Free tool
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.
Free tool, no sign up
Load profit per mile calculator
Score a broker rate against deadhead, fuel, and your own fixed cost per day before you accept the load.
A rate per loaded mile is a marketing number. The mile that pays your truck note is any mile the wheels turn, loaded or empty, which is why a 2,450 dollar load over 1,080 loaded miles looks like 2.27 and lands nearer 2.04 once you count the 120 miles you ran to reach the shipper.
This calculator does the whole chain: total miles, fuel burned at your MPG and your diesel price, fixed cost across the days the trip takes, then what is left per total mile. If the last figure lands under your break-even, the load is charity no matter how good the rate per loaded mile sounded on the phone.
Your result
Total miles the truck turns
1,200
Loaded plus empty, because both legs wear the same tires.
Fuel cost for the trip
$729
Fuel burned over every mile, not just the paid ones.
Net after fuel and fixed cost
$866
Trip days are estimated at 500 miles a day, rounded up.
Net per total mile
$0.72
What is left for maintenance, tires, and your own pay on every mile turned.
This treats maintenance, tires, and your pay as what the net has to cover, so compare the last figure against your own reserve target per mile.
How to set fixed cost per day honestly
Add the truck note, the trailer note if you own one, the annual insurance premium divided by twelve, plates and apportioned registration, UCR, the 2290, ELD and load board subscriptions, parking, and whatever you pay for bookkeeping. That is a month of bills that arrive whether or not you turned a wheel.
Now divide by the days you actually run. Home time, a week down with a turbo, and the day you spent at the DOT inspection station are not working days. Most single truck operations land between 230 and 260 working days a year. Using 365 is the most common way carriers talk themselves into cheap freight.
Reading the result against a real decision
Take the default case: 2,450 dollars, 1,080 loaded, 120 empty, diesel at 3.95, six and a half miles per gallon, 285 a day fixed. Fuel takes roughly 730 dollars. Three trip days take 855. What is left divided across 1,200 total miles is the number that matters, and it has to still cover tires, maintenance reserve, and your pay.
Run the same load with 400 empty miles instead of 120 and watch what happens. That is the single most useful thing this calculator does. A strong rate out of a hot market and a long reposition to reach it is the classic trap, and the arithmetic catches it in about eight seconds.
Questions about this calculator
Should I include the fuel surcharge in the linehaul field?
Enter the all in number the broker will actually pay you. If they quote linehaul plus a surcharge, add them together. The calculator charges you for real fuel burned at your own MPG, so a surcharge that does not cover the burn shows up immediately in the net.
Why estimate trip days at 500 miles a day?
It is a realistic average for a solo driver once you allow for loading, fueling, scales, and the parking search. If your lanes run better or worse than that, adjust your fixed cost per day figure slightly to compensate, or use the trip clock planner for a closer look at the hours.
Does this replace a full cost per mile model?
It handles the two costs that vary most per load, which are fuel and time. Maintenance, tires, and your own pay are what the net figure has to cover. A full DeadheadMath account stores all of that and checks it against your settlements over time.
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.