Owner Operator Salary: Income and Earnings Breakdown (2026)

Owner operator salary is the net income a truck owner keeps after paying the costs of running the truck, not a wage. Owner-operator income, take-home pay and net profit all describe the same figure: gross revenue from settlements or broker payments, minus fuel, the truck payment, insurance, maintenance and every other operating cost, before income tax. Employee truck driver wages measure something else, and published wage surveys leave owner operators out.

The best current benchmark comes from ATBS, a business services firm that keeps the books and files the tax returns for about 20,000 owner-operators. It put their average net income at $71,808 for 2025, up 0.5% on 2024.¹ The Bureau of Labor Statistics median for employee heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers was $58,640 in May 2025.⁵

How Owner Operator Income Works

Owner operator income is what remains of gross revenue after operating costs.

Gross revenue, operating costs and net income

Gross revenue is everything the truck bills: line haul, fuel surcharge and accessorial pay. For a leased owner operator it arrives as a settlement from the carrier. For an owner operator with authority it arrives as broker and shipper payments, sometimes through a factor.

Operating costs are everything the truck spends. Fuel, the truck and trailer payments, insurance, maintenance, tires, tolls and permits are the large lines; Owner Operator Expenses: Costs and Budget Breakdown takes them one by one. Net income is gross revenue minus those costs, and it is the figure that pays the owner, the self-employment tax and the income tax.

ATBS's full-year 2025 numbers show how the pieces moved. Average gross revenue fell 1.3%, miles fell 3.8% to about 95,000 a year, and revenue per mile rose 2.9%. Net income still finished up 0.5%, at $71,808.¹

Leased owner operators and owner operators with authority

How an owner operator gets paid depends on whether the truck runs under a carrier's authority or its own.

A leased owner operator is paid under a written lease, and FMCSA's leasing rule sets what the lease must say. Under 49 CFR 376.12(d), the pay "shall be clearly stated on the face of the lease or in an addendum" and may be "a percentage of gross revenue, a flat rate per mile, a variable rate depending on the direction traveled or the type of commodity transported, or by any other method" the parties agree. Paragraph (f) requires payment within 15 days after the necessary delivery documents are submitted. Paragraph (k) requires the lease to state the amount of any escrow fund, what it can be applied to, and how the carrier accounts for it.¹⁴

Three more paragraphs of the rule decide what reaches the bank account after a settlement. Paragraph (h) requires the lease to list every item the carrier pays first and deducts from the owner operator's pay, "together with a recitation as to how the amount of each item is to be computed," and to give the owner operator copies of the documents behind each charge. Paragraph (i) bars the carrier from requiring the owner operator to buy or rent products, equipment or services from it as a condition of the lease. Paragraph (j) requires the lease to say who pays for insurance beyond the carrier's public liability cover, such as bobtail insurance, and how much of it is charged back.¹⁴ Two leases with the same pay rate can leave very different net income after charge-backs.

An owner operator with authority bills brokers and shippers directly. It keeps the whole rate, pays for what a carrier would otherwise supply, and waits for its customers' payment terms. Mike Hosted, an ATBS vice president, put maintenance for the average independent with authority at roughly 20 cents a mile, while a 2025 truck under warranty might need as little as 5 cents a mile.⁴

Why BLS wage figures are not owner operator income

BLS wage data come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook says plainly that the figures do not include pay for self-employed workers, "because these data are not collected by the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey."⁵ The same page puts self-employed workers at 7% of the occupation's roughly 2.2 million jobs in 2025.

The BLS median of $58,640 is an employee's wage before benefits. It suits a company driver weighing a move to owner operator, and it does not measure an owner operator's income.

What Owner Operators Earn, With a Worked Example

The published figures below are the ones this page relies on, each with its year and publisher. After them comes a worked example that turns gross revenue into net income in dollars a year, a month and a mile.

The benchmarks, with year and source

Each figure is shown with the period it covers.

