Frequently Asked Questions

TruckCost.com helps owner operators and small fleets estimate what a load will cost to haul before accepting it. Enter the pickup, delivery and total load payment, then use your own truck expenses to estimate fuel, operating costs, your pay and the money left over.

The goal is Know Before You Roll. A strong rate per loaded mile does not automatically mean a profitable trip, especially when empty miles and operating expenses are involved.

The current website is free to use. You can use the load calculator and search the available driver-reported lane summaries without a paid subscription.

Create a TruckCost account to save truck costs and loads or contribute a lane rate. Creating an account does not purchase a subscription.

Create an account and sign in, then open My Trucks and use Add Truck to identify your first truck. Under My Truck Costs, enter a realistic monthly mileage figure, your truck’s average MPG, monthly expenses, maintenance and tire reserves, and the amount you want to pay yourself. Save these settings so they apply when this truck is selected for a load check.

Next, enter pickup and delivery cities or ZIP codes under Cost Calculator. Enter the actual total payment for the load. Open Trip Extras to enter miles to pickup, your diesel price if known, tolls and any other trip expenses. Click Calculate Load Costs and expand the breakdown rows.

You can enter a lane and obtain estimated road mileage and a fuel breakdown without an account. An account is required to save your truck settings, save load checks and submit a driver-reported rate.

Lane-rate summary searches are also available without signing in. To estimate the money left after all of your entered truck costs and pay, complete and save My Truck Costs.

Small fleets can use the calculator to evaluate a truck’s costs and loads. Each account can save up to 100 trucks. Identify a truck by its truck number, VIN, license plate or your own truck ID, then select it before checking a load.

Each truck has its own saved MPG and cost settings. Allocate shared fleet expenses to each truck instead of entering the entire fleet expense on every truck. This is a load-cost tool, not dispatch or maintenance-management software.

The calculator, account pages and FAQ are designed to adapt to smaller screens. Tap a breakdown row or FAQ question to expand its details.

For email confirmation and password resets, open the email link in the same browser and on the same device where you requested it. This helps the account verification process finish correctly.

Yes. Enter a five-digit U.S. ZIP code in Pickup City or ZIP or Delivery City or ZIP. You can also enter a city and state, or use a ZIP code for one end and a city and state for the other.

The location helper displays the matched city and state when the lookup succeeds. Check that match before relying on the mileage.

When ZIP data is available, the location helper displays matching ZIP codes for the city and state. If several ZIP codes match, choose the correct one from the dropdown or press Skip to keep the city estimate. If only one matches, select Use ZIP to use that ZIP area.

Choosing a ZIP replaces the location field with that code, and the city and state remain displayed beneath it. The list is a location aid; confirm the facility’s actual ZIP with the shipper or receiver.

Yes. Selecting a ZIP makes that ZIP the endpoint used by the mileage calculation. The routing service uses an approximate location within the ZIP area, then calculates road mileage between the selected endpoints.

Pressing Skip keeps the city and state as the endpoint and uses a city estimate instead. Either estimate can differ from the distance between exact warehouse addresses. After changing a location or choosing a ZIP, click Calculate Load Costs again to recalculate the lane. Truck-specific road restrictions are not included.

A load mileage calculation needs a city and state or ZIP code at each end. A state by itself does not identify a pickup or delivery location closely enough.

To research broader lanes, use the state-to-state search in Driver Submitted Lane Rates. That search shows reported city lanes within the selected origin and destination states when data is available.

Yes. After you enter both locations and click Calculate Load Costs, TruckCost requests a road route and fills in the estimated loaded miles. You do not need to calculate and enter those loaded miles yourself.

Enter your empty miles to pickup separately under Trip Extras. The mileage service can be unavailable or unable to match a location; if that happens, check the city, state or ZIP and try again.

No. The current mileage calculation uses standard road routing through OSRM and OpenStreetMap data. It does not account for truck height, weight, axle configuration, hazardous materials, commercial vehicle restrictions or restricted roads.

Use a truck routing tool and verify the actual permitted route before dispatch. A calculated distance is an estimate for evaluating a load, not a truck navigation instruction.

The endpoints are approximate locations for a city or ZIP area rather than exact pickup and delivery street addresses. Routing engines can also choose different roads.

