Truck cost per mile calculator
A cost per mile sheet asks you for a truck payment you already know. This page works it out first. Enter the price, your cash down, and the rate and term your lender quoted, then add the miles you run and your own operating figures. The page returns the monthly payment and the full schedule, the cost of a mile with the note on its own line, and the freight rate per loaded mile that covers all of it once the empty miles are counted.
What the truck note does to your cost per mile
These are example figures, not yours. They are arbitrary. They are not typical costs, not an average, and not a quote. Replace every one with the numbers on your own settlement statements, your own fuel receipts and your own lender paperwork.
- Price $150,000
- Cash down $20,000
- 9% for 60 mo
- 100,000 mi/yr
- 90% loaded
- 6.5 mpg at $3.80/gal
The loan in full
- Amount financed
- $130,000.00
- Monthly payment
- $2,698.59
- Total of payments
- $161,915.17
- Total interest
- $31,915.17
- Total cost with cash down
- $181,915.17
Amount financed is the price less your cash down, plus any fees you rolled in. Total cost adds your cash down back, because that money leaves your account too and leaving it out would understate what the truck cost you.
A mile, taken apart
- First twelve payments
- $32,383.03
- Other fixed costs, one year
- $21,000.00
- The note, per mile
- $0.324
- Other fixed, per mile
- $0.210
- Fuel, per mile
- $0.585
- Variable, per mile
- $0.830
- All in, per mile
- $1.363
Year one of ownership. The note per mile is the first twelve payments from the schedule divided by your annual miles. Other fixed adds your insurance, permits, parking and other monthly figures. Variable is your diesel price divided by your fuel economy, plus your maintenance, tires and other per mile entries. Every operand is a number you typed or a payment computed from your own loan inputs.
The freight rate that covers all of it
| Cost per mile you turn | $1.363 |
|---|---|
| Cost per loaded mile, at your loaded share | $1.515 |
| Rate per loaded mile at your target margin | $1.683 |
| Loaded miles in the year | 90,000 |
| Revenue at that rate | $151,494 |
| Cost for the year | $136,345 |
| Profit for the year | $15,149 |
Margin here is profit as a share of revenue, so the rate is the cost per loaded mile divided by one minus your margin. At a margin of 10 percent in the example, that is $1.515 divided by 0.90, which is $1.683. Divide by one minus the margin rather than multiplying by one plus it; a markup of 10 percent on cost leaves a margin smaller than 10 percent of revenue, and the difference is real money on a year of freight. None of these figures is a market rate. They are what your own costs require.
Empty miles, and what they add to every loaded one
| Loaded share of your miles | Cost per mile you turn | Cost per loaded mile | The note, per loaded mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100% | $1.363 | $1.363 | $0.324 |
| 95% | $1.363 | $1.435 | $0.341 |
| 90% | $1.363 | $1.515 | $0.360 |
| 85% | $1.363 | $1.604 | $0.381 |
| 80% | $1.363 | $1.704 | $0.405 |
| 75% | $1.363 | $1.818 | $0.432 |
Only the loaded share changes down these rows. The cost of turning a mile is identical in every one of them, because an empty mile burns the same diesel and wears the same tires as a loaded one. What changes is how many miles are available to pay for the year. In the example, moving from every mile paid to 90 percent loaded raises the cost that each paying mile has to carry by $0.151. Your own row is the one that matches the loaded share you entered.
More miles, and the note spread thinner
| Miles per year | The note, per mile | Fixed cost per mile | All in per mile | All in per loaded mile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50,000 | $0.648 | $1.068 | $1.897 | $2.108 |
| 100,000 | $0.324 | $0.534 | $1.363 | $1.515 |
| 150,000 | $0.216 | $0.356 | $1.186 | $1.317 |
| 200,000 | $0.162 | $0.267 | $1.097 | $1.218 |
The payment lands twelve times a year whether the truck runs or sits in the yard, and so do the insurance, permits, parking and other monthly figures you entered. Spread over more miles, each mile carries a smaller slice of that fixed sum. Only the mileage changes between these rows, at half your miles, your miles, one and a half times, and double, clamped to the 1,000 to 400,000 range the form accepts. Per mile costs like fuel and tires do not fall; they are the same on every mile, which is why the all in figure flattens out rather than dropping forever.