Figure	Value	Period	Source
Owner operator average net income	$71,808	2025	ATBS, 16 April 20261
Owner operator average gross revenue	$184,765	12 months to June 2026	ATBS via Overdrive, 11 September 20263
Owner operator average miles	About 95,000	2025	ATBS1
Owner operator average maintenance	$14,222	2025	ATBS via Overdrive4
Employee heavy truck driver median wage	$58,640	May 2025	BLS5
Lowest 10% and highest 10% of employee drivers	Below $40,140; above $79,380	May 2025	BLS5
Employee driver median, truck transportation industry	$60,320	May 2025	BLS5
Fleet driver wages and benefits per mile	$0.818 and $0.210	2025	ATRI via FleetOwner7

ATBS changed how it calculates the average for 2025. John Kingston reported in FreightWaves that ATBS stopped removing the lowest-paid and highest-paid clients as outliers and changed "a few other steps." Under the old method, ATBS reported 2024 at $64,000; recalculated on the new basis, 2024 was essentially flat with 2025's $71,800.² Any comparison with an ATBS average from an earlier year has to account for that change.

What each benchmark leaves out

No source measures owner operator income directly across a random sample of owner operators, so each figure on this page comes with a limit:

• ATBS measures its own clients, about 20,000 owner-operators who pay the firm for bookkeeping and tax work.² Owners who keep their own books or use another firm are not in the average, and from 2025 it includes the highest and lowest earners that earlier years removed.²
• ATRI surveys motor carriers, so its per-mile costs describe fleets, not one-truck owner operators.⁶ Its driver wage and benefit lines are what a carrier pays an employee, and its 22-cent maintenance line runs above the 14 cents ATBS reports for its clients.²⁷
• BLS counts employees only. Self-employed drivers, 7% of the occupation, sit outside the wage survey, and the $58,640 median covers every industry that employs heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers.⁵
• The worked example below mixes periods: gross revenue for the twelve months to June 2026 and costs for calendar 2025. It shows how the published figures fit together, not what any one truck earned.

ATRI's cost per mile, line by line

The American Transportation Research Institute's "An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking" put the average cost of operating a truck at $2.336 a mile in 2025, 3.4% higher than 2024 and the highest in the report's history.⁶ FleetOwner's Jeremy Wolfe reported the line items.⁷ The yearly column multiplies each one by ATBS's 95,000 miles.

Cost line, 2025	Per mile	Per year at 95,000 miles
Fuel	$0.482	$45,790
Truck payments	$0.280	$26,600
Trailer payments	$0.120	$11,400
Repair and maintenance	$0.220	$20,900
Insurance premiums	$0.110	$10,450
Tires	$0.050	$4,750
Tolls	$0.043	$4,085
Permits and licenses	$0.008	$760
Driver wages	$0.818	$77,710
Driver benefits	$0.210	$19,950
Total	$2.336	$221,920

The line items are rounded, so the rows add to $2.341. ATRI's data come from motor carriers of all sizes, not from owner operators, and two lines read differently for a one-truck business. The driver wage and benefit lines are the owner's own pay. ATBS's clients spend about 14 cents a mile on maintenance, below ATRI's 22 cents.²

Worked example: gross to net for one truck

The example uses published averages for every input and states each assumption.

• Miles: 95,000 a year, ATBS's 2025 average.¹
• Gross revenue: $184,765, ATBS's average for the twelve months to June 2026,³ which is $1.94 a mile.
• Operating costs: ATRI's 2025 total of $2.336 a mile minus driver wages and benefits of $1.028,⁶⁷ which leaves $1.308 a mile.
• Leased variant: the same, minus ATRI's trailer cost of $0.120, which leaves $1.188 a mile for an owner operator pulling the carrier's trailer.

	With a trailer to pay for	Leased, carrier's trailer
Gross revenue a year	$184,765	$184,765
Operating costs a year	$124,260	$112,860
Net income a year, before tax	$60,505	$71,905
Net income a month	$5,042	$5,992
Net income a mile	$0.64	$0.76
Self-employment tax a year	$8,549	$10,160
Net after self-employment tax, a year	$51,956	$61,745
Net after self-employment tax, a month	$4,330	$5,145
Net after self-employment tax, a mile	$0.55	$0.65

Self-employment tax in the table is 15.3% of 92.35% of net income, the base Schedule SE uses.⁸¹⁵ Income tax is not in the table, because it depends on filing status, deductions and state. Half of the self-employment tax reduces adjusted gross income for income tax purposes.⁸

The leased column lands within about $100 of ATBS's 2025 average net income. The gross figure runs to mid-2026 and the costs come from fleets, so the match is partly coincidence.

