Load Profit Calculator

How this calculator works

The calculator adds your loaded and deadhead miles together to get total miles, then estimates fuel cost from your fuel price and fuel efficiency. It multiplies your total miles by your per-mile operating cost (everything besides fuel — truck payment, insurance, maintenance, tires, permits) to get non-fuel operating cost. Dispatch and factoring fees, if entered, are subtracted from revenue in sequence, since factoring is typically applied to revenue that's already net of dispatch fees. What's left after every cost and fee is your estimated profit.

Worked example

Suppose a load pays $2,000 for 800 loaded miles, with 100 deadhead miles to reach pickup — 900 total miles. Fuel is $4.00/gallon and the truck gets 6.5 MPG, so fuel cost is about $554. At an operating cost of $0.65/mile (excluding fuel), non-fuel operating cost is $585. Total operating cost is about $1,139, leaving an estimated profit of about $861 — a 43% margin. Revenue per loaded mile is $2.50, while revenue per total mile (including deadhead) is about $2.22 — a useful reminder that deadhead miles dilute your effective rate.

How profit changes with revenue

Using the same trip as the worked example above (900 total miles, $1,139 in total cost), here's how profit and margin move as revenue changes:

Same costs and miles throughout — only revenue changes. Run your own numbers above rather than relying on this example.

Understanding the inputs and outputs

• Operating cost per mile should reflect your all-in per-mile cost excluding fuel — this calculator asks for fuel separately because fuel price and efficiency vary trip to trip.
• Break-even revenue is the load revenue at which your estimated profit would be exactly zero, given the miles, costs, and fees you entered — a useful floor for rate negotiation.
• Revenue per total mile divides revenue by loaded plus deadhead miles, showing your real effective rate once empty miles are accounted for — typically lower than revenue per loaded mile.

Common mistakes

• Ignoring deadhead miles entirely when evaluating a load's rate.
• Using a rough guess for operating cost per mile instead of a number based on actual expenses (see the Cost Per Mile Calculator).
• Forgetting to include factoring or dispatch fees when they apply to a load, which can turn an apparently profitable load into a loss.

Limitations

This calculator assumes one operating-cost-per-mile figure for the entire trip and doesn't separately account for tolls, lumper fees, detention pay, or per-stop pay differences on multi-stop loads. For a business-wide view across every load in a month, use the Owner-Operator Profit Calculator instead.