Owner Operator Trucking Spreadsheet, Excel Google Sheets, Cost Per Mile Calculator, Load Profit and IFTA Tracker (Digital Download)

OWNER-OPERATOR TRUCKING — cost per mile, load profit and IFTA, with a worked quarter inside

A broker offers you $2.60 a mile on 480 miles. That is $1,248, and on a load board it looks like a good day.

Then you drive 120 miles to get to the pickup. Nobody pays for those, but they burn the same diesel, wear the same tyres and pass the same weigh station. You ran 600 miles for that $1,248.

$2.08 a mile. The rate did not change. The truth did.

THREE NUMBERS ARE WRONG ON NEARLY EVERY TRUCKING SHEET, AND THEY ARE THE THREE THAT COST YOU

1. THE RATE
A load board quotes dollars per LOADED mile. So this file has a Deadhead column beside the loaded one, and every cost in the row — fuel, the maintenance set-aside, factoring, tolls, the fixed costs those miles have to carry — is charged against the total. Each load ends with the profit, the profit per mile, and a plain-word verdict: Good, Thin, or Lost money.

In the worked quarter the gap between the two ways of counting is twenty-four cents a mile. On thirty thousand miles that is $7,300, and it is the most common reason a truck that never stops moving does not make money.

2. COST PER MILE MOVES WITH THE MILES
Fuel is a cost per mile. So is a tyre. The truck payment is not — it is four figures on the first of the month whether you ran ten thousand miles or four.

$4,435 a month of fixed costs over 10,000 miles is 44 cents a mile. The same bills over 8,000 miles is 55 cents. Your break-even went up by eleven cents in a month when you did less work — which is exactly when the rates are worst and the temptation to take a cheap load is strongest. The Cost per mile tab shows you what a fifth fewer miles does before you say yes to one.

3. CHEAP FUEL IS NOT CHEAP TAX
IFTA charges you for the fuel you burned in a state, not the fuel you bought in it. Two hundred gallons in Oklahoma at twenty cents of tax, then those miles run in Pennsylvania at seventy-four, and you have not saved fifty-four cents a gallon. You have moved it to the quarterly return.

The IFTA tab does both halves. You type the miles you ran in each jurisdiction; the gallons you bought there come off the Fuel tab on their own. Taxable gallons are your miles at your own fleet MPG. In the worked quarter the truck is $188 in credit in Missouri, $157 down in Illinois, and the quarter ends $363 owing — money that felt like a saving at the pump three months earlier.

RATE CHECK — THE TAB TO KEEP OPEN
A broker is on the phone. Type the loaded miles, the miles to the pickup and the money offered. Fifteen seconds later you have the profit, the margin, and a sentence: TAKE IT, THIN, or WALK AWAY.

The example already in the file is 180 loaded miles, 220 empty ones to reach them, $468. That is $2.60 a loaded mile — one of the better numbers on the board. It is $1.17 a total mile against a cost of $1.37, and it loses thirty-two dollars. Underneath, the file tells you what to ask for instead: $3.30 a loaded mile.

THE TEN TABS

Setup — nine settings: your diesel planning price, the maintenance you set aside per mile, your factoring fee, your target margin, the miles you expect in a month, and whether you pay yourself per mile or take what is left.
Fixed costs — twenty lines, eleven already filled in as a checklist: truck and trailer notes, primary liability, physical damage, cargo, occupational accident, plates and 2290, ELD, the accountant, parking, phone. Each turned into a cost per mile.
Loads — 400 rows. Six things to type per load. Out comes the fuel, the set-aside, the factoring, the fixed costs those miles carry, the profit, the profit per mile, and the verdict.
Fuel — 300 rows. Date, state, gallons, price, odometer. A real fleet MPG, and a Check column that catches an odometer typed backwards or an MPG that could not be true.
Maintenance — 150 rows, split by category, put beside what you were setting aside. If the difference is negative your set-aside is too low for this truck.
IFTA — 60 jurisdictions. Tax due or credit, state by state, plus a check that the miles you have split match the miles on your Loads tab.
Cost per mile — the assembly. What you earned per loaded mile and per total mile, what every mile cost, what was left, and what a quiet month would do to your break-even.
Rate check — the calculator above, ending in the least you should accept per loaded mile.
Dashboard — five charts, the quarter week by week, and where every mile went.
Start Here — the guide, inside the workbook as well as in the PDF.

THE EXAMPLE WAS NOT TYPED BY HAND
There is a real-looking owner-operator in the file: one driver, one 2019 Cascadia, thirteen weeks. Sixty-three loads, 27,484 loaded miles and 3,372 empty ones, thirty-nine fuel stops across twenty-three states, ten maintenance bills including a turbo and two days down.

Nothing was invented and nothing was flattered. The loads chain together the way real lanes do, the fuel was bought where it was cheap the way a careful driver buys it, and that is exactly why the IFTA tab ends up owing money. Two of the sixty-three loads come out Thin and the file says so instead of hiding it.

TWO COPIES IN THE DOWNLOAD
One workbook has the quarter filled in, so you can see what every column expects before you touch anything. The second is the same file completely blank: same ten tabs, same formulas, same charts, the fixed-cost checklist and the IFTA rate table still there, ready for your first load. Start on whichever suits you.

WORKS WITH
Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer, Windows or Mac. Google Sheets — upload and open with Sheets; every formula works, the dropdowns look a little different, the print settings do not carry across. LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no login.

WHO IT IS FOR
An owner-operator with one truck, a lease-purchase driver, a hot shot or a small box-truck operation — anybody who is the driver, the dispatcher and the bookkeeper on the same day.

HONEST LIMITS — please read before buying
- One truck per file. Two trucks means two copies. The fixed costs, the MPG and the maintenance history all belong to one unit.
- It is not accounting software. No Schedule C, no payroll, no supplier ledger, no bank feed, no invoicing.
- IFTA here is a working sheet, not a filed return. It works out what you owe from your own miles and gallons so you can check it and see it coming. You still file through your state's system, and the rate table is yours to keep current.
- Fuel on a load is an estimate: your fleet MPG at your planning price. The Fuel tab holds what you really paid, and Cost per mile uses that.
- Depreciation is not in the fixed costs unless you put it there. If you own the truck outright there is no payment, but it is still losing value — add a line for it or your cost per mile will read low.
- It does not read your computer's clock. Everything counts from one date on Setup. A file that changes under you every morning is a file you stop trusting.
- Capacity: 400 loads, 300 fuel stops, 150 maintenance entries, 60 jurisdictions, 13 weeks on the dashboard.

WHAT ARRIVES
Two .xlsx workbooks and a plain-English Start Here guide as a PDF. Instant download — no app, no login, no monthly fee.

I never ask for shop access. No password, no manager invite, no app permissions. You download a file; that is the whole transaction.

Licence: for your own business. Reselling or redistributing the file is not allowed.

Something wrong with it? Message me through Etsy and I will fix the file.