What is the average mileage rate for a owner operator?

At the time he posted that fuel was hovering around almost $4 a gallon so those numbers are pretty accurate considering the truck he drives and the engine it has. At that time fuel had just started the precipitous decline to the current $2 a gallon +/- we now enjoy.

 

Yep I thought I had considered everything before I asked. High prices crossed my mind but I still forgot to look up at the date. Makes a little more sense....

 

Wow

 

If you've found volunteers to drive and wrench for you, by all means, remove those costs, but I've never been good at getting people to paint my fence for me...


The absolute lowest I could see anyone operating a truck, as far as maintenance & equipment replacement cost, is ~23cpm. That would be buying a new glider ($120k) and replacing it every 5 years ($50k residual value) and paying ~5cpm for maintenance in the meantime and a new trailer ($30k) replacing every 10 years ($10k residual) with 2cpm for maintenance.

30 cpm is not out of line for buying/maintaining either a new emission truck, a used emission truck, or keeping an old pre-emission truck on the road indefinitely. Whether 20cpm of that is truck payment, or all 30cpm goes to maintenance/repairs, it isn't outrageous (conservative maybe).

 

Operating under my own authority as a power only my cost are .90 cpm including taxes.

I dont pay myself a wage. Im a business owner. The profits of the business are mine.

When you say truck replacement it sounds like you actually mean revenue to compensate for the lost value of your new truck as a result of its use.

 

Truck replacement is a real cost that can be figured two different ways.

You can figure it just as @double yellow did above, and that works great if you plan to pay the trade difference in cash, and own the truck outright.

You can also borrow that money, and figure out what the payment is in a cost per mile scenario.

Either way works, but it is a real cost no matter which way you do it.

 

As to your 30cpm maintenance ive spent 30cpm on maintenance this year because i lost my motor,rebuilt rear suspension,put new drive tires and a wiring harness on. I hardly expect to do that much every year.Last year my maintenance costs were 14cpm. My truck is a 95 so depreciation isnt really a factor.

20cpm over the life of the truck would be high. 30 is crazy IMO though.

 

Well sure -- someone didn't hand you a new truck for free, right? The business needs to pay for the equipment it uses...

As an experienced driver, you ought to be able to find a job that pays at least 45cpm (including benefits) without even trying. So if you're hauling a load for $1.35/mile your business is not actually profiting at all -- you've bought yourself a job.

Add 4-5cpm for a trailer, and your operating costs aren't much different from mine ($1.40 now that fuel is this cheap).

 

So lets say you bought the truck for $15k.

Yr1: $14k
yr2: $30k
yr3: $14k
yr4: $14k
yr5: $14k
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Your 5 year average cost would be $101k / 500k miles = $0.202/mile as power only (or about 24-25cpm if you were pulling a <10 year old van). And that's assuming you had "normal" expenses for the next 3 years -- no transmissions, no rear ends, no paint job, no replacing aluminum wheels after 1M miles, etc

 

I dont understand why you think that your current truck should buy your next truck in cash+trade value. If you buy a truck and it pays for itself thats all it should be responsible for .

If you buy another truck it should pay for itself like the first one did.