Free box-truck route pricing tool

Box Truck Delivery Pricing Calculator

A short delivery route can use a full day. Price the miles, stop time and people together to find your minimum route quote and price per paid stop—with your pay covered before business profit.

How to price a delivery route: add vehicle costs, all paid time, daily overhead and route fees, then divide by 1 − target profit margin. Quote the full route, or divide by the stops you can actually bill.

All amounts are USD. Defaults are a worked example, not market rates or a recommended wage. One route per working day.

1 Route and time

One route per working day. Count the whole job, including the return or repositioning trip.

Route milesMiles between the pickup and planned delivery stops.

Deadhead milesTravel to the pickup and return/repositioning miles not included above.

Total driving hoursDriving for all route and deadhead miles; exclude stopped time.

Planned paid stopsWhole number of stops you expect to bill.

Minutes at each stopAverage unloading, paperwork and waiting time per stop.

Other paid hoursLoading, closeout and other paid time not counted above.

2 People and vehicle costs

Pay yourself for all job time before calculating business profit.

Driver pay ($/hour)Your owner-driver compensation or total hired-driver hourly cost.

Helper cost ($/hour)Total cost of all helpers per hour, for the whole job. Use 0 for none.

Vehicle cost ($/mile)Fuel + maintenance + repairs + tires only. Exclude pay and fixed costs.

Fixed overhead ($/month)Truck payment/lease, insurance, permits, phone and other fixed costs.

Working route-days/monthDays earning revenue; one route per day. Fixed overhead is divided by this.

Other route costs ($)Tolls, parking and job-specific fees not counted elsewhere.

3 Your quote

Target margin is the business profit left after the compensation and costs above.

Target profit margin (%)Enter 0 for break-even, or a target below 100%.

Offered route pay ($, optional)Total payment for this job. Blank skips comparison; 0 means no payment.

Need a vehicle-only cost? Use the fuel plus maintenance/tires components from the box-truck cost-per-mile calculator. Do not paste its all-in total here; that would count pay and overhead twice.

Your quote will appear when all required inputs are valid.

When stops take longer

Keep your miles, number of stops and other costs unchanged. Only the average time at each stop changes.

Uses your current inputs, with three stop-time scenarios
Time / stop	Total work	Route quote	Per stop

More stop time increases both driver and helper costs. If either hourly input is zero, that part of the time cost stays zero.

When fewer stops get paid

What if you do the planned work, but cannot bill every stop? Keep the original — per-stop price and the same route cost.

Lost billing, with no reduction in miles or work time
Paid stops	Revenue	Profit / loss	Per stop to keep target

If cancelled stops save time or miles, adjust those inputs. A guaranteed route minimum can cover costs when fewer stops are billable.

Worked example: 10 stops in one day

This example matches the default inputs. A 100-mile delivery route needs 20 more miles to reach the pickup or return. Driving takes four hours, each of 10 stops takes 20 minutes, and loading plus closeout takes one hour.

Illustrative route cost breakdown
Component	Calculation	Cost
Vehicle	120 miles × $0.95	$114.00
Driver	8⅓ hours × $25	$208.33
Helper	No helper in this example	$0.00
Fixed overhead	$2,200 ÷ 22 working days	$100.00
Tolls and other fees	Per route	$20.00
Total cost	Before business profit	$442.33

A 15% profit-margin target gives $442.333… ÷ 0.85 = $520.392…. Rounding the quote up to cents gives $520.40 for the route, or $52.04 for each of 10 paid stops. Driver compensation is already included; roughly $78.07 remains as business profit at the route quote.

At 30 minutes per stop, the same route takes 10 hours and needs $569.42. At the original $52.04 per-stop price, collecting payment for only eight stops brings in $416.32—about $26.01 below the original cost if the full route work was still done.

The formula, without double counting

Total miles = route miles + deadhead miles
Total hours = driving + (stops × minutes per stop ÷ 60) + other paid hours
Route cost = (total miles × vehicle cost/mile) + (total hours × driver and helper hourly costs) + (monthly fixed overhead ÷ working route-days) + other route costs
Minimum quote = route cost ÷ (1 − target margin ÷ 100)
Per-stop quote = minimum quote ÷ billable stops

Margin is different from markup. Dividing cost by 0.85 targets a 15% margin on the selling price. Adding 15% to cost gives a 15% markup, or only about a 13% margin. Calculations keep full precision until display; route and per-stop quotes round up independently to cents.

Set up a quote that matches the actual job

Count every mile once. Include the trip to the pickup and the return or repositioning leg. Do not add a return leg again if it is already in your route miles.
Count every paid hour once. Stop time covers unloading and waiting at deliveries; use other paid hours for loading, closeout or additional time not already included. If helpers work only part of the day, enter their total route cost under other costs and set helper hourly cost to zero.
Use the days that actually earn revenue. Spreading a $2,200 monthly cost over 22 working days gives $100 per day. At 16 days it becomes $137.50. This tool allocates one day's overhead to one route; combine same-day jobs or allocate overhead separately if you run multiple routes a day.
Define which stops are payable. Agree how failed deliveries, cancellations, extra waiting, stairs, assembly and return trips affect the total. Add their expected time and cost before quoting.
Use your own records. Replace the $0.95 vehicle cost and hourly examples with your actual costs. The output is a cost-based floor, not a prediction of what a customer or delivery platform will pay.

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Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for a box-truck delivery route?

Start with all route costs: every mile, driver and helper time, a daily share of fixed overhead, and route fees. Divide that total by 1 minus your target profit margin. The default example costs $442.33 and needs a $520.40 route quote for a 15% margin. These are illustrative inputs, not market rates.

Should I quote per mile, per stop or per day?

Use a route or day total to cover both miles and time. Divide that quote by the paid stops only when those stops are billable. A per-mile rate alone can miss loading, waiting and delivery time. A per-stop agreement needs clear treatment of failed deliveries, cancellations and additional work.

Is driver pay the same as profit?

No. Driver pay compensates the person doing the work, including an owner-driver. This calculator includes driver and helper pay in costs. Profit is the amount remaining after those costs and the other operating costs are covered.

What belongs in vehicle cost per mile?

Include fuel, maintenance, repairs and tires for each mile driven. Do not include owner pay, helper pay, truck payments, insurance or other monthly overhead here, because those are entered separately. For a diesel truck, fuel cost per mile equals diesel price divided by MPG.

What happens if a stop is cancelled or cannot be billed?

The cancellation table holds the original route work and costs constant, then reduces the number of paid stops. It shows the revenue and profit at the original per-stop quote and the higher per-stop quote needed to preserve the target margin. If the cancellation actually saves miles or time, update those inputs instead.

Why divide by 1 minus margin instead of adding a percentage?

Profit margin is profit divided by revenue. A 15% target margin means price equals cost divided by 0.85. Multiplying cost by 1.15 applies a 15% markup, which produces only about a 13% profit margin.

Check your cost profile on future loads.

Explore TruckMargin Pro for saved truck profiles and load checks, or return to all free tools.

Methodology and assumptions

Original TruckMargin cost model, published October 20, 2026. Default values are illustrative assumptions, not a freight-rate survey, prevailing wages or measured industry averages. The worked example and sensitivity tables follow the formulas above. Vehicle cost/mile includes fuel, maintenance, repairs and tires; all driver compensation and fixed overhead are separate. Profit is before income tax. The model is for one route per working day and does not assess operational feasibility or legal driving limits.