No projections and no promises. Published industry data, the arithmetic that follows from it, and a calculator for your own truck. Move the three sliders.
Sources: ATRI 2026 Operational Costs of Trucking · OOIDA Foundation owner-operator survey · ATA analysis of FMCSA registration data. Illustrative examples are labeled.
Every empty mile costs the same as a loaded one and earns nothing.
Scale 0 to 30% of total miles. Nine percent is what a planned reload usually gets a truck to. Planning aid, not a forecast
Sourced figures, real arithmetic, and two illustrative loads. Nothing here is a forecast.
Fuel is the number everyone watches, and it is barely a fifth of it. The other $1.854, payments, insurance, driver pay, maintenance, tires, tolls, permits, runs whether the truck moves or not.
Split derived from ATRI's two published figures for the same period: $2.336 all-in and $1.854 excluding fuel.
Empty miles earn nothing but cost the same. At 17% deadhead, every loaded mile has to bring in $2.81 just to break even, 48 cents more than the truck costs to run. That is the rate you should refuse to go under.
Left figure is the premium per loaded mile at the ATRI cost of $2.336; right figure is the resulting break-even rate. Deadhead as a share of total miles.
Load A looks better on the board and nets $183. Load B has 140 fewer miles of deadhead and a destination you can reload out of, and nets $604. Same week, same truck, same cost per mile.
Illustrative loads. Net = gross minus every mile at $2.336. Real economics depend on your cost structure, driver pay and market conditions.
Roughly 96 of every 100 registered U.S. carriers run ten trucks or fewer. The dispatch industry is built for the other four. We are built for these.
Each square is one carrier in a hundred. Share of U.S. for-hire carriers by fleet size, from ATA analysis of FMCSA registration data.
Most trucks leak money in the same six places. We close them one by one. Four you can check with a calculator:
Kept by cutting deadhead from 17% to 9% on a 100,000-mile truck. Every empty mile costs $2.34 and earns nothing.
One 4.5-hour wait, timestamped and billed at $75/h after two free. Most carriers never claim it. We claim every one.
Taking the $3,150 load instead of the $3,500 one: less deadhead, a real reload. More net on a single load.
Lost to a broker who doesn't pay. Credit and days to pay checked before the truck moves. Every load, every time.
| Running the truck alone | Typical | With us |
|---|---|---|
| Empty miles | 17% of all miles | Target 9% |
| Detention claimed | Sometimes, if remembered | Every event, documented |
| Broker checked before hauling | Rarely | Every load |
| Invoice sent after delivery | Days later, missing a POD | Same day, complete |
| Hours on the load board per week | 10 to 15 | 0. That's our job |
Typical targets from our operating model, not guarantees. Results depend on markets, your costs, equipment, drivers and brokers.
Ten minutes on the phone is enough to know whether we can make your truck earn more. No pitch deck, no pressure. If it's not a fit, we'll say so.
