Cost Per Mile Calculator: True Operating Cost and Break-Even Rate for Truckers

What each input means

The form takes one month of owner-operator operating costs, split into the fields below in the order they appear. The guide to owner-operator operating costs sets out each of these lines in $/mile and $/month.

• Operation type. Dry van, reefer, flatbed, tanker/hazmat, hotshot or expedited. It loads starting figures into each box and leaves the ATRI comparison unchanged.
• Monthly miles. Every mile the truck ran in the month, loaded and empty.
• Fuel price. Dollars per gallon of diesel. The default is $5.967, EIA's U.S. average for the week of 7 September 2026.
• Truck MPG. Miles per gallon across the month, idling included.
• Truck payment. The loan or lease payment on the tractor. Add a trailer payment here if you have one.
• Insurance. Every premium as a monthly amount: liability, cargo and physical damage.
• Maintenance. Repairs and servicing, averaged across the year and entered as one month's share.
• Tires. Replacements and repairs spread across the month.
• Permits. Registration, permits and licenses turned into a monthly amount.
• Tolls. The month's toll charges.
• Other fixed costs. Anything else paid monthly whatever the miles, such as an ELD subscription, phone, accounting or parking.
• Driver pay (fleet mode). Each truck in fleet mode has a driver pay box. Enter $0 if you drive the truck yourself.

Bills that arrive once a year are the easiest to enter wrong. Divide an annual insurance premium, a heavy vehicle use tax payment or a registration renewal by 12 before entering it. A large repair belongs in maintenance the same way, spread across the months it covers.

The assumptions behind the result

• Fuel cost is monthly miles divided by MPG, times the fuel price. At 6.5 mpg and $5.967 a gallon, fuel is 91.8 cents a mile.
• Every other field is a fixed monthly amount that adds to the total whatever the miles. A month with fewer miles carries the same fixed costs over less distance and shows a higher cost per mile.
• Cost per mile is total monthly cost divided by monthly miles.
• The default diesel price is the U.S. No. 2 diesel retail price for the week of 7 September 2026, $5.967, from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update released on 9 September 2026. Replace it with the price you pay.
• The other defaults are editable starting figures set for each operation type, not published averages. Replace every one with your own.
• Single-truck mode leaves out driver pay. If you drive the truck, the result is the cost before you pay yourself.
• The benchmark is ATRI's industry-wide average. It is not adjusted for operation type or fleet size, because ATRI's release gives no such adjustment.

A worked example in $/mile, $/month and $/year

This example enters ATRI's 2025 cost lines as monthly amounts for a truck running 10,000 miles a month, with diesel at the EIA price and the calculator's default 6.5 mpg. Driver pay is left out.

To check it in the calculator, enter the per-month column: a truck payment of $4,000, maintenance of $2,200, insurance of $1,100, tires of $500, tolls of $430, permits of $80 and nothing in other fixed costs. The result reads $1.75 a mile, which is $1.749 before rounding.

From cost per mile to break-even rate

The break-even rate is the lowest rate per mile that covers the cost per mile. Loads pay only for loaded miles, but cost per mile counts every mile. The table shows both for this truck, with 15% of its 10,000 miles run empty and $5,000 a month for the owner's own pay.

How this compares to the ATRI benchmark

The American Transportation Research Institute's Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update, released on 15 July 2026, put the industry-average cost of operating a truck in 2025 at $2.336 a mile. That was 3.4% higher than in 2024 and the highest in the report's history. Excluding fuel, the figure was $1.854. ATRI senior research associate Alex Leslie and senior vice president Daniel Murray presented the findings in ATRI's webinar, as Cliff Abbott reported in The Trucker on 20 August 2026. Jeremy Wolfe of FleetOwner broke the total into its lines on 22 July 2026.

Fuel was about 21% of ATRI's 2025 total, 48.2 cents of $2.336. The published lines add up to within half a cent of the total because FleetOwner rounds some of them. The $1.308 row is $2.336 less the 81.8 cents of driver wages and 21 cents of benefits.

The worked example sits 44.1 cents above ATRI's $1.308. Nearly all of that gap is fuel: diesel at $5.967 costs 91.8 cents a mile at 6.5 mpg, against ATRI's 48.2 cents for 2025. Use the $1.308 row when your result leaves out driver pay, and the $2.336 row when you entered driver pay in fleet mode. The result panel in the calculator shows the same three ATRI figures next to your number.

What this calculator does not account for

• The single-truck result is the cost before you pay yourself, so it says nothing about what owner operators earn. The guide to what owner operators earn covers the income side.
• A factoring fee comes off each invoice, so it raises the rate you need without showing up as a cost line here. The Factoring Cost Calculator works that fee out per invoice and per year.
• The result spreads cost over loaded and empty miles alike, so check a load's rate against cost per loaded mile, as in the worked example.
• A truck you own outright shows a $0 payment, though it still loses value and will need replacing.
• A major engine repair, days off the road, income tax and self-employment tax fall outside a monthly budget unless you average them in.
• One diesel price applies to every gallon in the month, so price changes within the month are smoothed over.
• Lumper fees, scale tickets and unpaid detention raise the cost of one load without appearing as a monthly line.
• ATRI's figures are industry-wide, so a reefer, flatbed or hotshot result has no like-for-like ATRI row here.