Working document
The break-even rate per mile worksheet
Fill in four short sections and you finish with the single number you should never book freight below.
Free resources
Resources for pricing freight and protecting your margin
Everything here exists to help you answer one question faster: does this load pay enough to be worth your truck, your clock, and your empty miles.
The calculators handle the two costs that move most per load, which are fuel over every mile turned and the days the trip ties up the truck. The break-even worksheet is the slower job, done once a quarter, that gives those calculators a floor to compare against.
The comparison pages describe what other software in this trade is built to do, so you can tell which problem you are actually buying for. If your gap is bookkeeping or invoicing, those pages will send you elsewhere with a clear conscience. If your gap is pricing loads before you accept them, that is the job DeadheadMath was built for.
Free tools
Free load math for owner operators and small carriers
Run the two numbers that decide whether a load is worth taking: what it nets per total mile, and what it costs you in hours on the fourteen and the seventy.
Comparisons
DeadheadMath compared with the tools owner operators already use
DeadheadMath answers one question in the ninety seconds before you call the broker back: does this load clear your cost per mile once deadhead and fuel are in it.
Main guide
Cost Per Mile Line by Line: Every Category and How to Check It
It settles what your truck actually costs per mile, category by category, with the sources to check every figure against.
Magazine
Mile Marker
Freight economics for owner operators and small carriers: rate per mile, deadhead, fuel, settlements, and the rules of the road.
About
Who writes all of this
Who runs DeadheadMath, why the empty miles question turned into a calculator, and how this freight math ended up written for one and two truck carriers rather than for fleets.
Keep the worksheet, add the running count
The calculators and the break-even worksheet are free to use with no account, and plenty of one truck carriers get by on nothing more. The difference an account makes is that your floor per loaded mile gets rebuilt from real settlements and real deadhead every month instead of by hand each quarter. Book a demo and we will run it against your last three months of freight.