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Every load pays a rate per mile. This tells you the number underneath it: what your truck actually costs to run a mile, fixed bills and fuel and maintenance together. Below that number you’re paying to drive.
This calculator uses a sample profile. Backhaul is the app that keeps your real cost per mile, pulls this week’s live diesel, and checks every load against your floor — then tracks it to getting paid. First 3 checks free.
Sample profile — not your truck. Backhaul keeps your real bills and this week’s live diesel, then checks loads against this floor.
Fixed bills are what you pay whether the truck moves or not: truck and trailer payment, insurance, plates and permits, ELD, parking, phone, software. Keep per-load costs — tolls, lumpers, dispatch or factoring fees — off this number; they ride with the specific load, not the monthly average. Run fewer miles in a slow month and your cost per mile climbs, because the same fixed bills spread over less distance.
Start here
Ask ten owner-operators their cost per mile and half won’t have it to the penny. That’s the number a broker is really testing when the rate comes in low — whether you know your floor well enough to say no. Cost per mile is simple to define: total operating cost divided by total miles. It’s just easy to get wrong, because the biggest pieces are the ones you don’t write a check for every day.
The formula is fixed cost per mile + fuel per mile + maintenance per mile. Get those three honest and you have a floor you can price against at 9 p.m. when a load board lights up and you have four minutes to answer.
Three steps, one number
The same defaults the calculator above starts on: $6,090 fixed over 10,000 miles a month. It’s a cash floor — a wage for your own seat comes out of what’s left above it.
Sanity-check your number
There’s no single national cost per mile — yours depends on your truck payment, your miles, and the price of diesel this week. But a few public anchors keep your math honest. ATRI, the industry’s standard operating-cost survey, puts the average carrier’s marginal cost near $2.26 a mile in its latest report. Nearly a dollar of that is driver wages and benefits — which an owner-operator pays out of profit — so your cash floor usually runs lower, often $1.20–$1.50 with a newer truck and $1.65–$2.10 once you count a real wage for your own seat.
If your number lands wildly outside those ranges, check two things first: the miles you’re dividing by (a slow month inflates everything) and your real MPG (the sticker number is optimistic). Just getting your authority? The new owner-operator cost guide breaks down the full first-year numbers, insurance included.
Sources: ATRI operational costs of trucking · EIA weekly on-highway diesel prices
Cost per mile is step one
Knowing you cost $1.49 a mile is worth nothing until a broker offers $2.25 for 700 loaded miles with 150 empty to the pickup. Then the number does its job: $1,575 spread over 850 real miles is $1.85 a mile the truck actually drives — still above the floor, but a lot thinner than the quoted rate made it sound.
That’s the move cost per mile sets up: judge every load across loaded plus deadhead, against your floor plus the margin you want. Our rate per mile calculator runs that check, and the load profit calculator turns it into a take, counter, or pass on a specific offer.
Straight answers
Add up your fixed monthly bills — truck payment, insurance, permits, ELD, parking, software — and divide by the miles you actually run in a month. Add fuel per mile (diesel price ÷ your real MPG) and a maintenance reserve per mile. The three together are your all-in cost per mile. On a typical owner-operator profile that lands near $1.49 a mile; the calculator on this page shows the breakdown on your own numbers.
It varies by truck, miles, and fuel, but most owner-operators run between $1.65 and $2.10 a mile all-in once a driver wage is counted, and new operators with a fresh truck payment often sit at $1.20–$1.50 in cash costs before paying themselves. ATRI's operating-costs study puts the average carrier's marginal cost near $2.26 a mile — the closest thing to an industry benchmark.
Two buckets. Fixed costs stay the same whether the truck moves or not: truck and trailer payment, insurance, plates and permits, ELD, parking, phone, accounting or software. Variable costs move with the miles: fuel and a maintenance reserve for tires, PMs, and repairs. Keep per-load costs like tolls, lumpers, and factoring fees separate — they belong on the specific load, not the monthly average.
Because most of it is fixed. Your truck payment and insurance don't shrink when you run fewer miles, so a slow month spreads the same bills over less distance and your cost per mile climbs. Run 8,000 miles instead of 10,000 on $6,090 of fixed bills and your fixed cost per mile jumps from about $0.61 to $0.76 — the same truck, a worse floor.
Cost per mile is what your truck spends to run a mile. Rate per mile is what a load pays per loaded mile. Profit is the gap between them. Knowing your cost per mile is step one; the next step is checking a load's rate — across loaded plus deadhead miles — against that floor. Our rate per mile calculator does exactly that.
Yes — it runs right on this page with no account, no email, and no card. It starts on a typical owner-operator profile so you can see the shape, then you change any field to your own numbers. When you want to check real loads against your floor, the first 3 checks are free too.
The two biggest levers are miles and MPG. Running more paid miles a month spreads your fixed bills — truck payment, insurance, permits — over more distance, so a slow month always raises your cost per mile; keeping the truck loaded moves the number more than trimming any single bill. On the variable side, MPG is what you control day to day: less idling, steady speeds, and correct tire pressure cut fuel cost per mile more than a fuel-card discount does. Refinancing a high truck payment and re-shopping insurance at renewal chip away at the fixed side.
It depends what you're deciding. For a break-even floor — the rate below which a load literally loses money — use cash cost per mile without your pay, which is what this calculator shows. When you're judging whether the business is worth running, add a driver wage per mile so your time isn't priced at zero. Most owner-operators track both: the cash floor for a go/no-go on a load, and the all-in-with-pay number for whether the month actually worked.
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Backhaul keeps your cost profile once, pulls this week’s diesel automatically, and prices every load against your real floor — the route with tolls, deadhead, and the broker’s FMCSA record — then follows the math from decision to delivery to getting paid.
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