Fleet Profitability: Which Trucks, Drivers and Loads Make Money
Truckvisor puts the real costs on every load, charges each truck its own fixed costs by the days in the period, and tells you when a truck did not cover itself that week. Every money figure says how sure it is, and the miles say which source won.
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Fleet profitability software works out what each truck, driver, load and customer earned against what it cost to run. It puts real costs on the load, charges fixed costs like the truck payment by the days in the period, and shows revenue per mile and cost per mile beside them.
Who it's for
- An owner who knows every truck by number and still cannot say which of them paid for itself last month.
- Small to mid-size carriers running owner-operators on percentage pay, where the driver buys his own fuel and the company's share is whatever is left.
- Company-driver fleets on per-mile pay, where the margin lives in the rate per mile and in the empty miles between loads.
- Dispatchers who haul a broker's freight all quarter before anyone works out that the lane barely cleared its costs.
The problem
The load looked good on the rate con
A rate con for $3,100 over 1,240 miles reads like a win. Then the fuel, the lumper, the tolls and the dispatch fee come off, and the driver takes his pay. What the company kept is a different number, and nobody writes it down. By month end the good loads and the bad ones have been averaged into one figure that explains nothing.
The truck payment never reaches the load
Lease, physical damage, liability, registration, permits. They leave the bank account whether the truck ran all week or sat in the yard. In a spreadsheet they sit in a column nobody connects to a truck or to a period. So a truck that turned over $11,940 and a truck that turned over $4,100 look like the same kind of good.
Nobody knows what the empty miles cost
Every carrier knows it deadheads too much. Almost none can say what share of last month's miles ran empty, or what that share cost. The run between a drop and the next pickup is on nobody's rate con. It is real money, and no report in the office puts a figure on it.
How Truckvisor handles it, start to finish
Enter what each truck costs you every month
The lease or note, insurance, registration and permits. Typed once, per truck.
Put the real costs on the load
Fuel, lumper, tolls, dispatch fee, factoring fee and driver pay go on the load as cost lines. A fuel cost sits on a load because somebody put it there. On the statement itself, pay is worked out from the load rather than typed on.
Miles take their best available source
The rate confirmation first. Your own correction beats it. A straight-line distance estimate between the two cities fills the gap only where neither exists, and every figure carries the source it came from.
The load shows what was left
Rate, miles, rate per mile, what the driver keeps, what the company keeps, with a line under it saying this is before truck payments and insurance — and, against the costs you typed on, the load's profit in dollars and as a percentage.
Fixed costs are charged by the days in the period
Monthly truck costs are spread over the window you are looking at, a thirtieth of the monthly figure for each day in it. A truck parked all week still costs what it costs.
Drivers are graded against their own normal
Each driver is measured against his own recent normal, or against a target you set for him. Never against another driver.
The digest arrives on your schedule
Daily, weekly or monthly, at an hour you pick in your own timezone. It leads with what is pulling against you and what to do about it. Until your normal has formed it sends progress instead, and when nothing needs you, it says so.
What the software actually does
What one load actually left you, before the fixed costs
Open any load and the money is on one screen. What the company keeps is a contribution figure, taken before the truck payment and the insurance, and the screen says so under the number. A rate per mile built on an estimated distance is never dressed up as a measured one — the money figures carry how sure they are, and the miles name the source that won. When the driver pays for his own fuel out of his percentage, Truckvisor stops charging that fuel to the company twice.
Each truck carries its own fixed costs, by the days in the period
Truck payments, insurance, registration and permits are entered once per truck as monthly figures, then charged to that truck by the days in the period. A truck that sat in the yard still costs what it costs. Running costs go to the miles actually run. When a truck loses money over a week, Truckvisor tells you: what it hauled, what it cost, and how sure the number is.
Every driver graded against his own normal, not against each other
Revenue per mile, cost per mile and margin, per driver, grouped into behind, at risk, on track, and not yet graded. The line is his own rolling normal over the last 55 days, or a target you set. Never a number Truckvisor invented. Never a leaderboard. The per-driver and per-truck views are cut from one calculation and add to the same total, checked on the screen rather than assumed.
Which brokers actually make you money
The same margin math, per customer. When the rates on a lane creep down and the reload at the far end dries up, the margin moves with them. Now it is a column on the customers list and a figure on each customer's page, not an afternoon of spreadsheet work per customer.
Empty miles, priced fleet-wide
Truckvisor works out the empty leg between one delivery and the next pickup. It tells you what share of your miles ran empty, and when that share runs above your own normal it says so and puts a dollar figure on what running empty cost you — naming the legs it could not price rather than counting them as zero. If you pay for all miles, record the empty run on the load and it is paid at the same rate. An empty run nobody recorded is never paid as zero miles: the load is named.
Cost per mile as a range, with the guesswork named
Cost per mile is driver pay, running costs and the truck's fixed costs, shown as a range that tightens as your real figures go in. Never a made-up single figure. Where a figure leans on a rule of thumb, the page says which part.