Same loan, different terms
| Term | Monthly payment | Total interest | Total of payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36 mo | $4,133.97 | $18,822.75 | $148,822.75 |
| 48 mo | $3,235.06 | $25,282.66 | $155,282.66 |
| 60 mo | $2,698.59 | $31,915.17 | $161,915.17 |
| 72 mo | $2,343.32 | $38,719.03 | $168,719.03 |
| 84 mo | $2,091.58 | $45,692.73 | $175,692.73 |
Only the term changes between these rows, to a year and two years either side of the one you entered, and the range is clamped to 12 to 180 months. A longer term lowers the payment, so it lowers the note per mile in year one, and it raises the total interest you pay before the truck is yours. Both effects are on this page at once, which is the point of reading them together.
Paying extra every month
| Extra payment | - |
|---|---|
| Payoff term | - |
| Months saved | - |
| Interest saved | - |
Same principal and same rate as your own entry, with only the extra amount changing. Every extra dollar goes to principal in the month you pay it. Paying extra raises the note per mile while you are doing it and ends the note sooner. Check your loan agreement for prepayment terms before relying on it.
Show the month by month schedule
| # | Payment | Interest | Principal | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $2,698.59 | $975.00 | $1,723.59 | $128,276.41 |
| 2 | $2,698.59 | $962.07 | $1,736.51 | $126,539.90 |
| 3 | $2,698.59 | $949.05 | $1,749.54 | $124,790.36 |
| 4 | $2,698.59 | $935.93 | $1,762.66 | $123,027.71 |
| 5 | $2,698.59 | $922.71 | $1,775.88 | $121,251.83 |
| 6 | $2,698.59 | $909.39 | $1,789.20 | $119,462.63 |
| 7 | $2,698.59 | $895.97 | $1,802.62 | $117,660.01 |
| 8 | $2,698.59 | $882.45 | $1,816.14 | $115,843.88 |
| 9 | $2,698.59 | $868.83 | $1,829.76 | $114,014.12 |
| 10 | $2,698.59 | $855.11 | $1,843.48 | $112,170.64 |
| 11 | $2,698.59 | $841.28 | $1,857.31 | $110,313.33 |
| 12 | $2,698.59 | $827.35 | $1,871.24 | $108,442.10 |
| 13 | $2,698.59 | $813.32 | $1,885.27 | $106,556.83 |
| 14 | $2,698.59 | $799.18 | $1,899.41 | $104,657.42 |
| 15 | $2,698.59 | $784.93 | $1,913.66 | $102,743.76 |
| 16 | $2,698.59 | $770.58 | $1,928.01 | $100,815.75 |
| 17 | $2,698.59 | $756.12 | $1,942.47 | $98,873.29 |
| 18 | $2,698.59 | $741.55 | $1,957.04 | $96,916.25 |
| 19 | $2,698.59 | $726.87 | $1,971.71 | $94,944.53 |
| 20 | $2,698.59 | $712.08 | $1,986.50 | $92,958.03 |
| 21 | $2,698.59 | $697.19 | $2,001.40 | $90,956.63 |
| 22 | $2,698.59 | $682.17 | $2,016.41 | $88,940.22 |
| 23 | $2,698.59 | $667.05 | $2,031.53 | $86,908.69 |
| 24 | $2,698.59 | $651.82 | $2,046.77 | $84,861.91 |
| 25 | $2,698.59 | $636.46 | $2,062.12 | $82,799.79 |
| 26 | $2,698.59 | $621.00 | $2,077.59 | $80,722.20 |
| 27 | $2,698.59 | $605.42 | $2,093.17 | $78,629.03 |
| 28 | $2,698.59 | $589.72 | $2,108.87 | $76,520.17 |
| 29 | $2,698.59 | $573.90 | $2,124.68 | $74,395.48 |
| 30 | $2,698.59 | $557.97 | $2,140.62 | $72,254.86 |
| 31 | $2,698.59 | $541.91 | $2,156.67 | $70,098.19 |
| 32 | $2,698.59 | $525.74 | $2,172.85 | $67,925.34 |
| 33 | $2,698.59 | $509.44 | $2,189.15 | $65,736.19 |
| 34 | $2,698.59 | $493.02 | $2,205.56 | $63,530.63 |
| 35 | $2,698.59 | $476.48 | $2,222.11 | $61,308.52 |
| 36 | $2,698.59 | $459.81 | $2,238.77 | $59,069.75 |
| 37 | $2,698.59 | $443.02 | $2,255.56 | $56,814.18 |
| 38 | $2,698.59 | $426.11 | $2,272.48 | $54,541.70 |
| 39 | $2,698.59 | $409.06 | $2,289.52 | $52,252.18 |
| 40 | $2,698.59 | $391.89 | $2,306.69 | $49,945.49 |
| 41 | $2,698.59 | $374.59 | $2,324.00 | $47,621.49 |
