Owner Operator Expenses: Costs and Budget Breakdown (2026)

Owner operator expenses are the costs of running a truck as a self-employed business: fuel, the truck and trailer payments, maintenance, insurance, tires, tolls, permits and registration. Owner-operator operating costs and trucking business expenses mean the same thing, and cost per mile is that money divided by the miles run. The American Transportation Research Institute put the average cost of operating a truck at $2.336 a mile in 2025, the highest in the report's history, which comes to about $200,900 a year at the 85,991 miles its average truck ran.¹²

Driver wages and benefits make up $1.028 of that figure. For an owner operator who drives the truck, those two lines are the owner's own pay, so the cost of running the truck comes to $1.308 a mile, or $124,260 a year at the 95,000 miles ATBS's owner-operator clients averaged in 2025.²⁴

How Owner Operator Expenses Work

Owner operator expenses fall into two groups that behave differently as the miles change, and the cost-per-mile calculator works both out from your own figures.

Fixed costs and variable costs

A fixed cost is set by time. Overdrive's business series defines it this way: "Any expense defined by time -- a tractor payment, insurance payment, license fees -- is a fixed cost."⁷ A variable cost is set by miles: fuel, tires, maintenance and tolls grow with every mile the truck runs.

ATBS does the bookkeeping and tax work for about 20,000 owner-operators.⁶ Overdrive worked out both costs from ATBS's full-year 2025 figures. Fixed cost came to $158 a day across ATBS's leased and independent clients, on a conservative 220 working days a year, or $34,760 for the year. Variable cost averaged about 68 cents a mile, of which 57 cents was fuel.⁸

A variable cost per mile stays roughly the same whatever the month's mileage. A fixed cost per mile falls as mileage rises, because the same payment is spread across more miles. Overdrive's example uses a $1,850 monthly tractor payment: at 9,600 miles in a month it costs 19.3 cents a mile, and at 10,000 miles it costs 18.5 cents.⁷

What ATRI's cost per mile measures

ATRI's "An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update" is built from motor carrier financial data, not from owner operators' books. Fleets of 251 to 1,000 trucks were the largest share of respondents, at 25.3%, and fleets of 25 trucks or fewer made up 22.4%.³ Its line items draw on outside data as well, including EIA for fuel prices and AM Best and Fitch for insurance.²

For a one-truck business, two parts of the method change how the figures read. The driver wage and benefit lines are what a carrier pays an employee, which for an owner operator is income, not an expense. And the permits line, at 0.8 cents a mile, "primarily" covers oversize, hazmat and similar specialized permits: FleetOwner reported that it "specifically does not include truck registration or CDL costs."² Heavy vehicle use tax, Unified Carrier Registration and IRP apportioned plates sit outside ATRI's total and are added separately below.

Leased owner operators and owner operators with authority

Which costs land on the owner depends on whose authority the truck runs under. A leased owner operator pulls under a carrier's authority, often with the carrier's trailer, and the lease sets which costs the carrier charges back. An owner operator with authority pays for everything a carrier would otherwise supply.

ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted put maintenance for an independent under its own authority at roughly 20 cents a mile in 2025, and as little as 5 cents for a 2025 truck still under warranty.⁵ ATBS President Todd Amen put the client average at about 14 cents.⁶ What owner operators take home after these costs is covered in Owner Operator Salary: Income and Earnings Breakdown (2026).

What Owner Operator Expenses Cost, With a Worked Example

The figures below come from ATRI's 2026 update, read line by line, followed by regional differences, fuel at today's diesel price and a worked budget for one truck.

ATRI's 2025 cost per mile, line by line

The table converts each of ATRI's 2025 line items to a monthly and yearly cost at ATBS's average of 95,000 miles.¹²⁴

Cost line, 2025	Per mile	Per month at 95,000 miles a year	Per year at 95,000 miles
Fuel	$0.482	$3,816	$45,790
Truck payments	$0.280	$2,217	$26,600
Repair and maintenance	$0.220	$1,742	$20,900
Trailer payments	$0.120	$950	$11,400
Insurance premiums	$0.110	$871	$10,450
Tires	$0.050	$396	$4,750
Tolls	$0.043	$340	$4,085
Permits and licenses	$0.008	$63	$760
Operating cost without driver pay	$1.308	$10,355	$124,260
Driver wages	$0.818	$6,476	$77,710
Driver benefits	$0.210	$1,663	$19,950
ATRI total	$2.336	$18,493	$221,920

ATRI rounds each line, so the rows add to $2.341 against the published total of $2.336. The operating cost row subtracts driver pay from the published total.