Per diem lowers taxable income. IRS Notice 2025-54 set the transportation industry meal and incidental rate at $80 a day inside the continental United States from 1 October 2025,¹² and Publication 463 lets drivers under hours-of-service limits deduct 80% of it.¹³ An illustrative 200 nights away from home comes to $16,000, of which $12,800 is deductible. The per diem calculator also counts departure and return days, at 75% of the rate.

Self-Employed Driver Income by State

The Census Bureau's American Community Survey reports earnings for self-employed drivers state by state, which the BLS wage survey cannot. Small Fleet HQ tabulated the survey's 2020 to 2024 five-year microdata, downloaded from the Census Bureau on 14 September 2026.¹⁶ It counts about 562,000 self-employed people in the driver/sales worker and truck driver occupation, with median earnings of $47,730 in 2024 dollars, give or take $800. The median is $42,800 for owners of unincorporated businesses and $53,600 for owners of incorporated ones.¹⁶

The group is everyone whose current or most recent job is in that occupation, who works for their own business, incorporated or not, and who was working or reported self-employment income. Earnings are wages plus self-employment income from all jobs in the 12 months before the interview, pooled across the five survey years and adjusted to 2024 dollars. Each margin is a 90% margin of error from the survey's 80 replicate weights. The table gives no figures for a state when fewer than 50 self-employed drivers there answered the survey, or when its count or median is too uncertain to rely on, meaning the standard error is more than 30% of the figure. Most published states carry margins of several thousand dollars, so two states a few thousand dollars apart may not differ at all.

State	Self-employed drivers	Median earnings, 2024 dollars (90% margin)	Note
Alabama	8,500	$52,500 (±$8,600)
Alaska	Not reported	Not reported	Too few survey responses (under 50)
Arizona	8,500	$47,700 (±$7,700)
Arkansas	5,500	$41,800 (±$8,200)
California	66,700	$45,100 (±$2,600)
Colorado	8,100	$41,500 (±$10,000)
Connecticut	3,600	$46,000 (±$10,600)
Delaware	1,700	$41,800 (±$16,700)
District of Columbia	Not reported	Not reported	Too few survey responses (under 50)
Florida	46,400	$40,600 (±$2,500)
Georgia	22,000	$45,800 (±$6,800)
Hawaii	Not reported	Not reported	Too few survey responses (under 50)
Idaho	4,300	$45,300 (±$11,300)
Illinois	26,900	$47,800 (±$4,300)
Indiana	11,200	$45,200 (±$9,500)
Iowa	8,400	$59,900 (±$10,700)
Kansas	5,300	$60,900 (±$14,500)
Kentucky	7,600	$50,800 (±$11,700)
Louisiana	8,300	$52,500 (±$9,300)
Maine	1,900	$55,000 (±$17,600)
Maryland	8,800	$41,600 (±$4,600)
Massachusetts	6,500	$40,600 (±$6,400)
Michigan	15,100	$44,700 (±$3,600)
Minnesota	10,600	$55,900 (±$6,800)
Mississippi	6,600	$50,800 (±$6,800)
Missouri	10,300	$48,900 (±$5,800)
Montana	Not reported	Not reported	Estimate too uncertain to report
Nebraska	4,200	$60,900 (±$6,400)
Nevada	4,000	$40,600 (±$4,000)
New Hampshire	1,100	$42,000 (±$11,000)
New Jersey	14,900	$47,600 (±$5,000)
New Mexico	3,000	$45,800 (±$9,700)
New York	21,500	$35,800 (±$1,700)
North Carolina	18,500	$44,700 (±$4,500)
North Dakota	2,000	$53,700 (±$8,700)
Ohio	19,300	$47,200 (±$4,700)
Oklahoma	7,200	$42,000 (±$9,500)
Oregon	5,000	$44,700 (±$19,500)
Pennsylvania	16,900	$52,500 (±$4,300)
Rhode Island	Not reported	Not reported	Too few survey responses (under 50)
South Carolina	10,700	$50,800 (±$8,300)
South Dakota	2,500	$60,900 (±$9,200)
Tennessee	11,200	$42,000 (±$6,400)
Texas	72,600	$52,500 (±$2,300)
Utah	4,200	$55,800 (±$9,900)
Vermont	Not reported	Not reported	Too few survey responses (under 50)
Virginia	10,000	$45,700 (±$8,000)
Washington	12,500	$50,800 (±$6,500)
West Virginia	2,500	$43,000 (±$3,500)
Wisconsin	9,600	$55,900 (±$7,000)
Wyoming	Not reported	Not reported	Too few survey responses (under 50)

