Case Study 001
A load that looked acceptable and lost money.
450 miles at $1.20 per mile. Nothing about the posting looked alarming. The numbers said otherwise.
The load as posted
- Loaded miles
- 450 mi
- Deadhead miles
- 62 mi
- Posted rate
- $1.20 / mi loaded
- Line haul total
- $540.00
- Fuel price used
- $3.55 / gal
- Truck MPG
- 6.5
- Operating cost
- $1.00 / mi
The X-Ray
The rate never covered the miles once the empty run to the pickup and the truck's own cost per mile were counted.
Walking the numbers
- Total miles run (450 + 62)
- 512 mi
- Gallons burned (512 ÷ 6.5)
- 78.8 gal
- Fuel cost (78.8 × $3.55)
- $279.72
- Operating cost (512 × $1.00)
- $512.00
- Total cost
- $791.72
- Revenue
- $540.00
- Result
- −$251.72
Counting only cash out the door for fuel and the driver's own operating figure, the load came out roughly $223 behind against the operator's own cost sheet, and worse than that against a fully loaded $1.00 per mile. Either way, it was a loss — and there were two days of the truck's life inside it.
What would have made it work
To break even on 512 total miles at those costs, the load needed roughly $792 — about $1.76 per loaded mile. To clear a real margin, the counter was higher still. That is the number to say out loud on the phone: not "can you do better," but a rate with arithmetic behind it.
Why we publish only this one
This is the load that started TSFI. We are not going to pad this page with cases we have not run. When there are more real ones, they will appear here with their numbers shown the same way.