How to Track Per-Load Profitability in Trucking

Gross revenue per load is what brokers pay you. Net is what's left after fuel, tolls, driver pay, and maintenance allocation. Most carriers run on gross because it's easy to measure — but gross tells you nothing about whether the lane is actually paying your bills.

What goes into a per-load P&L

• Gross revenue (freight + fuel surcharge + accessorials)
• Driver pay attributable to the load (loaded miles × rate + empty × rate, OR percentage)
• Fuel cost — actual gallons × actual price, not an average
• Tolls — pulled directly from your transponder per load
• Maintenance allocation — usually $/mile based on a rolling 12-month average
• Insurance allocation — flat per-load number based on annual cost ÷ load count
• Overhead allocation — optional but useful for true contribution margin

The math

Net per load = gross − driver pay − fuel − tolls − maintenance allocation. Margin = net ÷ gross. A profitable carrier runs at 15–25% net. Anything under 10% means you're trucking for the broker, not for yourself.

What this tells you

• Which lanes are net-profitable vs. just gross-profitable
• Which customers consistently book under your real cost
• Which drivers are net-profitable to dispatch on which lanes
• Whether your detention policy is recovering enough actual hours
• Whether dead-head ratio is killing margin on otherwise good lanes

The point isn't to refuse every load that comes in below your target margin — sometimes you take a thin load to keep a driver moving toward home. The point is to know you're doing it on purpose.

How to start

If you've never tracked per-load net before: start with gross − driver pay − fuel and ignore everything else for the first month. Once that's reliable, add tolls. Once tolls are clean, layer in maintenance and insurance allocations. Don't try to launch the full model on day one — you'll burn out on data entry and abandon the whole thing.