Truck restrictions, local access roads, detours, multiple stops and facility entrances can change the actual miles. Compare the estimate with the route you expect to drive and allow for differences when evaluating the load.

Loaded miles are the estimated road distance from pickup to delivery. Deadhead is the empty mileage you enter to reach pickup. Total miles in the calculator are loaded miles plus those entered miles to pickup.

For example, 900 loaded miles and 100 miles to pickup produce a 1,000-mile cost calculation. Fuel and saved costs apply to all 1,000 miles, even if the broker pays only for the loaded portion.

Not automatically. The current dedicated deadhead field is Miles to pickup. It does not automatically add repositioning after delivery, the trip home or the next load.

Consider those miles separately before making a business decision. The displayed result can look better than the overall movement if you still have a long empty trip after delivery. Multi-stop mileage is not automatically built into the current city-to-city route either.

The current website uses OSRM and OpenStreetMap for road mileage, Photon for city matching, and Zippopotam.us and GeoNames data for ZIP information. Google Maps is not currently connected.

The data sources are listed in the website footer. Regardless of the provider, verify truck access and the actual facility location before hauling the load.

Your truck payment, insurance, mileage and pay goals can be very different from another operator’s. Entering the actual expense categories creates a cost per mile based on your operation instead of a general industry figure.

TruckCost adds the entered monthly truck, trailer, insurance, overhead, maintenance, tires and owner pay, then divides the total by your expected monthly miles. Fuel is calculated separately for each trip.

Use a realistic estimate of all miles driven in a month, including loaded and empty miles. Do not use only the miles a broker pays for. Your expenses still exist while the truck is running empty.

For example, $10,000 in monthly costs divided by 10,000 total miles is $1.00 per mile before fuel. The same costs over 8,000 miles become $1.25 per mile. A mileage estimate that is too high can make your cost per mile look too low.

The Truck field can represent your monthly payment or a depreciation allowance, depending on the way you are evaluating your operation. Avoid simply adding both together and counting the same equipment cost twice.

A paid-off truck still has replacement and ownership costs. Consider an appropriate allowance for those costs rather than assuming the truck is free to operate. Your accountant can help you choose an approach that fits your records.

Insurance should reflect the monthly cost of the coverage you include in this truck profile. If you pay annually, divide that amount by 12 for the monthly entry.

Overhead can include registration, permits, ELD, phone, accounting, software and similar recurring business expenses. For fleet-wide expenses, allocate an appropriate share to the truck represented by this profile. Avoid entering the same expense in multiple categories.

Enter monthly reserve amounts based on your maintenance history, truck age, tire replacement costs and expected miles. A reserve spreads the cost of future repairs and replacements across the work that funds them.

Fill Example Reserves is an optional starting point. It uses $0.15 per expected monthly mile for maintenance and $0.04 per mile for tires. These are adjustable placeholders, not verified industry averages or a recommendation for your truck. Replace them with amounts that reflect your operation.

Compensation for your work is different from business profit. If you leave your pay out, the money remaining after expenses can appear to be profit even though it still needs to compensate you for driving and managing the business.

Enter your monthly pay goal in Your Pay. The calculator allocates that amount across expected monthly miles and includes the resulting share in each load’s truck costs. Money left afterward is in addition to the pay allowance you entered.

No. Once you save My Truck Costs while signed in, the selected truck’s saved costs and MPG load into the calculator and apply to later load checks. Use Edit My Costs when an expense or your expected mileage changes.

Review the profile when insurance renews, equipment payments change, maintenance needs increase or your monthly utilization changes. A saved profile is useful only while its assumptions remain realistic.

The current model allocates monthly costs and owner pay by total miles. It does not calculate a separate daily cost, driver hours, detention time or opportunity cost.

A slow load can consume several days while covering few miles. Evaluate its schedule, waiting time and effect on your next load in addition to the displayed per-mile result.

Estimated gallons equal total miles divided by your saved MPG. Fuel expense equals those gallons multiplied by the diesel price used for the trip.

For example, 1,000 total miles at 6.5 MPG require about 153.85 gallons. At $4.00 per gallon, estimated fuel expense is $615.38. TruckCost uses unrounded figures internally, so multiplying rounded values from the display can produce a small difference.