| 42 | $2,698.59 | $357.16 | $2,341.42 | $45,280.07 |
| 43 | $2,698.59 | $339.60 | $2,358.99 | $42,921.08 |
| 44 | $2,698.59 | $321.91 | $2,376.68 | $40,544.40 |
| 45 | $2,698.59 | $304.08 | $2,394.50 | $38,149.90 |
| 46 | $2,698.59 | $286.12 | $2,412.46 | $35,737.44 |
| 47 | $2,698.59 | $268.03 | $2,430.56 | $33,306.88 |
| 48 | $2,698.59 | $249.80 | $2,448.78 | $30,858.10 |
| 49 | $2,698.59 | $231.44 | $2,467.15 | $28,390.95 |
| 50 | $2,698.59 | $212.93 | $2,485.65 | $25,905.29 |
| 51 | $2,698.59 | $194.29 | $2,504.30 | $23,401.00 |
| 52 | $2,698.59 | $175.51 | $2,523.08 | $20,877.92 |
| 53 | $2,698.59 | $156.58 | $2,542.00 | $18,335.92 |
| 54 | $2,698.59 | $137.52 | $2,561.07 | $15,774.85 |
| 55 | $2,698.59 | $118.31 | $2,580.27 | $13,194.57 |
| 56 | $2,698.59 | $98.96 | $2,599.63 | $10,594.95 |
| 57 | $2,698.59 | $79.46 | $2,619.12 | $7,975.82 |
| 58 | $2,698.59 | $59.82 | $2,638.77 | $5,337.06 |
| 59 | $2,698.59 | $40.03 | $2,658.56 | $2,678.50 |
| 60 | $2,698.59 | $20.09 | $2,678.50 | $0.00 |
For reference, the U.S. Prime Rate is currently 7.00% (source: Federal Reserve H.15, as of 2026-10-13). The H.15 footnote defines it as the “Rate posted by a majority of top 25 (by assets in domestic offices) insured U.S.-chartered commercial banks”, and adds that “Prime is one of several base rates used by banks to price short-term business loans”. It is context only, it never enters the math here, and your rate is whatever your lender actually quotes. After you compute, the result restates your rate against this benchmark as plain subtraction.
How the cost per mile math works
The payment first
Every panel starts from one amortization function. The monthly payment is
payment = A × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)−n), where A is the
amount financed, the price minus your cash down plus any fees you finance, r is the
annual rate divided by twelve and then by a hundred, and n is the term in months. If the
rate is zero the payment is simply A divided by n. Each month, interest is the remaining
balance times r, the rest of the payment goes to principal, and the balance falls by that
principal. The final payment absorbs any rounding, so the schedule reconciles to its own
summary to the cent.
Then the mile
The note per mile is the first twelve payments from that schedule divided by your annual miles. Fixed cost per mile adds your insurance and permits for the year, plus your parking and other monthly figures multiplied by twelve, before dividing by the same miles. Variable cost per mile is your diesel price divided by your fuel economy, plus your maintenance, tires and other per mile entries; nothing there is divided by mileage, because those costs already arrive per mile. All in cost per mile is the two added together.
Then the loaded mile
Cost per loaded mile is the all in cost per mile divided by your loaded share written as a fraction. At 80 percent loaded that is a division by 0.8, which raises the figure by a quarter. The breakeven rate per loaded mile is that same number, because breakeven is the rate at which revenue equals cost. The target rate divides once more by one minus your margin.
Year one, not the whole loan
The per mile figures read the first twelve payments, so they describe your first year of ownership. On a fixed rate loan the payment does not change, so the note per mile stays put for as long as the loan runs, then drops to zero when it ends. That is why the term strip matters to a cost per mile reading and not just to a total interest reading.
