INDUSTRIES / LOGISTICS & TRUCKING
Logistics & truckingKnow your cost per mile,
then price from it
Every rate decision in trucking comes back to one number: what it costs you to run a mile. Most carriers are working from an estimate they set years ago, and the gap between that estimate and reality is where the margin goes.
One number decides
every rate
Cost per mile sounds simple and rarely is. It has to include fuel, driver pay, insurance, tractor and trailer payments, maintenance, tyres, permits, tolls, and the office cost behind all of it. Miss a category and the number comes out low, which means every load you accept is thinner than you think.
Deadhead is the most commonly excluded piece. Empty miles cost fuel and driver time and generate nothing, and a lane with fifteen percent deadhead is materially worse than one with three, even at a better headline rate. Carriers who calculate cost per loaded mile without accounting for empty running consistently over-value the wrong lanes.
Maintenance is the second distortion. It arrives unevenly — nothing for months, then a transmission — and treating it as an expense when it lands makes some months look excellent and others catastrophic. Accrued per mile, it becomes a real component of what running a truck actually costs.
Driver settlements need to be accurate and, just as importantly, explicable. Per mile, percentage of load, detention, layover and deductions all interact, and settlement disputes are one of the fastest ways to lose drivers in a market where drivers are hard to replace.
Then IFTA. Quarterly fuel tax reporting depends on accurate mileage by jurisdiction and fuel purchases by state. It's administrative rather than difficult, but the record-keeping has to be right through the quarter, not reconstructed at filing.
What usually goes wrong
- Cost per mile estimated rather than calculated from actuals
- Deadhead miles excluded from the cost base
- Maintenance expensed when it lands instead of accrued per mile
- Owner-operator settlements calculated inconsistently
- Fuel purchases not tracked by state for IFTA
- Per-truck and per-lane profitability unknown
- Equipment financing and depreciation not separated properly
Bookkeeping from $299/month · Cleanup from $200 per month behind
Built around the mile
Because in this business, almost every question resolves to cost and revenue per mile.
Cost per mile
Fuel, driver pay, insurance, equipment, maintenance and overhead built into a real number, including deadhead.
Fuel & maintenance
Fuel tracked by truck and by state, maintenance accrued per mile so monthly costs reflect wear rather than repair timing.
Per-truck profitability
Revenue and cost by tractor, so you can see which units earn and which are due to be replaced.
Driver settlements
Per mile, percentage, detention and deductions calculated consistently and presented so drivers can verify them.
IFTA support
Mileage by jurisdiction and fuel purchases by state kept current through the quarter, so filing is routine.
Equipment & financing
Tractor and trailer notes split into principal and interest, with depreciation schedules maintained properly.
You'll recognise this if...
Trucking runs on thin margins across high revenue, which means small costing errors translate into large money surprisingly fast.
CPM is a guess
You'd quote a cost per mile from memory rather than from last quarter's actuals.
Maintenance shocks
A major repair reshapes the month it lands in because nothing was accrued for it.
Lanes look similar
You couldn't rank your regular lanes by profitability after deadhead.
Settlement disputes
Drivers or owner-operators query their settlements more often than you'd like.
What a real cost
per mile enables
Rate decisions change first. Once you know your true all-in cost per mile including empty running, accepting or declining a load becomes arithmetic rather than instinct. Carriers routinely discover they've been running certain lanes at or below cost.
Per-truck reporting surfaces the units that are costing more than they return — usually older equipment where maintenance has crept up past the point where the payment savings justify keeping it. That's a replacement decision made on numbers rather than on breakdowns.
Accrued maintenance smooths the monthly picture so you can actually compare periods, and it means a major repair is funded rather than absorbed as a shock.
And settlements stop being contentious. Calculated consistently and shown transparently, they become routine — which matters more than it sounds in a market where drivers move easily.
BOOK A FREE CALLEvery client gets
- Replies within 48 hours, guaranteed
- Books closed by the 15th, every month
- Flat monthly pricing, no hourly billing
- A plain-English summary with every report
- The same team every single month
- Cancel any time, files handed over cleanly
Trucking accounting questions
Yes. Mileage and load data from your TMS or ELD is what makes per-mile and per-lane costing possible, so we pull from it and reconcile against the financials monthly.
Yes, on whatever basis your agreements specify. We also flag classification, since the line between an owner-operator and an employee driver has been examined closely in several states.
We maintain the records — mileage by jurisdiction and fuel by state — through the quarter so filing is straightforward. Whether we file or you do is a conversation we'll have on the call.
Set up correctly through payroll, since it affects both the driver's take-home and the company's deduction. It's frequently done loosely and is worth getting right.
Common, and worth reporting separately. The economics differ substantially and blending them hides which model is working better for you.
Depends on your tax position, your entity structure and the current expensing rules. It's worth modelling both rather than defaulting, and it's exactly what tax planning during the year is for.
Find out what a mile
actually costs you
Thirty minutes, no pitch. We'll look at how your costs are being recorded and quote you a flat monthly price.
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