Cost Per Mile Calculator
Enter a year of costs and miles. You get your cost per mile driven, your cost per paid mile, and a comparison against the industry average published by ATRI — which is the part most calculators leave out.
How to read your result
Cost per mile driven vs cost per paid mile
Most calculators give you one number: total costs divided by total miles. That number is fine for understanding your operation, but it is the wrong number to quote a rate against, because you are not paid for empty miles. If you run 100,000 miles and 88,000 of them are loaded, your costs are spread over 100,000 miles but recovered over 88,000. The gap between those two figures is the margin people accidentally give away.
The industry comparison
The benchmark is $2.336 per mile: the average marginal operating cost for the industry in 2025, from ATRI's Operational Costs of Trucking, the 2026 edition. It is the highest figure in the history of that report, 3.4 percent up on the previous year. Excluding fuel, the average was $1.854 per mile.
We compare your total against $2.336, and your fuel cost against $0.482 per mile — the difference between those two published figures.
What we do not do, and why. ATRI's published summary gives the total and the ex-fuel figure, but not a dollar benchmark for every individual line item. So we do not show one. Some calculators present a full set of "industry averages" line by line; unless they cite a source for each, those numbers are estimates dressed as data. Your line items are shown as a share of your own total instead, which is genuinely informative and genuinely accurate.
If you are well below the benchmark
Congratulations, possibly. But check first that you have included everything: your own pay, a realistic maintenance provision rather than only what you happened to spend, and the fixed fees. A cost per mile that looks excellent is often a cost per mile that is missing lines.
If you are well above it
Look at utilisation before you look at prices. A truck that runs 80,000 miles a year carries the same payment and insurance as one that runs 120,000, so the fixed costs land on far fewer miles. Empty mileage is the other usual culprit. Both of those move the needle more than shaving cents off fuel.
Nothing leaves your browser
The calculation runs entirely on your device. Your figures are not sent anywhere and we cannot see them. If your browser allows it they are saved locally so the form is still filled in when you come back — the Clear all fields button removes that copy.
Related reading
- What it actually costs to start a trucking company — including the ATRI margin data.
- Federal fee reference — the numbers for your permits and fees line.
- UCR fees for 2027.
Sources
- Operational Costs of Trucking — American Transportation Research Institute, 2026 edition (2025 data).
This tool produces estimates from the figures you enter. It is not accounting or financial advice; check the output against your own records before pricing freight.