Free tool
Load profit per mile calculator
Score a broker rate against deadhead, fuel, and your own fixed cost per day before you accept the load.
Free tool, no sign up
Trip clock planner for hours of service
See how many days a load really takes and what it leaves on your seventy hour clock before you agree to the appointment.
Rates get argued about. Hours get assumed. A load that pays well and eats four days of your cycle can leave you parked on Friday with freight moving and no clock to run it, which is a cost that never shows up on a rate confirmation.
This planner turns miles into driving hours at a realistic average speed, splits them into days against your usual driving hours, adds the on duty time that loading, fueling, scales, and inspections take, and shows what is left of the cycle when you deliver.
Your result
Total miles including empty
1,200
The reposition leg burns clock just like the paid miles do.
Driving hours needed
25.0
Miles divided by your real door to door average speed.
Driving days needed
3
Rounded up, since half a driving day still takes a full reset.
Cycle hours left at delivery
29.5
What remains on the seventy before recap hours start coming back.
If the cycle hours left land in single digits, price the load for the down time it forces, because the next good load will show up while you are out of clock.
Why the average speed input decides everything
Drivers plan at 60 and run at 46. Between the metro slowdowns, the scale queue on I-40, the fifteen minutes circling for a spot, and the shipper who wants you at the guard shack early, door to door averages for solo over the road work usually land in the mid to high forties.
Set the average speed to what your own last few trips actually produced, taking total miles over total elapsed driving hours. If your number is 44 rather than 55, every appointment you have ever promised was tighter than you thought, and that is worth knowing before you commit to a Monday morning delivery.
Turning clock hours into a price
A load is not just miles, it is time you cannot sell to anyone else. Two loads paying the same total can differ by a full day once you count a Sunday pickup window, a four hour live unload, and 120 empty miles to reach the shipper.
Use this planner next to the load profit calculator. If the trip takes three days and leaves 12 hours on your cycle, the real question is what the following two days will earn while you sit on a 34. That is the cost that turns a decent looking rate into a flat week.
Questions about this calculator
Does this account for the 34 hour restart?
It shows the hours you have left when you deliver rather than modeling the restart itself. If the number is low, plan a restart into the trip. The point of the tool is to see the shortage before you accept the load, not after the delivery.
Why include on duty time that is not driving?
Because it comes out of the seventy just like driving does. Pretrip, fueling, scales, live loads, and the evening parking search commonly add two to four hours a day. Leaving it out is the reason so many trips run a day longer than planned.
Can I use this for a team operation?
The math assumes one driver on one clock. A team splits driving hours across two logs, so run each driver separately or raise the driving hours per day only if you understand how your team actually swaps. Solo over the road work is what the defaults are set for.
More free tools and working documents
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.
Now put your last twenty offers through it
One number on the screen tells you about one load. Twenty scored quotes tell you where the year is leaking: the headhauls that only work if you ignore the reposition, and the brokers whose settlements come in under what the rate con promised. DeadheadMath scores every offer against your stored cost model and keeps the record. Book a demo and bring your thinnest week.