.0% for truckload and refrigerated carriers, 4.0% for tank carriers, and an operating loss of -0.5% for flatbed. Those are for-hire fleet margins with driver pay counted as a cost, so an owner-operator's take-home is a different measure — but they set the scale. If your loads clear cost by a few cents per mile, you are running in line with the sector, not failing at it.
Cost
ATRI put the 2025 all-in average at $2.336 per mile, up 3.4%, with the largest increases in tolls (13.2%), repair and maintenance (8.6%), driver benefits (6.6%) and tires (6.4%). Excluding fuel, costs rose 4.2% to $1.854 per mile — which is the important part: the pressure in 2025 was not coming from the pump. Owner- operators responding to the OOIDA Foundation's Freight Rate Survey published in January 2025 reported a lower average operating cost of $2.00 per mile for 2024, against an average rate of $2.22 per mile, or $2.45 for those running under their own authority. Keeping your books clean enough to know which of those you resemble is covered in our trucking bookkeeping guide.
Trucking Numbers Glossary
The twenty terms that appear in the calculators above, in plain language.
- Cost per mile (CPM)
- Every dollar you spend to run the truck divided by every mile you turn, loaded and empty. ATRI put the 2025 industry average at $2.336 per mile.
- Revenue per mile (RPM)
- Gross pay on a load divided by miles. Divide by total miles including deadhead, not loaded miles, or you will overstate what you earned.
- Break-even rate
- The rate per mile at which you neither make nor lose money. It equals your cost per mile. Below it, you are paying to haul freight.
- Fixed cost
- Spending that does not change with mileage — truck and trailer payments, insurance premiums, permits, parking. More miles spreads it thinner.
- Variable cost
- Spending that scales with mileage — fuel, tires, repairs, tolls. Roughly constant per mile no matter how much you run.
- Deadhead
- Empty miles between a delivery and the next pickup. They burn the same fuel and wear the same tires as loaded miles but earn nothing directly.
- Fuel surcharge (FSC)
- A separate per-mile charge that moves with diesel prices, keeping fuel volatility out of the base line-haul rate.
- Freight factoring
- Selling an unpaid invoice to a factor for immediate cash, minus a fee. Recourse factoring leaves you liable if the broker never pays; non-recourse does not, and costs more.
- Advance rate
- The share of an invoice the factor pays up front, with the balance released after the broker settles, less the fee.
- Detention
- Money owed when a shipper or receiver holds you past the free window, usually two hours. It is only collectible if your arrival and departure times are documented.
- Layover
- Compensation for a day lost waiting when a load cannot be worked until the following day.
- Lumper fee
- A charge for third-party labor unloading your trailer, typically at grocery and food warehouses. Usually reimbursed if you get it in writing first.
- TONU
- Truck Ordered Not Used — a flat payment when you have accepted and started toward a load that is then cancelled.
- Spot rate
- A one-off price for a single load on the open market. Moves fast with capacity and season.
- Contract rate
- A negotiated rate held over a period, usually for committed volume. Steadier than spot, and usually lower when spot is hot.
- IFTA net settlement
- The International Fuel Tax Agreement squares fuel tax across member jurisdictions. Because taxes paid at the pump are credited against tax owed on miles run, a quarter can end in a refund rather than a bill.
- Per diem
- The IRS special transportation industry meal and incidental expense rate a driver may deduct for nights away from home, instead of keeping every meal receipt.
- Apportioned plates
- Registration under the International Registration Plan (IRP) that splits your registration fees across the states you run in, based on distance travelled in each.
- Double brokering
- A broker or fake carrier re-brokering a load they were paid to haul. The carrier who actually moves it is often the one who never gets paid.
- Operating margin
- Operating profit as a share of revenue. ATRI reported 2025 truckload and refrigerated margins below 1.0%, tank at 4.0% and flatbed at an operating loss of -0.5%.
Double brokering in particular is worth understanding before it costs you a load — our double brokering protection guide pairs with the broker vetting checklist. If you are still getting set up, the guide to starting a trucking business and the new authority dispatch guide sit behind the startup cost calculator.
Where These Numbers Come From
Every benchmark quoted on this page is attributed to a named third party, not to us. Cost-per-mile and margin figures come from the American Transportation Research Institute's Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update, published July 2026 and covering the 2025 operating year. Owner-operator rate and cost figures come from the OOIDA Foundation's Freight Rate Survey published in January 2025, covering 2024, based on 1,023 member responses. Diesel is the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Weekly Retail On-Highway Diesel Prices series. Authority, registration and inspection requirements follow FMCSA rules; per diem and Heavy Vehicle Use Tax references follow IRS guidance.
The IFTA calculator uses the current published quarterly tax rates for the 48 contiguous states. Distances in the deadhead and fuel tools are road-adjusted estimates, not routed mileage from a specific mapping engine, so treat them as planning figures rather than billing figures. Everything on this page is an estimate: verify an official IFTA return with your accountant before you file, and confirm Form 2290 Heavy Vehicle Use Tax and deduction treatment against current IRS guidance rather than against a calculator.