Tolls rose 13.2%, repair and maintenance 8.6%, driver benefits 6.6% and tires 6.4%, while "only two line-items rose at sub-inflationary rates: fuel and, for the second year in a row, driver pay."¹ Fuel ended 2025 at 48 cents a mile, "just 0.1 cents higher than in 2024," FleetOwner's Jeremy Wolfe reported.² Excluding fuel, costs rose 4.2% to $1.854 a mile.¹

Each cost line, explained

Several of ATRI's lines carry details that change how an owner operator reads them.

• Fuel. ATRI's 48.2 cents a mile rests on EIA's 2025 diesel prices, which ATRI described as "their most stable year since the pandemic."² Hosted called fuel the No. 1 expense for any one-truck business: "Fuel's the name of the game."⁵
• Truck and trailer payments. ATRI reported truck and trailer costs as separate lines for the first time in the 2026 update: 28 cents for the truck and 12 cents for the trailer, 40 cents together and up 3.6%. Small fleets spent less on trucks and trailers in 2025 than in 2024, while truckload fleets with more than 1,000 trucks spent 16.1% more.¹²
• Repair and maintenance. Up 8.6% to 22 cents a mile. Deborah Lockridge of Heavy Duty Trucking reported the figure as 21.5 cents before rounding, covering parts, labor and roadside service but not tires, towing or recovery. The average truck in ATRI's data was 3.6 years old in 2025, up from 3.4.²³ ATBS President Todd Amen told FreightWaves that "maintenance is crazy," putting his clients' 2025 increase at 6.5% and the cost at about 14 cents a mile, against 6 to 7 cents a few years earlier.⁶
• Insurance. Premiums rose 3.9% to 11 cents a mile. FleetOwner reported that the commercial auto segment of the insurance industry "has been unprofitable in all but one of the last 10 years."²
• Tires. Up 6.4% to 5 cents a mile, with prices affected by tariffs on natural rubber and by synthetic rubber costs tied to petroleum prices.³
• Tolls. The fastest-rising line, up 13.2% to 4.3 cents a mile.¹²
• Permits and licenses. 0.8 cents a mile, and for most owner operators a smaller cost than registration, which ATRI leaves out.²

What each line costs by region

Where the truck runs moves the total by 29 cents a mile. FleetOwner reported ATRI's regional figures for the highest-cost and lowest-cost region on each line.²

Cost line, 2025	Highest region	Lowest region
Total cost per mile	Northeast, $2.52	South-Central, $2.23
Fuel	West, $0.54	Southeast, $0.45
Truck payments	West, $0.32	Southeast, $0.27
Trailer payments	West, $0.13	South-Central, $0.11
Repair and maintenance	Northeast, $0.22	South-Central, $0.19
Insurance premiums	Northeast, $0.12	Midwest, $0.10
Tires	South-Central, $0.052	West, $0.046
Tolls	Northeast, $0.079	West, $0.021
Permits and licenses	South-Central, $0.011	Midwest, $0.007

At 95,000 miles a year, the gap between a Northeast truck at $2.52 a mile and a South-Central truck at $2.23 is about $27,550. Tolls alone differ by about $5,510 a year between the Northeast and the West. Costs in the West rose 12.55% year over year, the largest regional increase.²

Fuel at the September 2026 diesel price

Fuel is the line most exposed to the price at the pump, and diesel has moved sharply since the 2025 figures were collected. EIA's annual average for U.S. retail diesel was $3.660 a gallon in 2025. For the week of 7 September 2026, EIA reported the U.S. on-highway average at $5.967, up 36.8 cents on the week and $2.201 on a year earlier.¹⁰¹¹

The fuel cost per mile is the price per gallon divided by miles per gallon. ATBS clients averaged 7.28 miles a gallon in 2025, down a tenth of a mile per gallon on the year.⁵ At that economy and 95,000 miles, a truck burns about 13,049 gallons a year, or 1,087 a month.