The survey measures something different from ATBS's $71,808. The Census Bureau defines self-employment income as gross receipts minus business expenses,¹⁷ but the figure is whatever a household member recalls and rounds. The occupation also includes driver/sales workers, such as route delivery drivers, and about a third of the group works outside the truck transportation industry. Owners of incorporated businesses, 37% of the group, may pay themselves a wage and leave profit in the company, and only the pay they take counts here. The pooled years also include 2020.

Owner Operator Income in Practice for a 1–5 Truck Fleet

What an individual truck nets comes down to the rate per mile, the freight segment, the age of the equipment, and whether the owner drives the truck or pays someone else to.

What moves one truck's net income

Four inputs move it.

• Rate per mile. ATBS clients' gross revenue rose 9.3%, or $15,712, in the twelve months to June 2026. Overdrive reported that about half of the increase came from fuel surcharges covering a higher fuel bill and half from rate increases.³ Only the rate half reaches net income.
• Freight segment. Over the same period, leased flatbed owner-operators among ATBS clients grew revenue 17.5%, reefer owners gained a quarter of the all-segment average, and tank operators grossed the most, averaging more than $227,000.³ For 2025, ATBS reported income gains among leased dry van, flatbed and tanker owners, and losses in other segments.⁴
• Maintenance and truck age. "Maintenance is crazy," ATBS President Todd Amen told FreightWaves, putting the 2025 increase at 6.5% and the cost at about 14 cents a mile, against 6 to 7 cents a few years ago.² A newer truck under warranty cuts that line and raises the truck payment line.
• Miles. ATBS clients ran about 95,000 miles in 2025, 3.8% fewer than in 2024.¹ At the worked example's 76 cents of net per mile, 5,000 fewer miles is about $3,800 of net income.

Owner operator income against company driver pay

A driver weighing the move needs a company wage and owner operator net income side by side, even though they measure different things. The owner operator column uses the leased worked example above, and the benefits line converts ATRI's fleet cost at the same 95,000 miles.

	Company driver	Leased owner operator
Wage or net income a year	$58,640, BLS median, May 20255	$71,905, before tax
Benefits	Employer-paid; ATRI fleets spent $0.210 a mile, about $19,9507	Paid by the owner out of net income
Social Security and Medicare	7.65% withheld, $4,486; the employer pays the other 7.65%9	15.3% self-employment tax, $10,1608
Left after Social Security and Medicare	$54,154	$61,745

On these figures the leased owner operator keeps about $7,600 more a year before income tax. The company driver's employer also spends about $19,950 on benefits at ATRI's fleet average, which the owner operator pays for, or goes without, from that margin and more.

Adding a second truck with a hired driver

The first truck still pays the owner, but the second truck earns only what is left after paying a driver.

ATRI's full cost of $2.336 a mile, driver included, comes to $221,920 a year at 95,000 miles.⁶ The same truck grossing ATBS's average of $184,765 would lose $37,155 a year. At that mileage, a hired-driver truck breaks even only when its gross revenue reaches about $2.34 a mile.

Carriers are working with almost no margin. ATRI found operating margins below 1.0% for truckload and refrigerated carriers in 2025, and an average operating loss of 0.5% for flatbed carriers.⁶ Chad Marsilio, chief operating officer of PGT Trucking, said in ATRI's release that "fleets must continue with aggressive cost discipline."⁶ Check the rate per mile a second truck can book before signing for its truck payment.