Rates, tax tables and benchmark figures on this page last reviewed August 11, 2026. Diesel figure verified against eia.gov on 2026-08-11. More background across all of these topics is in our trucking resources library, and what we actually do day to day is on the dispatch services page.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average cost per mile to operate a truck in 2026?
The most recent industry benchmark is ATRI's Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update, which put the average cost to operate a truck at $2.336 per mile in 2025 — 3.4% higher than the year before and the highest in the report's history. Excluding fuel, costs rose 4.2% to $1.854 per mile. The largest increases were tolls at 13.2%, repair and maintenance at 8.6%, driver benefits at 6.6% and tires at 6.4%. Owner-operators responding to the OOIDA Foundation's Freight Rate Survey published in January 2025 reported a lower average operating cost of $2.00 per mile for 2024, because an owner-operator's cost base differs from a for-hire fleet's.
How do I calculate my trucking cost per mile?
Add up your fixed monthly costs — truck and trailer payments, insurance, permits, parking — then divide that total by the miles you expect to run this month. That gives your fixed cost per mile. Add your variable costs per mile: fuel, maintenance, tires and tolls. The sum is your total cost per mile and also your break-even rate. Run it at two or three different monthly mileage figures, because fixed cost per mile falls as you turn more miles. The Cost Per Mile Calculator on this page does the arithmetic with your numbers.
What rate per mile do I need to break even?
Your break-even rate equals your cost per mile, calculated across total miles including deadhead — not loaded miles only. Using ATRI's 2025 industry average of $2.336 per mile across all miles, a carrier running 16.5% empty would need roughly $2.80 per loaded mile just to cover the cost of all the miles driven. Your own number will differ; the point is that a rate quoted per loaded mile always flatters the load.
How do I know if a load is worth taking?
Work out the rate per total mile, not per loaded mile. Add the deadhead to the pickup onto the loaded miles, divide the line-haul rate by that total, then subtract fuel, dispatch fee, factoring, tolls and any lumper. Compare what is left against your own cost per mile. If the rate per total mile is below your break-even, the load loses money no matter how good the headline rate looks. The worked example on this page shows every step on an 850-mile run.
What is a good deadhead percentage?
Published industry reality is higher than most advice suggests. ATRI's 2026 operational costs report found empty mileage averaged 16.5% in 2025, excluding tanker fleets. Treat that as the benchmark: below 10% is a strong, dispatch-managed outcome rather than the norm, the mid-teens is ordinary, and anything sustained above 25% points to a lane problem rather than a bad week.
How much does deadhead cost per mile?
An empty mile costs roughly the same as a loaded one, because fuel, tires and wear do not know whether the trailer is full. Fuel alone works out at about $0.81 per empty mile at 6.5 MPG using the EIA weekly U.S. on-highway diesel average of $5.257 per gallon for the week ending August 10, 2026. Add maintenance, tires and the fixed costs those miles absorb and the true figure is higher again.
What is a realistic owner-operator profit margin?
Judge it against what the sector actually earned. ATRI reported 2025 operating margins below 1.0% for truckload and refrigerated carriers, 4.0% for tank carriers and an operating loss of -0.5% for flatbed. Those are for-hire fleet margins after driver pay is counted as a cost, so they are not directly comparable to an owner-operator's take-home — but they show how thin the room is, and why a load that clears cost by a few cents a mile is normal rather than a failure.
Do I get money back from IFTA, or do I always owe?
Either is possible. IFTA is a net settlement, not a bill. You are credited for fuel tax already paid at the pump in each jurisdiction and charged for the tax owed on the miles you ran there. Buy more fuel in a high-tax state than the miles you drove there justify and that jurisdiction produces a credit. A quarter can end in a refund. That is also why an average annual IFTA liability is not a meaningful figure.
How much do dispatch services charge?
Two models dominate: a percentage of the gross on each load, or a flat weekly fee per truck. Our own published rates are 6% per load or $250 per week flat for semi trucks, and 8% or $350 per week for box trucks and hotshot. The crossover between them is arithmetic: at 6%, a flat $250 per week becomes the cheaper option once weekly gross passes about $4,167. Percentage pricing costs you most in exactly the weeks you perform best.
How accurate are these calculator results?
They are estimates built on industry-standard formulas, current state fuel tax rates and road-adjusted distance estimates, and they are only as good as the inputs you give them. Benchmarks quoted alongside them come from ATRI, the OOIDA Foundation and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, each named where it is used. For an official IFTA return or a tax filing, confirm the figures with your accountant before you submit.
Want Someone Else Running These Numbers?
Our dispatchers screen deadhead and check the rate against your cost per mile before a load is ever put in front of you — so the arithmetic on this page is done before you say yes.