The math, in plain English
Six ideas decide whether a leased truck makes money. None of them are complicated — they’re just never explained to you. Pick your equipment and we’ll walk it with real numbers.
The big number on the rate confirmation is gross — before the carrier deducts your lease, fuel, insurance and the rest. What you actually keep is what’s left. Here’s a normal week on a dry van, every line laid out:
Fixed costs come out no matter how many miles you run — lease, insurance, escrow, permits. Variable costs scale with miles — fuel, tires, maintenance, tolls. This split is the whole game: variable costs shrink in a slow week, but the fixed nut doesn’t budge.
Three numbers tell you everything. Gross per mile is what it looks like. Operating cost per mile is what it costs to turn the wheel. Take-home per mile is what’s left — the only one that pays your mortgage.
Note: take-home per mile here is business net, before your own income/SE tax — see step 6.
Every mile you run earns the rate minus your variable cost — that’s your contribution per mile. Pile up enough of it to cover the week’s fixed nut, and you’ve hit break-even. Everything past that is yours.
Lease-purchase programs are built around the weeks you don’t see coming. Miles drop, the rate softens, but the lease payment and insurance come out anyway. A couple of those in a row, and the truck is bleeding you — usually before you’ve noticed. The decoder’s negative-week alarm says it out loud, in plain numbers, while you can still act.
Knowing the past is half of it. The other half is working backward from a goal: how many miles, at what rate, to actually clear what I want? And because you’re self-employed, part of every dollar isn’t really yours until taxes are set aside.
A planning cushion using a 25% rule of thumb (self-employment + income tax) — not a tax return. Set your own rate in the calculator.