Car hauler cost per mile: find your break-even rate.
Every load has to beat one number: what a mile costs you to drive, loaded or empty. Put in your own fuel, payments, insurance and repairs, and the calculator gives your cost per mile and the gross you need each month to break even.
Updated 6 October 2026·Your numbers, worked in the page
Your costs
The starting numbers are round examples, not market data: replace every one with your own. "Other" is the ELD, phone, software, permits and anything else you pay monthly.
Two numbers, two jobs
- Per load, before fixed costs: what a load leaves after its own fuel, empty miles, driver pay and payment terms. Our worked example nets $0.87 per loaded mile on a $1,400 load.
- Per month, the fixed costs: the payments, the insurance and the rest, spread over the miles you drive. That is what the loads' net has to cover.
Put them together and the test is simple: over a month, the net your loads leave has to be larger than your fixed costs. A load that nets less per mile than your fixed cost per mile is paying for fuel and not for the truck.
Your break-even is a fact about your truck, not about the market.
What moves the break-even
- Miles a month. Fixed costs spread thinner the more you drive: the same $5,800 a month is $0.73 a mile at 8,000 miles and $0.97 at 6,000.
- Empty miles. They cost the same per mile as loaded ones and earn nothing, so a load is the trip from where the truck is to the delivery.
- Insurance. Usually the largest fixed cost of a new authority. What car haulers pay.
- Fuel. Diesel price and mpg change it every week. Use a current regional price, not a remembered one.
From break-even to a floor rate
Your floor rate is the lowest rate per mile you accept. Start from the break-even above, add the profit you want per mile, and judge each posting by its rate per mile driven, empty miles included. Car hauling rates per mile shows what shippers pay by distance.
On loadez, every load on the board shows its net for your truck after fuel at today's regional price, empty miles, tolls, driver pay and factoring (Growth), and Autopilot claims only loads above the floor rate you set (Pro). Pricing.
Common questions
How do you calculate cost per mile for a car hauler?
Add fuel per mile (diesel price divided by your mpg), your monthly fixed costs divided by the miles you drive a month (truck and trailer payments, insurance, ELD, phone, permits), and tires and repairs per mile. Count every mile driven, loaded and empty. If you pay a driver a percentage of gross, divide the result by one minus that percentage to get the gross you need per mile.
What is a good cost per mile for a car hauler?
There is no market number that fits every truck: it depends on your payments, insurance, fuel and how many miles you drive. What matters is that the loads you take net more per mile, after fuel, empty miles and driver pay, than your fixed costs per mile. The calculator shows both sides with your own numbers.
How many miles does a car hauler need to break even?
Divide your monthly fixed costs by what your loads net per mile before fixed costs. With $5,800 a month of payments, insurance and other costs and loads netting $0.87 per loaded mile, that is about 6,700 loaded miles a month; empty miles add to the total you drive without adding to the net.
Hold every load to your break-even.
Free for one truck, forever. Net per load for your truck from Growth.