Diesel price	Fuel per mile at 7.28 mpg	Fuel per month at 95,000 miles	Fuel per year
$3.660, EIA 2025 average	$0.503	$3,980	$47,761
$5.967, EIA week of 7 September 2026	$0.820	$6,489	$77,866

The 2025 row is higher than the $3,816 a month on ATRI's fuel line. It applies ATBS clients' 7.28 miles a gallon to EIA's annual average price, where the line-by-line table uses ATRI's own 48.2 cents a mile.

At September's price, one extra mile per gallon, from 7.28 to 8.28, saves about 9.9 cents a mile, or $9,404 a year. Fuel surcharges recover part of a higher fuel bill for owner operators whose rates carry one. Overdrive reported on 11 September 2026 that the surcharge part of ATBS clients' revenue increase "is offset by a fuel bill that has climbed to meet it."⁹

Registration costs that ATRI's total leaves out

An owner operator with its own authority pays federal and state registration charges that ATRI's permits line excludes. These are the published amounts.

Charge	Amount	Period	Source
Heavy vehicle use tax, truck over 75,000 lb	$550 a year	1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027	IRS Form 229015
Heavy vehicle use tax, truck at 55,000 lb	$100 a year	1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027	IRS Form 229015
Unified Carrier Registration, 0 to 2 vehicles	$46	2026 registration year	UCR Plan16
Unified Carrier Registration, 0 to 2 vehicles	$55	2027 registration year	UCR Plan16
Clearinghouse query	$1.25 a query	Per query	FMCSA21
IRP apportioned registration	Varies by state and miles	Registration year	State registration offices19

IRP fees are apportioned by the distance a truck runs in each member jurisdiction, so no single figure applies across states. Drug and alcohol consortium fees, medical examinations and annual inspections are priced by private providers and are not listed here.

Worked example: a year's budget for one truck

The example combines ATRI's line items, the registration table and ATBS's averages for one truck, using these inputs.

• Miles: 95,000 a year, ATBS's 2025 average.⁴
• Operating costs: ATRI's 2025 lines without driver pay, $1.308 a mile.¹²
• Own authority: adds heavy vehicle use tax at $550 and the 2026 UCR fee at $46.¹⁵¹⁶ IRP is left out because it varies by state.
• Leased on: the same, minus ATRI's trailer line of 12 cents, for an owner operator pulling a carrier's trailer. Whether a leased owner operator pays registration charges depends on the lease, so this column leaves them out.
• Gross revenue: $184,765, ATBS's average for the twelve months to June 2026, which is $1.945 a mile.⁹

	Own authority, own trailer	Leased, carrier's trailer
Operating costs a year	$124,856	$112,860
Operating costs a month	$10,405	$9,405
Operating costs a mile	$1.314	$1.188
Gross revenue a year	$184,765	$184,765
Left for the owner a year, before tax	$59,909	$71,905
Left for the owner a mile	$0.63	$0.76

Swap ATRI's 48.2-cent fuel line for the fuel table's 82.0 cents a mile, which is September 2026's diesel price at ATBS clients' 7.28 miles a gallon, change nothing else, and costs rise by 33.8 cents a mile. About 2.1 cents of that increase comes from using 7.28 miles a gallon, and the rest from the price. The own-authority budget becomes $156,932 a year, or $1.652 a mile, and the leased budget $144,936, or $1.526 a mile. The gross revenue figure runs to June 2026 and does not reflect September's diesel price or any surcharge collected on it, so the table does not net those two figures against each other.

A monthly budget template

The template below turns the own-authority column into a month, with a blank column for your own figures. The benchmark column is ATRI's 2025 cost per mile at 95,000 miles a year, divided by twelve.¹²¹⁵¹⁶

Monthly line	Benchmark	Your figure
Fuel	$3,816
Truck payment	$2,217
Repair and maintenance reserve	$1,742
Trailer payment	$950
Insurance	$871
Tire reserve	$396
Tolls	$340
Permits and licenses	$63
Heavy vehicle use tax and UCR, set aside monthly	$50
Total operating cost	$10,405
Miles this month	7,917
Cost per mile	$1.314

ATRI rounds each line, so the benchmark lines add to $10,445. The total uses ATRI's published $1.308 a mile plus the registration set-aside, the same basis as the line-by-line table and the worked budget.