What to enter and where to find it
The loan fields
Take the price, the cash down, the rate and the term straight off the written quote. If you do not have one yet, the page still works, but it will not supply a rate, a term or a down payment for you, because no figure it could offer would be your lender's. Try the numbers you are hoping for, read the term strip and the rate spread under the result, then type the real quote over your trial numbers when it arrives. For a payment only reading on a tractor, the semi truck loan calculator and the commercial truck loan calculator cover the same loan without the mileage layer.
The mileage fields
Total miles is every mile the truck turns in a year, loaded and empty together. Take it off your own logs or your IFTA filings rather than estimating from a good week. The loaded share is the percentage of those miles that carried freight. If you do not track it, divide your paid miles by your total miles for the last quarter and use that. If you are paid for every mile you turn, enter 100 and the loaded figures and the total figures will match.
The cost fields
Insurance and permits are annual figures; parking and other fixed costs are monthly. The diesel price is what you actually pay after any discount, not the posted price, and the fuel economy is what your own records show rather than what the truck is rated for. Maintenance, tires and other per mile costs are best taken as a year of spending divided by a year of miles, which is what makes them per mile figures. Leave anything you do not carry blank and it counts as zero.
What is deliberately not here
No field asks for a typical cost, because the page never supplies one. There is no field for your own pay either. If you want your take home treated as a cost, put it in the other fixed monthly costs box and the breakeven rate will cover it; leave it out and the breakeven rate is the rate that covers the truck and nothing else. Say which of the two you did before you compare the answer with anyone else's.
Deadhead, and why the loaded mile is the only mile that pays
A cost per mile figure answers a question about spending. A rate per mile answers a question about income. They are not the same denominator, and the gap between them is the empty mile. Every mile the truck turns costs diesel, tires, wear and a slice of the note. Only the loaded ones are on an invoice. So a carrier who runs 100,000 miles at 90 percent loaded is recovering a full year of cost from 90,000 paying miles, and every figure that matters to the bid has to be divided by 90,000, not by 100,000.
The arithmetic is a single division and it is unforgiving. Cost per loaded mile is cost per mile divided by the loaded fraction. At 90 percent loaded the divisor is 0.9, which adds about 11 percent. At 80 percent it is 0.8, which adds 25 percent. At 70 percent it is 0.7, which adds roughly 43 percent. A carrier reading a cost per mile of one dollar eighty and bidding one dollar ninety is losing money at anything under about 95 percent loaded, and nothing on the invoice will say so. The deadhead table above runs that division across a band of loaded shares on your own numbers, with your row marked.
The truck note makes it worse in a specific way, and this is why the payment belongs in a cost per mile page rather than in a separate loan page. Fuel is proportional; if the truck sits, it burns nothing. The note is not. It arrives on the same day for the same amount in a week with three loads and a week with none. So a soft month raises the note per loaded mile twice over, once because the total miles fell and once because the loaded share usually falls with them. In the example on this page the note alone is $0.324 per mile turned and $0.360 per loaded mile, and the mileage table shows what half those miles would do to both figures.
None of this is an argument for a longer term. A longer term lowers the payment and therefore lowers the note per mile in year one, and it raises what the truck costs in total, and both of those are true at the same time. The term strip prints them side by side so you can decide with the two numbers in view rather than one. If you are weighing the truck against a lease structure, the equipment loan calculator compares a finance agreement against a dollar buyout and a fair market value lease on total cash to own. For a straight truck, a box truck or a van that is titled as a road vehicle, the commercial vehicle loan calculator handles the payment side.
One published industry average, for context only
The American Transportation Research Institute measures operating costs across participating motor carriers and publishes them once a year. In its Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking, 2026 Update, released 2026-07-15, ATRI reported that “the industry-average cost to operate a truck in 2025 was $2.336 per mile”, and that “excluding fuel, costs rose by 4.2 percent to $1.854 per mile”, per its own release on the report.
That is an industry average for a data year, and it is not your number. It is not used anywhere in the calculator above, it is not a rate, and it is not a target. Two carriers with the same truck and the same lane can sit either side of it on insurance alone. Treat it the way you would treat any benchmark, as one reference point to place your own arithmetic against, and then trust your own arithmetic. If your figure is far from it, the useful question is which line item explains the gap, not whether the average is right.
Questions about truck cost per mile
How cost per mile is calculated here
Fixed costs for the year, which include the first twelve loan payments, are divided by the miles you run. Per mile costs are added on top without being divided, because they already arrive per mile. The result is what one mile costs you. Every operand is a number you typed or a payment computed from your own loan inputs.