The automatic price is an EIA regional diesel benchmark associated with the pickup region. The result displays the benchmark region and date so you can judge its relevance.

A regional average is not a quote from a particular truck stop, and the displayed date may precede your trip. Check the date and enter your own expected diesel price when you have a better estimate.

Not currently. It does not compare station prices along the route, choose fuel stops, calculate fuel-card discounts or connect to AAA or GasBuddy.

You can enter your expected purchase price under My diesel price in Trip Extras. That amount takes priority over the regional benchmark. Use a realistic price after any discount you expect to receive.

They are not calculated separately by the automatic fuel formula. The formula uses road miles, MPG and the diesel price.

If these expenses are material, estimate the additional cost and include it once in Other trip charges or in an appropriate recurring expense allowance. Avoid adding an expense separately if your MPG or saved cost profile already accounts for it.

Automatic truck toll detection and pricing are not connected in the current version. The website cannot confirm whether the particular route has tolls or calculate an axle-specific toll bill.

Confirm the route and truck tolls separately, then enter the estimate in Estimated tolls under Trip Extras or in the expandable Tolls row. Toll amounts can depend on the road, vehicle configuration and payment method.

A blank toll field means the toll cost is unknown. It does not mean the route is toll-free. The unknown amount is excluded from Known Estimated Costs and from the money-left calculation.

Enter 0 only after confirming that no toll charges apply. If there are tolls, enter the amount you expect to pay. Recheck this field for every lane; calculating a route clears the prior toll entry so an old estimate is not carried over automatically.

Include expenses specific to this load that you will bear, such as scales, paid parking, unreimbursed lumpers, washouts, additional fuel allowances or other special handling charges.

Enter the combined dollar amount for the trip. Keep fuel from the main formula, separately entered tolls and expenses already included in My Truck Costs out of this field to avoid double counting.

Use a consistent approach. For a load check, an expected reimbursement can be included in total revenue with its related expense included in trip costs, provided you do not count either twice. If payment is uncertain, consider the result without that reimbursement before accepting the load.

Driver-reported lane rates use a narrower rule: report the linehaul payment including fuel surcharge, and exclude separately paid toll reimbursements and accessorial payments so reports are more comparable.

Enter the total load payment you expect to receive, including fuel surcharge. The payment field starts blank so each load uses the amount you enter. Do not enter the rate per mile in a field that asks for total dollars.

If a percentage fee will reduce what you retain, account for it consistently by using the net payment or including the fee as a cost. Do not reduce revenue and also add the same fee as an expense.

Revenue per total mile divides the load payment by loaded miles plus the empty miles to pickup that you entered. This shows how the payment spreads across the miles you actually need to drive for that movement.

For example, a $2,000 load over 900 loaded miles pays $2.22 per loaded mile. Add 100 empty miles to pickup and revenue becomes $2.00 per total mile. The expandable revenue row shows both figures.

It is the load payment minus estimated fuel, the trip’s share of your saved truck costs and pay, entered tolls and other trip charges. It is an estimate based on the figures you supplied.

It is not a complete accounting profit or take-home income calculation. Unentered costs, unknown tolls, taxes, additional empty miles and time-related effects can still reduce what remains.

When tolls are blank, the subtotal includes only costs the calculator can estimate from the available data and your entries. Unknown tolls are excluded.

This label is a reminder that the cost picture is incomplete. Enter confirmed tolls and review other trip expenses before treating the result as your expected margin.

After saving realistic truck costs and entering all known trip expenses, compare total load payment with Total Estimated Costs. If payment is equal to those estimated costs, the movement covers the expenses and owner-pay allowance included in the calculation.

A payment above that total leaves an estimated amount for business profit or a cushion. A negative result means the offer does not cover the entered costs and pay under those assumptions. Unknown and omitted expenses still matter.

Yes. Tap any load breakdown row to see its components. Total Miles separates loaded miles and miles to pickup. Fuel Expense shows gallons, MPG and diesel price. Truck Costs and Your Pay shows the portion of each monthly expense allocated to the trip.

The Tolls and Other Trip Charges rows let you review and adjust those amounts. The displayed totals update as applicable inputs change.

The result supports your decision; it does not make the decision for you. Review the appointment times, realistic route, empty miles after delivery, payment terms and whether the load fits your equipment and schedule.

