How to calculate your cost per mile as an owner-operator (2026)

A broker offers you $2.50 a mile. Is that a good load? You cannot answer that until you know what it costs you to run one mile. Cost per mile is the one number that turns a rate from a feeling into a decision.

The math is not hard. It is just a lot of small numbers that are easy to forget. Here is the whole thing in five steps.

Step 1: add up your miles for the year

Take the miles you run in a normal week and multiply by the weeks you actually work. A truck running 2,500 miles a week for 48 weeks covers 120,000 miles a year. Use all miles here, loaded and empty. You pay for fuel, tires and the truck note on every one of them.

Step 2: add up your fixed costs

Fixed costs are the bills that arrive whether the truck moves or not.

• Truck payment and trailer payment
• Insurance (liability, cargo, physical damage)
• Plates, permits, UCR and your 2290 heavy vehicle tax
• ELD and software subscriptions
• Phone, parking and office costs

Add them up for the year and divide by your annual miles. That is your fixed cost per mile. The fewer miles you run, the more each mile has to carry.

Step 3: add your running costs

Running costs only happen when the truck moves.

• Fuel: the price of a gallon divided by your miles per gallon. Diesel at $6.29 and 6.5 mpg is about 97 cents a mile.
• Maintenance and repairs: set money aside on every mile, even in the months nothing breaks.
• Tires
• Tolls

Step 4: pay yourself

This is the step people skip. If you drive the truck, your pay is a cost of running it. Decide what you need to take home in a year and divide it by your miles. $70,000 a year over 120,000 miles is about 58 cents a mile. If you leave your own pay out, a rate can look profitable while you work for free.

Step 5: put it together

These are example numbers for one dry van running 2,500 miles a week, 48 weeks a year, with 12% empty miles, diesel at the Midwest average for the week of October 5, 2026 ($6.29 a gallon), a $2,400 truck payment, a $600 trailer payment, $14,000 a year for insurance and $70,000 a year of take-home pay for the owner. Your numbers will be different, which is the whole point of running them.

Cost per mile is not the rate you need

Brokers pay you for loaded miles only. If 12% of your miles are empty, every loaded mile has to pay for itself and for part of an empty one. Divide your cost per mile by the share of your miles that are loaded: $2.31 divided by 0.88 is $2.63. That is your break-even rate per loaded mile. Below it, you are paying to haul the freight.

Then add a profit margin, because a truck that only breaks even cannot survive a blown engine. At a 10% margin the example truck needs about $2.92 a loaded mile.

How this compares with the industry

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) surveys carriers every year. Its latest report puts the industry average cost at about $2.34 a mile. A one-truck operation will not match a large fleet line for line, but if your number is far below that, check that you counted your own pay, maintenance and empty miles.

Run it again when something changes

Your cost per mile moves every time diesel moves, your insurance renews or you change how many miles you run. A dollar on diesel adds about 19 cents to the rate the example truck needs. Rerun your numbers at least every quarter, and any time a big bill changes.