Why the loan payment belongs in the number
Because it is money that leaves the account every month for as long as the loan runs, and it does not care whether the truck moved. Leaving it out produces a cost per mile that is lower than the truth by exactly the note per mile, and that is the figure people bid against. If the truck is paid for, enter a price equal to your cash down so nothing is financed, or read the fixed cost per mile line and ignore the note line.
What breakeven per mile means on this page
The freight rate per loaded mile at which revenue equals cost for the year. Below it you are paying to haul the load. It is the all in cost per mile divided by your loaded share, because only loaded miles generate revenue. The target rate goes one step further and divides by one minus the margin you asked for.
Why the cost per loaded mile is higher than the cost per mile
Because the empty miles cost money and earn nothing, so the paying miles have to carry their share too. The ratio is exactly one divided by your loaded fraction. At 90 percent loaded the cost per loaded mile is about 11 percent higher; at 75 percent it is about 33 percent higher. Enter 100 percent and the two figures are identical.
What happens to the number when I run more miles
The fixed part falls and the variable part does not. The note, insurance, permits and parking are the same money whether you run 60,000 miles or 140,000, so each mile carries less of them. Fuel, tires and maintenance stay where they are. The mileage table shows both effects at half, one and a half times and double the miles you entered.
Whether to use markup or margin on the target rate
This page uses margin, meaning profit as a share of revenue, and divides the cost by one minus that share. A 10 percent markup on cost is not a 10 percent margin; it works out to about 9.1 percent of revenue. If you are used to quoting markup, convert first or you will bid low. The table under the result prints the revenue, the cost and the profit for the year so you can check which one you got.
Should my own pay be inside the cost
That is a choice, and the page does not make it for you. An owner operator comparing a rate against a company driving job usually wants their pay counted as a cost, so the breakeven rate is the rate that keeps them whole. A fleet pricing a truck usually counts driver pay already. Put your pay in the other fixed monthly costs field if you want it in, leave it out if you do not, and be consistent when you compare figures with anyone.
What the financed fees field is for
Any fee your lender rolls into the loan instead of collecting up front. It is added to the amount financed, so it accrues interest like the rest of the balance and it raises the note per mile. Fees paid in cash at closing do not belong here, because they do not change the payment.
Is the Prime Rate my rate
No. It is the bank prime loan rate the Federal Reserve publishes in its H.15 release, shown here as a labeled reference point and kept out of the payment math. Enter the rate your lender actually quoted; the page subtracts the two so you can see the gap.
Where the numbers come from
Every payment, total, per mile figure and schedule row is recomputed in code from figures you typed, by one shared amortization function the whole site uses, and the schedule reconciles to its own summary. The only external numbers anywhere here are the published Prime Rate, fetched from the Federal Reserve H.15 release at build time, and the ATRI industry average quoted with its report, its release date and its link. Neither enters the math.
Who built it
I built the calculators on this site from the ground up, including the in browser tools that print their own month by month schedule and reconcile every row back to the summary. I added the cost per mile reading because the good cost sheets, the OOIDA spreadsheet among them, ask you to type a truck payment as a number you already have, which is no help while you are still deciding what to buy and at what term. This page builds the payment from the loan first. The empty mile gets its own reading for a different reason, that it is the one division which turns a comfortable looking number into a loss. I am Michael Lip.
What this page is and is not
Use it to price a truck purchase against the miles you actually run, and to set a floor under a freight rate. For the payment on its own, without the mileage layer, use the semi truck loan calculator or the commercial truck loan calculator. For a titled road vehicle that is not a tractor, use the commercial vehicle loan calculator, and for machinery priced against lease structures, the equipment loan calculator.
Asset Loan Calculator is not a lender, broker, financial adviser, tax adviser or freight broker, and does not give financial, tax or legal advice. Results are estimates computed from the numbers you enter using the standard loan formula and plain division. They are not a quote, a rate offer, an approval, a pre-approval or a recommendation to accept any load.
The cost per mile panel is arithmetic on the costs and miles you entered. It is not an operating cost estimate for any truck, any lane or any authority, and the example figures on this page are not market data. Every rate, term, down payment, fee, price and mileage shown is an assumption you provided, and a real lender's APR, fees and total cost may differ. Confirm any offer directly with the lender.