TruckCost does not verify the broker’s identity, authority, insurance, credit or willingness to pay. It also does not replace your accounting records, tax planning or carrier due diligence.

They come from rates submitted by signed-in users for lanes they were offered, booked or hauled.

Reports are unverified. A summary is a view of the reports available on TruckCost, not a verified average for the entire freight market or a guarantee of what a broker will offer today.

Yes. Use the state-to-state option in Driver Submitted Lane Rates and choose the origin state, destination state and equipment type. Available results are grouped into reported city lanes within those states.

For a specific lane, use cities and states or ZIP codes. Direction matters: Nashville to Dallas is a different lane from Dallas to Nashville.

No. It shows historical driver-reported rate summaries. It is not a live load board and does not list currently available freight, broker contact offers or a booking button.

Use the information to support research and negotiation, then confirm current availability and terms directly through your normal freight sources.

Offered is a rate proposed to the driver. Booked is a rate accepted for a load. Paid is a payment the reporting driver says was received. These statuses are summarized separately.

An offered rate does not prove a load was booked, and a booked rate does not prove the broker paid it. Choosing the correct status makes the reports more useful.

TruckCost shows numeric median and range figures only when a lane, equipment type and status group has reports from at least five distinct reporting accounts within the search window.

Below that threshold, the site displays the reporting count without a numeric benchmark. This avoids presenting a single driver’s report as a representative lane rate. Accounts are not independently verified as unique drivers.

For each qualifying report, the reported total payment is divided by automatically estimated loaded miles. The median is the middle rate after sorting; for an even number of reports, it is the average of the two middle rates. The range is the lowest through highest qualifying rate.

Searches use pickup dates from the past 90 days. Within each lane, equipment type and status, only the latest qualifying report from each account contributes to the summary. These figures use loaded miles and do not include your personal deadhead.

You can select Dry Van, Reefer, Flatbed, Step Deck, Power Only or Box Truck. Choose the category that matches the report or the lane you are researching.

Different equipment requirements and load details can materially affect pricing. The current summary does not normalize reports for every commodity, weight, appointment requirement or special service.

Sign in, select Report a Rate and enter the origin, destination, equipment type, status, pickup date and full load payment including fuel surcharge. The platform estimates the loaded miles automatically. You may also enter the broker name.

Exclude separately paid toll reimbursements and accessorial payments. Confirm that the report reflects your own experience and choose the correct status. The form accepts pickup dates within the past year, while public summaries use the past 90 days.

The current public lane search returns aggregate summaries. It does not display the optional broker name, your email address or your account identifier.

Reports are associated with the account that submits them and may include the optional broker name in stored data. Avoid entering personal information, rate-confirmation text or confidential notes into the broker-name field.

Identical reports from the same account for the same lane, equipment, status, pickup date and payment are not added repeatedly. Submissions are also limited to 20 reports per account in a rolling 24-hour period.

The summary uses one latest qualifying report per account for each lane, equipment and status group. These controls reduce repetition, but they do not independently verify the accuracy of a report.

Open Sign in to save your truck costs, then select Create Account. Enter your name, email address and a password with at least 12 characters. Submit the form and check your email to confirm your account.

Open the confirmation link in the same browser and on the same device where you registered. Check your spam folder if the email does not appear. New customer registration and sign-in use TruckCost’s account pages.

No. New customers create a TruckCost account with their email and password. Supabase provides the account service, and Resend handles the configured account emails.

The Earlier Login link exists only to help people bring over data saved through the previous sign-in method. New customers do not need to use that link.

Sign in, open My Trucks and choose Add Truck. Pick an identifier type and enter the truck number, 17-character VIN, license plate or custom truck ID. For a license plate, include the state when available. Then save the truck and enter its own costs and MPG.

Use Truck for This Load or the Selected Truck menu in My Trucks to switch. The selected truck’s costs, MPG and saved preferences populate automatically. The result names the truck being used.

Your previous single-truck settings are preserved as My Truck. Use Edit Identifier to give that truck its truck number, VIN, plate or another ID. You do not need to enter those costs again.

New saved loads retain the truck identifier and cost inputs used when saved. Renaming or removing a truck does not rewrite its older saved loads. Loads saved before truck selection was available are marked Truck Not Recorded.

