Flatbed Operating Cost per Mile

Cost per mile is a division problem

Pick a period you can close. A month works if the miles and the bills fall in the same month. A quarter works better when an insurance premium or a set of tires hits in one week and would distort thirty days. Add the operating dollars you actually spent or incurred in that period. Divide by the miles the truck moved in that period, loaded and empty, because empty miles burn fuel and wear tires too. The quotient is your operating cost per mile for that period. It will not match next quarter, and it should not match a national study.

Miles have to be the same miles. Hub miles, dispatch miles, and paid miles are three numbers. Use the odometer or the ELD miles for cost, because that is the distance the fuel and the tires saw. Paid miles are a revenue concept. Mixing them makes the cost look low and the rate look safe when the deadhead was real.

What the ATRI table is, and what it is not

An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2025 Update, from ATRI, reports carrier financial data from 2024 and some indicators from the first quarter of 2025. The report says the average operational cost of for-hire trucking in 2024 was $2.260 per mile, down 0.4 percent from $2.270 in 2023. Excluding fuel, cost rose 3.6 percent to $1.779 per mile. Per hour, the same report puts 2024 cost at $90.89 with fuel and $71.57 without fuel, using an average operating speed of 40.20 miles per hour drawn from GPS data. Those sentences are in the report. They describe the carriers who answered, weighted for industry averages by sector share. They do not describe your flatbed.

Table 8 is the line-item history. For 2024 the vehicle-based averages per mile are fuel $0.481, truck and trailer lease or purchase payments $0.390, repair and maintenance $0.198, truck insurance premiums $0.102, permits and licenses $0.009, tires $0.047, and tolls $0.038. Driver wages are $0.798 and driver benefits are $0.197. The columns sum to the $2.260 total. Table 10 in the same report shows the 2023-to-2024 change: fuel down 13.0 percent, payments up 8.3 percent, repair and maintenance down 2.0 percent, insurance premiums up 3.0 percent, permits unchanged, and the rest of the story is in the table rather than in a slogan.

The respondent fleet did include flatbed trailers. Table 5 lists 24,138 flatbed trailers with an average age of 7.3 years, next to a much larger count of 53-foot trailers. Inclusion is not a flatbed breakout. ATRI did not, in Table 8, publish a flatbed-only cost per mile. Specialized carriers are discussed elsewhere in the report as a sector, and this page will not borrow a specialized average it is not quoting from a table in front of you. If you want a flatbed number, compute it.

A 2026 ATRI update was announced in trade coverage. The PDF URL checked the week of this draft did not return the 2026 file, so the figures above stay anchored to the 2025 update and the 2024 data year. When a later report replaces Table 8, the later table wins. Do not freeze $2.260 as a permanent flatbed constant.

The lines you can source, and the lines you leave blank

Fuel is gallons times the price you paid, from receipts or from the card statement, divided by miles. Do not use a national diesel average unless you are explicitly comparing your price to the EIA series ATRI itself cites as context. Your cost is your tickets. A flatbed that idles at a jobsite, or that runs a wet kit, burns fuel the paid miles will not explain. Put that fuel in the numerator anyway.

Tires are the invoice for rubber, casings, and repairs, spread across the miles you expect that rubber to survive only if you are honest about the miles. If you do not know the life of the set, do not invent a mileage. Book the cash when you spend it, and accept that the month you buy eight tires will look ugly. The ATRI tire line of $0.047 per mile in 2024 is what the study fleet averaged, not a promise that your recap program costs that.

Repair and maintenance is the shop stack: PM services, brakes, aftertreatment, lights, and the road calls. The 2024 study average is $0.198 per mile. A flatbed trailer adds floor, winches, rub rails, and air lines that a dry van also has in part and a flatbed abuses differently. Use your work orders. If you do the work yourself, the parts still count. Your unpaid Saturday does not become a zero just because no invoice arrived.

Insurance is the premium you pay for the policy you hold, divided by miles. The study line is truck insurance premiums, $0.102 per mile in 2024. Liability, physical damage, cargo, and occupational accident are different policies. Some fleets in a study self-insure a layer and the average will not match a new-authority owner-operator whose premium is a large fixed bill on low miles. Fixed premium on low miles is a high cost per mile. That is arithmetic, not a moral failure. Do not hide it by spreading the premium across miles you hope to run.

Permits and licenses in the study are $0.009 per mile, and tolls are $0.038. Both move hard with the lanes you actually run. A flatbed on heavy-haul permits is not in that nine-tenths of a cent. If your envelope of permits is larger, your line is larger. Leave the study number in the reference column and put the permit invoice in yours.

Truck and trailer payments, $0.390 per mile in the 2024 column, are a real cost if you have a payment. They are not a reason to invent a payment you do not have. If the truck is paid off, that line is zero and your cost is lower. If you leased, use the lease article's rule: only a sourced payment goes in the cell. A hopeful number is not a cost.

What a flatbed adds that the average smooths away

Securement is a cost center. Tarps wear out and get cut. Straps are rated and retired. Chains and binders are bought, inspected, and replaced. Edge protectors, coil racks, headache racks, and bulkheads are steel you hauled around empty. None of those items has its own row in Table 8. They are inside someone's maintenance line or they are invisible. On your worksheet they get a row, because you write the checks.

Labor is the other hidden row. Tarping and chaining take time the ELD may show as on-duty not driving. If you pay a driver for that time, it belongs in wages. If you are the driver and you only count driving pay, you are understating the cost of a tarped load relative to a no-tarp load. The study's driver wage line of $0.798 per mile is a fleet average, including carriers whose drivers do not tarp. It is a poor proxy for a one-truck flatbed that spends an hour on a coil.

Trailer specialty changes maintenance. A step deck, a double drop, or a stretch trailer is not the 24,138 standard flatbeds' average age talking. Parts, tires on a spread axle, and permit exposure belong in your column. Do not scale them off $2.260.

Run the worksheet without borrowing a total

1. Choose the period and export miles from the odometer or ELD, loaded and empty.
2. Drop in fuel, tires, maintenance, insurance, permits, tolls, and truck or trailer payments from statements.
3. Add securement gear and any site equipment that only the flatbed uses.
4. Add driver wages and benefits if someone is paid. If you are unincorporated and you have not paid yourself, do not pretend the wage line is the ATRI $0.798. Decide what you must clear and keep it out of the cost stack or label it as pay, but do not mix it in silently.
5. Divide the sum by miles. Write the date on the sheet. Next quarter, do it again.
6. Put the ATRI 2024 figures in a reference column if you want a sanity check. A line that is many times the study average deserves an explanation. It does not deserve to be replaced with the study average.

Empty miles are already in the denominator if you used hub miles. If you insist on a loaded-mile cost, say so in the label. A loaded-mile figure is higher because you threw the empty miles out of the denominator and left their fuel in the numerator. Both ratios can be useful. Neither is a rate.

A cost build is not a rate per mile

Shippers pay for a move. Your cost is what the move consumes. The gap is margin, deadhead positioning you have not driven yet, and the risk that the load cancels after you bought the permit. This page does not estimate that gap and does not publish a flatbed rate. Pages that discuss rates are doing a different job. If you came here for what to charge, finish the worksheet first. A rate quoted from a national cost average is a rate quoted from somebody else's fleet in 2024.

O Trucking will not invent a flatbed cost to make a dispatch conversation easier. Bring the sheet. The miles and the invoices are the whole method.

Frequently Asked Questions