Semi Truck Load Profit CalculatorKnow Before You Book.

The American Transportation Research Institute's 2025 update put the average all-in cost of operating a truck at $2.34 per mile, $1.85 per mile excluding fuel. Fuel was 48 cents a mile, driver wages 81.8 cents and driver benefits 21 cents, so driver pay passed a dollar a mile for the first time. Owner-operators with a paid-off truck and no benefits load can run below that; a new truck with a payment can run well above it.

Take the gross pay for the load, subtract the broker's cut, then subtract every cost of running it: fuel and DEF for all the miles including deadhead, the driver's pay, tolls, a per-load share of maintenance and tires, insurance, and the fixed costs of the truck for the days the load ties it up. What is left is the net, and dividing it by all the miles gives profit per mile. If the net is positive but the margin is under what you need to cover the loads that go wrong, it is a thin load, not a good one.

Because the truck burns fuel, wears tires and uses the driver's hours on empty miles too, and nobody pays for them. A load that pays $2.60 a loaded mile but needs 150 empty miles to reach it pays far less per mile the truck actually ran. The calculator charges fuel, DEF and wear on every mile and shows the rate per loaded mile next to the rate per all miles so the difference is visible.

It depends on the lane, the trailer, the season and the market, which is why the calculator does not guess one. The useful number is your own break-even rate, the rate at which the load exactly covers its costs, and then the rate that clears your target margin. ATRI's 2025 cost of $2.34 a mile is a reasonable floor: a rate near it leaves nothing for the loads that go wrong.

A freight broker arranges the load and keeps a percentage of what the shipper pays, commonly 10 to 20 percent. The calculator takes the fee off the gross before any costs, so the margin and the break-even rate are figured on what reaches the carrier, not on the shipper's rate.

Everything the truck costs whether it moves or not, spread over the days you expect to run: the truck and trailer payment, insurance that is billed monthly, plates, permits, ELD and software subscriptions, parking, phone, accounting. Add them up for the month and divide by working days. A newer truck with a payment is often $150 to $250 a day; a paid-off truck much less.

ATRI reported repair and maintenance at roughly 20 cents a mile for fleets in 2025, with tires on top, and the figure jumped 8.6 percent that year. Twenty to twenty-five cents a mile across all the miles on the load is a sound starting allowance; a well-maintained truck on Preventative Maintenance runs below it, a neglected one far above it in the month it finally breaks.

The diesel price at which this load would make exactly zero. If the break-even is $4.40 a gallon and the pump is at $3.75, the load has 65 cents a gallon of cushion against a price spike before it turns to a loss. It is a quick way to see how exposed a thin load is.

Yes. Diesel exhaust fluid is figured as a percentage of the diesel burned, 3 percent by default, at its own price. It is a few dollars on most loads and it is never on a rate confirmation, which is exactly why it belongs in the math.

One road call can erase the profit on several loads: the repair, a tow if it comes to that, the driver's time, a missed delivery window and the next load you could not take. Preventative maintenance is what keeps that line off the ledger. Superior Truck and Trailer runs PM programs and 24/7 Mobile & Roadside Assistance out of Louisville so the truck earns instead of sitting.