2026 so far

Revenue is recovering faster than income. Overdrive reported on 11 September 2026 that ATBS clients' gross revenue was up 9.3% in the twelve months to June. Todd Amen said it was "fantastic to see a recovery," then added that "cost inflation has limited how much of this additional revenue reaches the bottom line."³ ATBS had not published a net income figure for that period when this page was checked.

Rules and Citations That Govern Owner Operator Income

The rules below decide what an owner operator keeps. Each was checked on 13 September 2026.

• Self-employment tax rate. 15.3% of net earnings: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, applied on Schedule SE to 92.35% of net profit.¹⁵ Schedule SE is required once net earnings reach $400, and the employer-equivalent half of the tax is deductible when working out adjusted gross income.⁸¹⁰
• 2026 Social Security wage base. The Social Security part of the tax applies to the first $184,500 of combined wages and self-employment earnings in 2026. Medicare has no cap, and a 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax applies above $200,000 for a single filer.⁸⁹
• Estimated tax. Sole proprietors generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe $1,000 or more when the return is filed.¹¹
• Per diem. IRS Notice 2025-54: $80 a day inside the continental United States and $86 outside it for the transportation industry, for travel from 1 October 2025.¹²
• Meal deduction limit. Publication 463: 80% of business meal expenses for "interstate truck operators and bus drivers who are under Department of Transportation regulations," against 50% for most taxpayers.¹³
• Lease pay terms. 49 CFR 376.12(d) requires pay to be stated in the lease; (f) requires payment within 15 days of the delivery documents; (h) requires every charge-back item to be listed with how it is computed; (i) bars the carrier from requiring the owner operator to buy or rent from it; (j) requires the lease to say who pays for insurance beyond the carrier's public liability cover; (k) requires the escrow amount, its permitted uses and an accounting to be set out.¹⁴
• What wage surveys cover. The BLS OEWS survey excludes self-employed workers, so its truck driver wages are employee wages only.⁵

What to Do Next

The questions below decide whether the averages on this page apply to you, and in what order to check them.

Do you know your own cost per mile?

If not, start there. Every income figure on this page depends on it, and the cost-per-mile calculator works it out from your fuel, payments, insurance and maintenance.

Does your rate per mile clear your cost per mile by enough to live on?

At 95,000 miles, every 10 cents of margin is $9,500 a year before tax. The leased owner operator in the worked example clears about 76 cents a mile; a margin well below that puts you under ATBS's average.

Would you lease on or run your own authority?

A lease puts the pay method and a 15-day payment deadline in writing under 49 CFR 376.12.¹⁴ Your own authority keeps the whole rate and adds broker payment terms, insurance, permits and, for most, a trailer.

Do you have the cash to start?

If you are still planning the move, the Trucking Startup Cost Calculator adds up authority, insurance down payments, equipment and the working capital to cover the weeks before the first payment.

Have you set money aside for quarterly tax?

If you expect to owe $1,000 or more, the IRS expects estimated payments during the year.¹¹ In the worked example, self-employment tax alone is $10,160 a year before any income tax.

Who This Is Wrong For

Owner operator income does not suit every driver, and these are the situations where the averages on this page argue against the move.

• You need a steady paycheck every week. Net income moves with rates, fuel and repairs. A company driver at the BLS median of $58,640 is paid whether or not the truck breaks down.⁵
• You cannot absorb a large repair. ATBS's average owner spent $14,222 on maintenance in 2025.⁴ An owner operator without a cash reserve for repairs can miss a truck payment after one breakdown.
• Employer benefits make up much of your current pay. ATRI's fleets spent 21 cents a mile on driver benefits in 2025,⁷ about $19,950 a year at 95,000 miles. An owner operator pays for health insurance and retirement savings out of net income.
• You plan to grow by hiring drivers at average rates. At ATBS's average gross, a hired-driver truck loses money against ATRI's full cost per mile. Growth by adding trucks works only with a rate per mile above that line.