What It Costs to Run a Truck #
Driver pay and fuel, the two largest costs of running a truck, came to about $1.60 per mile across the national fleet in 2025, by our calculation from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Energy Information Administration and Federal Highway Administration data. The method is set out below.
Those two lines are most of the cost, but not all of it. Truck and trailer payments, repair and maintenance, insurance, tires, tolls and driver benefits come on top, and federal data does not measure them per mile. The American Transportation Research Institute's annual study of fleet finances puts those remaining lines at roughly a dollar a mile more.
How We Calculated It #
Driver pay per mile. BLS puts the mean annual wage of heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers at $59,710 for May 2025, and the Federal Highway Administration's national highway statistics put annual mileage per combination truck at 55,276 on average for 2024. Dividing one by the other gives driver pay of about a dollar and eight cents for every mile a truck runs.
Fuel per mile. Retail diesel averaged $3.66 a gallon across 2025 in EIA's weekly series, and the same FHWA table puts combination-truck fuel economy at 7.1 per gallon. That is about 52 cents of fuel per mile.
The inputs span two years, because the highway statistics trail the wage and price data, and mileage is the average per registered truck. We re-run the figure as each series updates.
Two properties of that method are worth stating, because they decide how the figure should be read. It is built from national averages rather than from a sample of carriers, so it describes the fleet rather than any operator in it. And mileage per registered truck includes trucks that ran for part of a year, which pulls the denominator down and the per-mile pay figure up relative to a truck in continuous service.
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Where the Increases Came From #
In ATRI's fleet study, fuel was the component that held steady in 2025; almost everything else rose. Tolls rose 13.2%, the steepest single move, followed by repair and maintenance, driver benefits and tires.
Taken together, the pattern describes fleets paying more to keep older equipment running and more to keep drivers in seats, in a market where replacing either has become expensive. Because fuel can be partly passed through with a surcharge and the rest cannot, the non-fuel costs are the ones that land directly on the margin.
Maintenance is the component most within an operator's influence and the one most often deferred when rates are poor, which is precisely how a cost problem in a bad year becomes a larger one the following year.
Truckload and Less-Than-Truckload Are Different Businesses #
Long-distance general freight splits into two industries that share a cost denominator and almost nothing else. Census draws the line at shipment consolidation.
Truckload (NAICS 484121) carriers provide full truck movement of freight from origin to destination, where the shipment is a single load not combined with other shipments. Census counts 60,137 establishments in truckload trucking with paid employees (Census CBP, 2023).
Less-than-truckload (NAICS 484122) carriers combine multiple shipments from different customers onto one truck for delivery across a network. Census describes the activity as a chain: local pick-up, local sorting and terminal operations, line-haul, destination sorting and terminal operations, and local delivery. There are 10,742 such establishments (Census CBP, 2023).
The ratio between the two counts is itself informative. Truckload is the industry of the small carrier, with low capital requirements beyond the equipment. Less-than-truckload requires a terminal network before the first shipment moves, which is why so few establishments carry so much of the freight.
What the Classification Covers #
General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance (NAICS 48412) comprises establishments providing long-distance general freight trucking. Census defines general freight as a wide variety of commodities, generally palletised and transported in a container or van trailer, and long-distance as trucking between metropolitan areas, which may cross North American country borders. Both truckload and less-than-truckload carriers sit inside it.
The boundary with local general freight trucking is geographic and operational rather than a matter of size. Local carriers operate within a single metropolitan area with same-day return trips; long-distance carriers operate between metropolitan areas and typically do not return the same day. Both handle similar commodities in similar equipment.
That distinction is the one that matters for this page. A cost per mile built on a driver wage and an annual mileage assumption describes over-the-road work. It is not the right frame for a local fleet, whose miles, duty cycles and pay structures differ, and it is not the right frame for specialised freight, which Census classifies outside general freight altogether.
The wage side of the same picture is covered in our page on average truck driver salary, and the entry economics in our guide to starting a trucking company.
Why Cost Per Mile Beats Cost Per Load #
Cost per mile is the industry's standard denominator because it is the only unit that lets a carrier compare unlike work. A short regional run and a long haul cannot be judged against each other on cost per load, and neither can a reefer against a dry van.
It also converts directly into the decision an operator actually faces, which is whether to accept a rate. A carrier that knows its own cost per mile can evaluate any offered load in one step, including the empty miles required to reach it, and the empty miles are where thin margins usually disappear.
The industry average is a reference point, not a target. Costs vary by region, equipment age, driver pay model and lane mix, and a carrier whose number sits above the average may simply be running the kind of freight that costs more to serve. Broader movements in freight demand are covered in our logistics industry trends page.
Benchmarking a Fleet Against the Industry #
The federal record counts 70,879 long-distance general freight trucking establishments with paid employees, employing 901,394 people (Census CBP, 2023). The overwhelming majority are small carriers rather than the fleets that set the industry's pricing conversation.
Driver pay and fuel on this page are our own calculation from federal wage, price and highway data. The remaining cost lines come from ATRI's annual study of carrier finances.
Build your own cost per mile from your own accounts, including empty miles, and use this page to check that no category has been left out.
| Benchmark | On this page | In the report |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per mile, from federal wage and fuel data | Yes | Discussed, not measured |
| Carriers and employment, national | Yes | Yes |
| Carriers and employment by state | No | See Report → |
| Industry receipts and five-year forecast | No | See Report → |
| Market concentration | No | See Report → |