A worked example
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Rate on the rate confirmation | $3,100.00 |
| Miles, from the rate confirmation | 1,240 |
| Revenue per mile | $2.50 |
| Driver pay, 1,240 miles at 62 cents | −$768.80 |
| Fuel, typed onto the load | −$521.40 |
| Lumper at the drop, receipt attached | −$150.00 |
| Tolls | −$46.20 |
| Dispatch fee, 4 percent of the rate | −$124.00 |
| Factoring fee, 3 percent of the rate | −$93.00 |
| Load profit against the costs typed on it | $1,396.60 |
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue, 4 loads delivered | $11,940.00 |
| Driver pay, 4,760 miles at 62 cents | −$2,951.20 |
| Fuel, lumpers, tolls and dispatch fees on those loads | −$3,118.40 |
| Factoring fee, 3 percent | −$358.20 |
| Lease payment, $2,100 a month, 7 days | −$490.00 |
| Insurance, $1,450 a month, 7 days | −$338.33 |
| Registration and permits, $310 a month, 7 days | −$72.33 |
| What the truck kept for the week | $4,611.54 |
Fleet profitability software vs. the way it works today
| How it works today | With Truckvisor |
|---|---|
| A month-end spreadsheet that averages every load into one margin figure, so the lane that loses money hides behind the lane that pays. | Each load carries its own costs and its own contribution, and the driver and truck figures are cut from that same calculation. |
| Truck payments and insurance live in the bank statement and never reach any load, any truck or any week. | Each truck's monthly costs are entered once and charged to that truck day by day, whether it ran or sat. |
| Empty miles are a feeling. Nobody has ever put a figure on the miles between a delivery and the next load. | The run from each drop to the next pickup is worked out, priced, and compared with your own normal. |
| A cost per mile copied off a webinar slide and used to price freight for a year. | A cost per mile built from your own driver pay, running costs and truck costs, given as a band that narrows as your figures go in. |
Questions carriers ask
How does Truckvisor work out profit per truck?
It adds up what that truck's loads earned, takes off what each driver was paid on them and your own running cost per mile, then charges the truck's own monthly fixed costs by the days in the period. There is no per-truck profit and loss statement to open. You meet the number as an alert when a truck lost money that week, and as per-mile figures on the fleet page.
Is profit per load a net profit figure?
No. The load shows two figures side by side: what the company keeps after paying the driver and covering your running cost per mile — a range whenever an input fell back to a rule of thumb — and, underneath, the load's profit against the costs you actually typed on it. Neither is net profit: truck payments, insurance, registration and the rest are fixed costs, charged to the truck over the days in the period instead of split across loads.
Where do the miles come from?
From the rate confirmation where you have one, from your own correction when you fix it, and where neither exists a straight-line estimate between the two cities. The better source always wins, and every figure says which one it used. Where a distance cannot be worked out, it stays blank rather than guessed. Truckvisor does not read miles off the truck.
How does fuel get onto a load?
Somebody puts it there. You upload your fuel-card statement or hand-enter a purchase, and a fuel figure on a load exists because a person typed it onto that load. The statement you upload posts against the truck that bought the fuel in the books. Nothing ties a fill to a load, so Truckvisor never claims to know the gallons burned hauling one particular piece of freight.
What do I get in the first week, before all my costs are entered?
A labelled range, and a plain sentence saying which part of it is a rule of thumb. Truckvisor does not bluff a number. For the first month it tells you it is still learning your normal rather than grading you against somebody else's, and a truck with no costs entered says so instead of being treated as free to run.
Does maintenance get counted in the margin?
No. Maintenance cost per mile is reported beside your margin, deliberately not folded into it, per truck and fleet-wide, against the industry yardstick of about 21.5 cents a mile. Folding a repair bill into a load's margin would count the same money twice, once as a cost line and once as an allocation. So it is reported next door.
The rest of the system
- Driver Settlements — Automate driver and owner-operator settlements. Truckvisor calculates pay, applies advances and deductions, runs nine checks and builds the statement.
- Trucking Accounting — Truckvisor keeps real double-entry books for carriers. Loads, driver pay, fuel and factoring post themselves into a trial balance that has to add up.
Keep reading
- How to calculate profit per truck, on one sheet of paper — Profit per truck is a question about a period, not a load. Here is the arithmetic in the order it has to go in, and the four places it usually goes wrong.
- Four people read the statement. It was still wrong. — Four separate readings signed off on one owner-operator's settlement. Three errors survived all four, because on the page every one of them looks correct.
- Why your settlement never matches the driver's math — Three deductions cause most Friday arguments, and the one drivers shout about loudest usually isn't the one that moved the number.
Bring one week of your paperwork — rate cons, settlements, the spreadsheet — and we run it end to end. The statement pack for that week is yours whether or not you sign.