Box truck business profit calculator

What this calculator shows

A box truck business looks simple from the outside: a truck, a driver and loads. The money is less simple. Fuel and maintenance rise with every mile. The truck payment and insurance arrive every month whether you haul or not. And every load has to pay for its own miles before it pays anything toward the fixed bills.

This box truck business profit calculator puts all of that on one monthly page. It shows revenue, every cost line, profit before your own pay and taxes, the margin each load leaves after its running costs, and how many loads a week you need just to break even. Change one input and you can see what it does to the month.

How the profit is calculated

Loads a month are your loads a week times 4.33. Revenue is loads times your average rate. Fuel is total miles divided by miles per gallon, times your fuel price. Maintenance and tires are total miles times a per-mile figure. The dispatch fee is a percentage of revenue, or zero if you book your own loads. Fixed costs are the payment, insurance and everything else that bills monthly.

Profit is revenue minus all of that. The margin per load is what one load leaves after its fuel, maintenance and dispatch fee, before fixed costs. Divide the fixed costs by that margin and you get the loads a month needed to cover them, which the calculator shows per week.

• EXAMPLE

  EXAMPLE MONTH

  One 26 ft box truck, 5 loads a week

  Each load pays $650 for 300 total miles. Fuel at an EXAMPLE $4.00 a gallon and 10 mpg, maintenance at 15 cents a mile, $1,500 payment, $1,000 insurance, $500 other, 7% dispatch. Revenue is about $14,072 and profit about $6,515 before the owner's pay and taxes. Each load leaves about $440, so break-even is 1.6 loads a week. All-in cost is about $1.01 a mile.

Those are placeholder numbers to show the math, not typical box truck rates. Rates for box truck freight vary a lot by region, season and the kind of freight, so use your own loads.

Reading your result

• +Profit is positive and break-even is low. The business covers its bills with room to spare. Watch the margin per load, because that's what slow weeks eat into.
• +Profit is negative but the margin per load is positive. Each load pays its way, but you're not running enough of them to cover the fixed bills. More loads, or lower fixed costs, fixes it.
• +The margin per load is negative. Each load costs more to run than it pays. More loads make it worse. The rate per load has to go up, or the miles per load, especially empty ones, have to come down.

Look at the cost per mile line too. That's your break-even rate for every mile you drive, and it's the number to have in your head when a broker names a price. The counter-offer calculator turns it into a minimum and target for any load.

Starting a box truck business: the numbers to check first

If you're planning a box truck business rather than running one, use the calculator as a simple business plan. Put in a conservative number of loads, a rate you've actually seen posted for your area, and real quotes for the truck and insurance. If the month only works with your best-case inputs, it doesn't work yet.

• +Operating authority. To haul freight for hire across state lines under your own name, you need a USDOT number and operating authority from FMCSA, plus the required insurance on file.
• +Insurance. Get real quotes for liability and cargo coverage before you buy a truck. For new authorities, it's often one of the biggest fixed costs.
• +The truck. Check the length and the gross vehicle weight rating on the door sticker. Many brokers and shippers want a 26 ft box with a liftgate for common freight.
• +CDL or non-CDL. A truck with a GVWR of 26,001 lb or more needs a commercial driver's license. Many 26 ft box trucks are rated at or under 26,000 lb and can be driven without one, but check your truck's rating.
• +Cash for the gap. Brokers often pay in 30 days or more. Plan for fuel and bills until the first payments arrive, or look at factoring.

A starting a non-CDL box truck business checklist runs longer than this, with registration, an ELD where required, a business bank account and a carrier packet ready to send. These five are the ones that change the math the most.

Getting box truck loads dispatched

We dispatch box trucks 26 ft and longer, nothing shorter. The box truck rate is 7% of gross, with no setup fee. Our dispatchers search loads that fit a box truck, check every broker, counter above your floor and plan the reload before you deliver. Every load comes to you first, the broker sends the rate confirmation straight to you, and you can turn down any load. Run more than one kind of truck? See how we work with owner-operators.

If you want a closer look at what your fuel costs per fill-up, the fill-up cost calculator works it out by tank. For safety on the road, the stopping distance calculator shows how much room a loaded truck needs. To understand why rates rise and fall, read our guide to the load-to-truck ratio, and before your first load, our page on the rate confirmation explains what to check on it.