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Trucking cost per mile calculator: the fleet, then every truck

The fleet number first: every dollar you spent this month over every mile you drove. Then the number that matters, the same calculation for each truck, so you can see who is above the fleet and by how much.

By Djuro Kolundzija, founder of Nerivo. Started his own trucking company in 2012 and grew it past 100 trucks.

In short: trucking cost per mile = everything the fleet spent in the month (fuel, driver pay, repairs and tires, tolls, insurance, truck payments, permits and software) ÷ every mile the trucks drove, empty miles included. Industry averages run about $2.26 (2024) to $2.34 (2025) per mile per ATRI, but the useful number is each truck against your own fleet: the one 10% or more above it is where the money is.

Fleet cost per mile · one month

Trucks in the fleetTotal miles, incl. emptyRevenue per mile ($)

Fuel ($)Driver pay ($)Repairs & tires ($)Tolls ($)Insurance ($)Truck payments ($)Permits, ELD, other ($)

Fleet cost per mile

$2.050

$435,650 over 212,500 miles

Break-even rate

$2.05

per mile, all miles

Margin per mile

$0.40

at $2.45 revenue per mile

Month profit

$84,975

before tax

Fuel$0.600/mi

Driver pay$0.700/mi

Repairs & tires$0.150/mi

Tolls$0.040/mi

Insurance$0.176/mi

Truck payments$0.294/mi

Permits, ELD, other$0.089/mi

Now the same number, per truck

The fleet average hides the trucks that are costing you. Enter a few units from your ELD and fuel card statements; fixed costs (insurance, payments, other) are spread evenly at $4,760 per truck this month.

Unit	Miles	Fuel $	Repairs $	Tolls $	Driver pay $	Cost / mile	vs fleet
						$2.526	+23%
						$2.051	+0%
						$2.303	+12%
						$1.965	-4%

Red = 10% or more above the fleet.

Get this as a PDF and an Excel worksheet

A one-page PDF of the numbers above, plus the Excel worksheet with your trucks and the formulas live, so next month you only change the yellow cells. Emailed in a minute; we don't keep the figures.

How trucking cost per mile is calculated

Cost per mile = total monthly cost ÷ total monthly miles. Total cost is fuel, driver pay, repairs and tires, tolls, insurance, truck payments or leases, and permits, ELD and software. Total miles is every mile on the ELD for the month, including empty miles, because the fuel and the driver were paid on those too.

That gives you the fleet average, which is the number most owners know. It is also the number that hides the problem. In the sample fleet above, the average is about $2.05 per mile, and unit 216 runs 44% above it, mostly in repairs. Nothing in the average tells you that; the per-truck table does.

Per truck: what to pull and from where

Miles from the ELD: Motive, Samsara and Geotab all report miles by vehicle for any date range.
Fuel from the fuel card statement, by unit. Check that the unit on the card is the unit that actually fueled; purchases away from the truck’s location are the first thing Nerivo flags.
Repairs and tires from shop invoices, by unit. A repair that keeps coming back on the same truck should raise a question, not just add to the total.
Tolls from the toll account by transponder or plate.
Driver pay from payroll, by the driver who was in that truck.
Fixed costs (insurance, payments, overhead) spread evenly across trucks, unless a truck has its own payment.

Average trucking cost per mile, for reference

The American Transportation Research Institute's operational cost survey puts the marginal cost of trucking at about $2.26 per mile in 2024and $2.34 in 2025. Roughly how that splits, per mile: fuel $0.55–0.65, driver wages and benefits $0.85–0.95, repairs and maintenance $0.20–0.22, truck and trailer payments $0.35–0.40, insurance $0.10–0.11, tolls and permits $0.05. Your mix will differ with freight, region and equipment; the calculator above shows yours, and the spread between your best and worst truck matters more than the distance from the national average.

Reading the result

A truck 10% or more above the fleet is worth a look; 25% or more usually has a single cause: a repair that keeps coming back, a driver idling through the night, fuel that is not going into that truck, or a lane with tolls nobody priced in. The fix is different for each one, which is why the per-truck breakdown matters more than the number itself.

Revenue works the same way. Divide what each truck’s loads paid by the miles that truck ran, and margin per truck appears. Two trucks with the same cost per mile can have very different margins because of the lanes they run.

Frequently asked questions

What is cost per mile for a fleet?

Everything the fleet spent in the month (fuel, driver pay, repairs and tires, tolls, insurance, truck payments, permits and software) divided by every mile the trucks drove in the month, empty miles included. For a 25-truck fleet that spent $435,650 over 212,500 miles, cost per mile is $2.05.

Why calculate it per truck and not just for the fleet?

The fleet average is what all the trucks did together, so a truck running 44% above it is invisible inside it. Per truck, the fuel card, repair invoices and ELD miles for one unit give that unit's own cost per mile. That is where the money is: one or two units are usually carrying most of the gap.

What is a good cost per mile in trucking?

It depends on freight, region and equipment, so the useful comparison is your own fleet. For reference, the American Transportation Research Institute put the average marginal cost of trucking at about $2.26 per mile in 2024 and $2.34 in 2025, with fuel, driver wages and repairs the largest shares. A truck 10% or more above its own fleet is the one to look at.

Should empty (deadhead) miles be included?

Yes. The truck burned fuel and the driver got paid on those miles; leaving them out makes cost per mile look lower than it is. Use total ELD miles, and compare against revenue per total mile, not per loaded mile, when you check margin.

How do I split fixed costs across trucks?

Insurance, truck payments and overhead are not on any one truck's fuel card, so the calculator spreads them evenly across the fleet. Fuel, repairs, tolls and driver pay come from each truck’s own records. If one truck carries a bigger payment, put it in that truck's repairs line, or treat the payment as its own column.

Where do the per-truck numbers come from?

Miles from the ELD (Motive, Samsara, Geotab), fuel from the fuel card statement (Relay, EFS, Comdata), repairs from shop invoices, tolls from the toll account, and driver pay from payroll. The hard part is matching them: T-214 on the fuel card, 214 in the ELD and Truck 214 on the invoice all have to be the same unit. Nerivo does that matching automatically and recalculates every week.

One truck or an owner-operator? The single-truck version with a PDF report is on our sister product: Digital Permit Book’s trucking cost per mile calculator.

Nerivo IQ

Nerivo does this for every truck, every week, from your own systems.

Connect your ELD, fuel cards, tolls, TMS and shop software once. Nerivo matches every line to the right truck, driver and load, calculates cost per mile per truck, and flags the ones above the fleet, with the fuel lines, invoices and trips behind each figure. For fleets of 50+ trucks.

Get a fleet check