Free tool for aggregate haulers
Price a haul per ton, per hour or per load from your own costs. See loads per day, your break-even, what a delay costs you, and a quote summary you can text to the customer.
1 · The haul
Take the one-way drive time from a map app and add a little, since loaded trucks run slower than cars; 2.25 minutes a mile is a common starting point. Not sure of your legal payload? Work it out with the axle & payload calculator.
2 · Plan for delays
3 · What your truck costs
The starting values are examples, not typical costs. Replace them with your own: your pay rate, your payment and insurance bills, and what you really spend on fuel, tires and repairs. Overhead covers permits, phones, accounting and the like.
4 · How you price
A daily goal is how many owner-operators price short-haul aggregate. Costs plus profit builds the price up from what you entered above; a 20% margin means 20 cents of every dollar is left after costs.
5 · The job (optional)
Enter the job size to see loads, truck-days and a job total. Enter a rate a customer or broker offered to see what that day would pay you.
6 · Fuel surcharge (optional)
Your quote · From a $1,500 day
Your costs for the day
Break-even
Below these rates the truck loses money at the costs you entered.
Estimates only. Results are based on the numbers you enter and normal travel, loading and dumping times. Actual loads and earnings will change with road construction, traffic, weather, jobsite conditions, loading and scale times, and breakdowns. VTA does not set or recommend rates. Nothing you enter leaves your device.
How it works
The calculator starts with the clock: how many loads fit in your day. Then it adds up what the truck costs to run that day and turns your price into a rate per ton, per hour and per load, so you can quote the job the way the customer wants to pay.
Choosing a truck as well? A bigger truck changes the tons per load. Compare a tri-axle and a quad with the axle & payload calculator, or read how many axles your dump truck needs, state by state.
FAQ
General information for planning, not financial advice. Every rate the calculator shows comes from your own numbers.
Work out what the truck costs to run for a day, add the profit you need, and divide by the tons you can haul in that day. Tons a day is loads a day times tons a load. For example, 8 loads of 21 tons is 168 tons, so a $1,500 day works out to about $8.93 a ton. The calculator does this from your own numbers.
Per ton is common for aggregate hauled from a quarry or pit on short, predictable runs. Per hour is common for jobsite work such as dirt, demolition and asphalt, where waits are out of your hands. Per load fits fixed deliveries. A per-ton price puts the risk of delays on you; an hourly price puts it on the customer. The calculator shows all three for the same day.
Divide the minutes you can work by the minutes one round trip takes, and round down. A round trip is the miles there and back times your minutes per mile, plus loading and dumping. At 12 miles one way, 2.25 minutes a mile and 15 minutes to load and dump, a trip takes 69 minutes, so a 10-hour day with 45 minutes of stops fits 8 loads.
Driver pay plus payroll taxes and workers’ comp, fuel for every mile including the run to and from the yard, tires and repairs per mile, the truck payment, insurance, and yearly overhead such as permits, phones and accounting. Spread the yearly costs over the days the truck actually works.
Add a planned delay per load for lines at the scale, detours, traffic and soft or crowded jobsites. Each added minute stretches every round trip, and a few minutes a load can cost a whole load by the end of the day. Many haulers also put waiting-time terms in writing before the job starts.
It depends on what your truck costs to run and what your market pays, so there is no single number. To find yours, take the price you need for the day and divide it by the hours you bill. The calculator shows your hourly price and your hourly break-even next to the per-ton price.
No. Every number this calculator shows comes from what you enter. VTA does not publish going rates or suggest prices, and each hauler sets its own rates. The starting values are examples only.
Nothing you enter leaves your device. The calculator remembers your last numbers in this browser so you don’t have to retype them. Tap Reset to go back to the example values.
Work out your legal payload, track short-haul hours, and find your state trucking association.