Calculating Your Operating Cost

97k miles at say a company base rate of 0.45 a mile is around 44k a year. Add another 10k in for payroll overhead/benefits puts it at around 55k dollars or 0.57 cpm on top of the $1.00 per mile comes out to around $1.57 per mile operating costs.

Pretty much in line with the average in my estimation.

 

If you mean work bills then just the truck, @ $1500. I paid cash for the trailer and my other fixed costs are pretty lean.

 

This is important and it would be good to get some input on payroll overhead and benefits.

Many of us, formed corporations or LLC, which for the purpose of IRS tax filing are declared as S-corporations.
It is primarily done to lower taxes by means of declaring a part of gross profit - before paying a driver (if a solo o/o, paying yourself) as a corporation income stated on K1 which is subjected to much lesser a tax than what you pay yourself on W-2 with all that payroll overhead. This is done with a notion of a reasonable salary. However, in order to minimize taxes, many minimize the reasonable salary to the point that it becomes rather unreasonable or even very daring, thus very likely of triggering IRS audit.

In practice, the way it works is that every month or week, an owner writes himself a paycheck of that reasonable salary amount and every quarter there is a check sent to the IRS and State with a withheld tax - which corresponds to what those paid wages were. Between the paychecks there could be additional withdrawals - from dividends, not subjected to the payroll overhead. They are pretty much unlimited and happen especially when the wages are insufficient - which does not mean unreasonable.

Therefore "paying yourself" seems to be very arbitrary for a solo owner operator, so they tend to rather look at the gross profit in order to have a better grasp of what they actually made.

I agree to a large extend, however, that being a solo or not, one should look at the whole picture, meaning that if you hired an actual driver at the real wage, there should be some money left from the business, otherwise you generating a loss - you are better off to drive someone else's truck per pure business logic.
On the other hand, which I agree to a large extent too, driving a truck for yourself/being o/o has other - beyond money - "intrinsic values", as you once eloquently put it yourself, if I remember correctly. So, even if I cannot afford a driver or would be making slightly lesser money than being a driver myself, I'd still prefer to do what I do as one of my biggest "intrinsic values" is not having to answer to any bosses.

 

Fantastic post right up until you said “on the other hand” in that last part.

You MUST treat it as a real business who has to profit after paying yourself. Otherwise when that dreaded major break down occurs your expected to dig into your personal account to get up and running. Which means you have made much less then a company driver and still have all the head ache and risk.

 

That’s real good I as well drive an older truck and pull an older trailer all payed for I want to be home as much as I can

 

Don't forget the benefit of being able to include per diem as part of your salary structure, non-taxable to you as an employee of the S-Corp, and the bulk of which is fully deductible as an expense on the business side. It's a win win situation as far as tax liability is concerned.

 

My advice to you is calculate month by month instead of yearly miles. Costs fluctuate you always wanna be on the dot so you don't lose money nor keep any money on the table.