Working Out What Rate to Accept

Every load is one calculation. Done properly once, it becomes instinct; skipped, it is how carriers run hard all year and finish flat.

Work out your floor rate with the break-even rate calculator →

The four numbers

Your cost per mile driven. Everything you spend in a year divided by every mile you turn.
Your cost per paid mile. The same costs divided by loaded miles only. Always higher, and always the relevant one.
The total miles of this load, including the deadhead to get to it.
The total revenue, including fuel surcharge and any approved accessorials.

The test: total revenue divided by total miles, compared against your cost per mile driven. That single division answers whether the load pays, and it is the one most people skip because the broker quoted a rate per mile that sounded fine.

Worked example. A load pays $2.75 per mile for 400 loaded miles: $1,100. You are 120 miles away, so you drive 520 miles in total. $1,100 ÷ 520 = $2.12 per mile driven. Against an industry average operating cost of $2.336 per mile, a load advertised at $2.75 is below cost before you have argued about anything.

That is the entire trick. Deadhead does not reduce your rate a little; it can eliminate the margin completely.

The benchmark, and its limits

ATRI put the industry average marginal operating cost at $2.336 per mile for 2025, or $1.854 excluding fuel. That is the highest in the history of that report.

Use it as a sanity check, not as your number. A single owner-operator has a different cost structure from a fleet, and your figure depends on your equipment, lanes and utilisation. Our calculator works out yours and compares it line by line against that benchmark.

Two things are inside that average that are easy to miss. It includes driver wages and benefits of $1.028 a mile — the equivalent of your own pay. And its fuel line, about $0.48, reflects 2025 diesel prices. The EIA US average was $6.199 a gallon for the week of October 5, 2026, against about $3.71 a year earlier: at 6.5 mpg, that difference alone is ($6.199 − $3.711) ÷ 6.5 = about $0.38 a mile. A cost per mile worked out last year needs its fuel line updated before you judge loads with it.

What has to be inside your cost before the comparison is honest

Your own pay. If you did not include it, you are measuring against a job that pays nothing.
A maintenance accrual, not the repairs you happened to pay this year. See maintenance.
Fixed costs across realistic miles, with weeks off and shop time removed.
Factoring fees, if you use it. See factoring.
Tax reserves. The bill arrives whether or not you set money aside.

A cost per mile that omits any of these produces a number that makes bad loads look acceptable, which is the worst possible error to make repeatedly.

Building your floor rate, step by step

Illustrative figures, chosen for the arithmetic — replace every one with your own.

Fixed costs for the year. Truck and trailer payments, insurance, permits, plates and admin: say $55,000. Add the pay you need to draw: say $60,000. Total: $115,000.
Variable costs per mile. Fuel at $6.199 ÷ 6.5 mpg = $0.954; a maintenance accrual of $0.25; tires $0.06; tolls and other $0.04. Total: $1.304.
Realistic miles. 100,000 total, of which 12 percent empty, so 88,000 loaded.
Cost per mile driven: $115,000 ÷ 100,000 + $1.304 = $2.45.
Cost per paid mile: ($115,000 + $1.304 × 100,000) ÷ 88,000 = $245,400 ÷ 88,000 = $2.79.
Adjust for factoring if you use it: divide by one minus the fee. At an illustrative 3 percent, $2.79 ÷ 0.97 = $2.88.

The first figure is the one to test each load against using total revenue ÷ total miles. The second is what loaded miles must average across the year.

Why miles matter as much as rate

The same illustrative costs at different annual mileage, with 12 percent empty in each case:

Illustrative: $115,000 fixed, $1.304 per mile variable.
Total miles	Cost per mile driven	Cost per paid mile
80,000	$2.74	$3.11
100,000	$2.45	$2.79
120,000	$2.26	$2.57

Losing 20,000 miles a year to waiting, shop time or poor planning raises the floor by about 29 cents a mile driven in this example. A load that costs you a day can be worse than a load that pays a little less.

Judge the round trip, not the leg

Illustrative loads. Option one: $1,800 for 600 loaded miles plus 50 empty ($2.77 a mile driven), into an area where the best load out pays $900 for 550 miles plus 100 empty ($1.38). Together: $2,700 ÷ 1,300 = $2.08, below the $2.45 floor.

Option two: $1,500 for 550 loaded plus 30 empty ($2.59), then $1,500 for 500 plus 40 empty ($2.78). Together: $3,000 ÷ 1,120 = $2.68. The weaker-looking first leg wins by 60 cents a mile across the trip.

Judging a load in thirty seconds

Once you know your cost per mile driven, three questions settle almost every load:

What is total revenue divided by total miles? Below your cost, stop here.
Where does it leave me? A slightly weak rate into a strong freight area can beat a strong rate into a dead one. You are buying position as well as revenue.
What does it cost me in hours? A tight appointment, a known slow receiver or a long wait turns an acceptable rate into a bad day. See detention.

On negotiating

The strongest position is knowing your number and being willing to decline. You are not bluffing when you say a load does not work — you are reading your own arithmetic aloud, and that is audible.

Two practical points. Ask for the rate you need rather than nudging theirs, because it is a different conversation. And remember the broker has a budget for that load and a deadline; late in the day on a load that must move, your position improves considerably.

On what the broker was paid: under 49 CFR § 371.3, brokers must keep a record of each transaction for three years, including the compensation they received, and each party to the transaction has the right to review it. FMCSA proposed in November 2024 to require those records to be kept electronically and provided within 48 hours of a request. As of this review that proposal is not a final rule, and § 371.3 applies as written. Some broker-carrier agreements include a waiver of this right, so read yours.

Common mistakes

Testing a load against the cost per paid mile. The per-load test uses total revenue ÷ total miles against cost per mile driven; the paid-mile figure is for the year.
Using last year's cost per mile when diesel has moved. Update the fuel line first.
Treating a rate index as your floor. An average spot rate tells you about the market, not about your costs.
Comparing linehaul with an all-in rate. Make sure both numbers include, or both exclude, the fuel surcharge.
Forgetting the hours. A rate that covers the miles but not a day's detention may not cover the week.

The context nobody in the negotiation will mention: ATRI's 2026 data put operating margins below 1 percent in truckload and refrigerated in 2025, with an average loss in flatbed. In an industry running at roughly break-even on average, the operators who do well are disproportionately the ones who decline work. Being busy and being profitable are not the same thing, and only one of them shows up in your account.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if a load pays?

Divide total revenue by total miles including deadhead, and compare against your cost per mile driven. The advertised rate per loaded mile is not the comparison.

What is a good rate per mile?

There is no universal figure. It depends on your cost, which depends on your equipment, lanes and utilisation. The industry average operating cost was $2.336 per mile in 2025, which is a floor for the average operator rather than a target.

Should I include my own pay in the cost?

Yes. Leaving it out means comparing loads against working for free.

Can I see what the shipper paid the broker?

Under 49 CFR 371.3, each party to a brokered transaction has the right to review the broker's record of it, which includes the broker's compensation. Some broker-carrier agreements ask carriers to waive that right, so check before signing.

Should my floor rate change when diesel moves?

Your cost per mile should. Fuel is the most volatile line, so update it with current prices and your own fuel economy before judging loads.