A maintenance or tire line in a budget is a reserve: the money is set aside every month and spent when the repair or the new set of tires arrives.

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

The averages above come from fleets of every size, and a small fleet's budget departs from them on maintenance, fuel and the cost of a second truck.

Small fleets spend more on maintenance

ATRI found that fleets with fewer than five trucks had the highest repair and maintenance costs in the truckload sector, "because they spent less on truck and trailer procurement," and Heavy Duty Trucking's report added that older trucks typically need more maintenance.³ A small fleet that keeps an older truck trades a lower payment line for a higher maintenance line. Hosted's figures show the range: as little as 5 cents a mile for a truck under warranty and about 20 cents for the average independent.⁵

Maintenance is expected to keep rising. ATRI said repair and maintenance costs are likely to climb at elevated rates, "thanks to tariffs on imported parts and on steel, aluminum, and copper."³ ATBS's average owner spent $14,222 on maintenance in 2025, at least $1,000 a month, Overdrive reported.⁵

Fuel economy moves the largest line

Fuel economy sets the size of the largest line in the budget. ATBS clients averaged 7.28 miles a gallon in 2025, and Overdrive's fuel guide puts the value of one more mile per gallon at "about seven cents/mile" at the prices it used.⁵⁸ At September 2026's diesel price, the same gain is worth about 9.9 cents a mile.

Hosted told Overdrive that ATBS clients named discount fuel networks tied to payment cards and mobile systems as the No. 1 technology advancement for their businesses.⁵ Fuel cards and their discount networks are compared in 7 Best Fuel Cards for Truckers: Discounts and Features Compared (2026).

Surcharge terms decide how much of a higher diesel price comes back in the rate. Overdrive described surcharges as typically built on the diesel price above a $1.25 base and 6.5 miles per gallon, and Hosted explained how to reprice a rate when the basis moves: "I know my basis has gone up 30 cents, so now I need to get $2.30 as a rate instead of $2/mile."⁵

What share of revenue each cost takes

ATBS has also published expense shares for leased owner operators. Overdrive reported them from ATBS client averages through December 2023, so they predate the 2025 cost figures elsewhere on this page.⁷

• Fuel took 30.8% of total revenue.
• The truck payment took 19.1%.
• Maintenance took 6.6%.
• Insurance, counting physical damage, bobtail and occupational accident premiums, took 4.5%.
• License and permits took 2%.
• Cell phones and other communications took 1%.

On the same basis, the average ATBS client netted 36.6 cents of every dollar of gross revenue.⁷

Knowing your cost per mile

Owner operators who know their costs report earning more. The OOIDA Foundation's Freight Rate Survey, reported by Land Line in February 2023, found that in 2022 owner-operators who knew their cost of operations earned $1.15 more per mile, and $1,500 more per trip, than those who did not.¹² Respondents reported an average cost per mile of $2.38 in 2022, up 36% on 2020. Those figures are from 2022 and are older than ATRI's.

Andrew King, a researcher analyst for the OOIDA Foundation, told Land Line Now: "if you don't know your cost of operations, I hope that that kind of sparks a thought on maybe I should start."¹² Overdrive notes that saving one penny a mile over 100,000 miles is $1,000 a year.⁷

Costs against revenue, and a second truck

Costs have outpaced revenue across truckload. David Taube reported in Trucking Dive that in an American Trucking Associations index covering truckload and excluding fuel, costs were 26% higher than revenue, from ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello's address on 27 October 2025.¹³ ATRI found truckload and refrigerated carriers' operating margins below 1.0% in 2025, and flatbed carriers at an average loss of 0.5%.¹

A second truck with a hired driver carries ATRI's full $2.336 a mile, because the driver's wages and benefits become a real expense. At 95,000 miles that is $221,920 a year, against ATBS's average gross of $184,765. The second truck breaks even only when it books about $2.34 a mile or more.

2026 so far

Most costs kept rising into 2026. ATRI's first-quarter figures showed insurance premiums up 6.4%, driver benefits up 4.5%, tolls up 2.7% and fuel up 5.9% after staying flat through 2025, while tire costs fell 4.8%.²³ EIA's September diesel price of $5.967 sits $2.201 above a year earlier.¹⁰

Rules and Citations That Govern Owner Operator Expenses

Federal rules set several of these costs. Each was checked on 13 September 2026.