No. These identifiers organize your account’s trucks. TruckCost does not verify registration, ownership or VIN history. A VIN entry checks the standard 17-character format, not its authenticity.

Your saved truck profile includes your entered monthly expenses, expected monthly miles, MPG and applicable calculator preferences. You can also save individual load calculations, including the lane, payment, mileage and cost inputs used.

My Saved Loads displays up to the 30 most recent saved load checks. A saved load is a record of the inputs at the time it was saved, not a live quote that automatically refreshes fuel prices or current market conditions.

Sign in and open My Truck Costs. Select Edit My Costs, make your changes and save the settings. The updated profile applies to subsequent calculations.

After checking a load and reviewing the estimates, select Save This Load. Saving a load requires a completed truck-cost profile. Confirm the success message before closing the page.

Use Sign out in the website header. The sign-out page asks you to confirm by clicking Sign Out. Your saved costs and loads remain associated with your account.

On a shared device, complete sign-out before leaving the browser. To return to the same saved data later, sign in with the same account.

Open the account page, select Forgot Password and enter the email address you used to register. If an account exists for that address, a reset link is requested.

Open the link in the same browser where you requested it, then enter and confirm a new password with at least 12 characters. If the link is expired or you requested another link afterward, request a fresh one and use the latest email.

Create and confirm a TruckCost account using the same email address as your earlier account, then sign in to the new account. On the account page, choose bring over your saved costs and complete the earlier sign-in when prompted.

Select Connect My Saved Data to link the earlier costs, loads and rate reports. Both accounts must be authenticated and use the same verified email. Automatic linking is unavailable if the new account already contains saved data, so bring over earlier data before saving new costs or reports.

Saved profiles and load checks are accessed through authenticated account checks on the server. They are not shown as public lane-search results.

Driver-reported lane rates are a separate contribution used for aggregate summaries. Do not share your password. The current site does not provide a public link for sharing an individual truck profile or saved load.

The example amounts are based on miles: maintenance uses $0.15 per monthly mile and tires use $0.04 per mile. Without monthly mileage, there is no monthly dollar amount to calculate.

Click Fill Example Reserves. If mileage is missing or outside the supported range of 1 to 30,000, the form focuses the mileage field and explains what to enter. Enter your expected total monthly miles, including deadhead, then click the button again. Review the filled amounts and save your truck costs.

Check the spelling and include the state with a city name. Use a five-digit U.S. ZIP code and review the matched city and state. An ambiguous city name, unsupported ZIP or unavailable location service can prevent a match.

Try the city and state if a ZIP fails, or the ZIP if a city name fails. A city can remain usable for routing even when the helper cannot retrieve its matching ZIP list.

Check the address you entered, your spam folder and any mail filters. Wait briefly before requesting another message; account email requests can be rate limited. Use the newest email if you have requested several links.

If you already confirmed your account, try signing in instead of registering again. A password reset response does not reveal whether an email is registered, so make sure you entered the address you originally used.

Links can expire, be used already or fail when opened in a different browser from the one that requested them. Email software may open a separate browser or an in-app browser.

Return to the browser where you started, then open the latest link there. If necessary, request a fresh password reset link. Do not forward account links to someone else.

Check the email displayed in the website header. A different account has a different saved profile and history. If your data was saved with an Earlier Login, follow the bring-over process before expecting it to appear in your new account.

Check whether the last save displayed a success message. Entering values without saving does not ensure they will be available on another device. The Saved Loads list shows only the 30 most recent records.

Review total payment, expected monthly miles, MPG, the diesel price used and miles to pickup. Then expand the breakdown to check every expense category. Make sure you have not counted a truck payment, fuel charge, reimbursement or fee twice.

An unrealistic monthly-mile figure can spread fixed expenses over too many miles. Leaving your pay, reserves, tolls or other costs out can also make the estimated money remaining look better than it should.

Automatic truck toll pricing, truck-restricted navigation, station-by-station fuel shopping, Google Maps integration, a licensed market-rate feed, a live load board and full fleet dispatch management are not currently connected.

The calculator also does not automatically handle exact facility addresses, multiple stops, repositioning after delivery, daily time-based costs, tax calculations or broker verification. Use the current results alongside your route planning, accounting records and operating judgment.