• Insurance minimum. 49 CFR 387.9 sets minimum financial responsibility for for-hire carriers of nonhazardous property in vehicles over 10,001 pounds at $750,000.¹⁷
• Heavy vehicle use tax. Form 2290 applies to highway motor vehicles with a taxable gross weight of 55,000 pounds or more, for the tax period from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027. It is due by the last day of the month after the month of first use. The tax runs from $100 at 55,000 pounds to $550 over 75,000 pounds, and a vehicle expected to run 5,000 miles or less qualifies for suspension.¹⁴¹⁵
• Unified Carrier Registration. Carriers register and pay before 1 January of the registration year. The fee for zero to two vehicles is $46 for 2026 and $55 for 2027, and the 2027 registration portal opens on 1 October 2026.¹⁶
• IFTA. A licensee files one fuel tax return each quarter for its whole fleet, due by 30 April, 31 July, 31 October and 31 January. A state can bill estimated tax and suspend or revoke the license of a carrier that does not file.¹⁸
• IRP. Apportioned registration fees are calculated from the actual distance run in each jurisdiction during the reporting period, reported on Schedule B.¹⁹
• Drug and alcohol testing. Under 49 CFR 382.103, an employer who employs only itself as a driver has to run a random testing program with a selection pool of two or more covered employees.²⁰ FMCSA's Clearinghouse notes that working with a consortium or third-party administrator "is a requirement of all owner-operators," and queries cost $1.25 each.²¹
• Medical certificate. 49 CFR 391.45 requires a driver to be medically examined and certified at least once every 24 months.²²
• Annual inspection. 49 CFR 396.17 bars a carrier from operating a commercial motor vehicle unless each listed component has passed an inspection within the preceding 12 months, with the documentation on the vehicle.²³
• Per diem. IRS Notice 2025-54 set the transportation industry meal and incidental rate at $80 a day inside the continental United States and $86 outside it, from 1 October 2025.²⁴ Publication 463 allows interstate truck operators under Department of Transportation hours-of-service rules to deduct 80% of business meal expenses.²⁵ A table of past and current trucker per diem rates comes with a calculator.

What to Do Next

These questions show which parts of this page apply to your truck, in the order to check them.

Do you know your own cost per mile?

If not, work it out before comparing yourself with any average. The cost-per-mile calculator takes your fuel, payments, insurance and maintenance and returns a cost per mile and a break-even rate.

Is your fuel line above ATRI's 48 cents?

At September 2026's diesel price and 7.28 miles a gallon, fuel runs about 82 cents a mile. If yours is higher, check your fuel economy, your fuel discounts and whether your rates carry a surcharge that moves with the diesel price.

Are you setting aside money for maintenance and tires every month?

ATBS's average owner spent $14,222 on maintenance in 2025.⁵ A reserve of about $1,742 a month matches ATRI's 22 cents a mile at 95,000 miles.

Have you budgeted for registration outside ATRI's figures?

Heavy vehicle use tax is due for the period that began on 1 July 2026, and the 2027 UCR fee of $55 can be paid from 1 October 2026.¹⁴¹⁶ Add your state's IRP fees to the budget as well.

Does your rate per mile clear your cost per mile?

In the worked example, an owner operator with authority spends $1.314 a mile and grosses $1.945, leaving about 63 cents a mile for the owner before tax. What that margin means for income, and for self-employment tax, is set out in what owner operators earn.

Who This Is Wrong For

This page describes the costs of owning and running a truck, and some readers need different figures.

• Company drivers. An employee driver's truck, fuel and insurance are paid by the carrier, and none of these costs apply.
• Owner operators planning their first truck. Start-up costs such as the down payment, authority filing and the insurance deposit come before any of these operating costs.
• Specialized and oversize carriers. ATRI's permits line averages 0.8 cents a mile across all carriers, so it does not describe an operation that buys oversize or hazmat permits for most of its loads.²
• Readers wanting tax advice. The rules listed here set costs and deductions, and how they apply to a particular return depends on filing status, business structure and state.