Trip Figures

For those of you interested in the down-and-dirty nitty gritty of a lease-purchase in the trucking industry I will be releasing my weekly settlements here online shortly. Until then, here is a breakdown of some of the figures for this load I'm on now:

Trip #6 includes 777 loaded miles, 20 deadhead miles, and a Fuel Surcharge (FSC) of 58 cents per mile. Assuming there is no detention at the consignee, this is the total income for this load, and it breaks out as follows:

INCOME:

deadhead $ 17.40
loaded $699.30
FSC $462.26
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total $1178.96

No matter how I run my truck on this load, that is what I'm going to be paid, and I know this up front.

Now, the only real variable left in the equation is the cost of fuel. Since I fueled today I'll use that price as the cost of fuel for the trip (anal retentive types could argue it would be a blend of the last fill up I made and this one, but I'm not one of those).

I paid $4.51 per gallon at the pump this morning. Since the amount I get paid in FSC doesn't change ($462.26) the only real control I have over the equation is how many gallons it takes me to get from where I started, to the shipper then to the consignee.

It turns out this trip, as I'm running it, is right at 900 miles long. I've mentioned before the disparity between Rand-McNally "short miles" and what I call "real miles", but suffice it to say we rarely get paid for all miles run on a load. In this case, I have to run about 100 extra miles, on my own dime, for this load.

Now, I'm going to show you three ways of accomplishing this trip. The first way, we have our driver "Mick Miser" who gets 7.2 MPG average the entire way. The second way, we will have a driver "Alex Average" who gets 6.0 MPG for the trip, and finally our big spender, the ever-popular "Billy Big Rig" who gets 5.0 MPG in his super fast truck.

Here is "Mick Miser":

EXPENSE: (7.2 MPG - 125 gallons)

fuel $563.75
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Profit: $615.21

And now "Alex Average":

EXPENSE: (6.0 MPG - 150 gallons)

fuel $676.50
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Profit: $502.46

Finally, "Billy Big Rig":

EXPENSE: (5.0 MPG - 180 gallons)

fuel $811.80
================
Profit: $367.16

Remember, once you are assigned the trip your income is fixed; it is your expenses that will make or break you. In this example, there is a difference of $112.75 between "Mick" and "Alex" and a whopping $248.05 between "Mick" and "Billy".

Another way to look at this is the adjusted fuel expense per mile. That is, take the cost of filling up, subtract the FSC then divide the rest by the miles in the trip. This boils down the following way:

Adjusted fuel expense per mile @ 7.2 MPG: 11.2 cents
Adjusted fuel expense per mile @ 6.0 MPG: 23.7 cents
Adjusted fuel expense per mile @ 5.0 MPG: 38.8 cents

It doesn't take much of a genius to figure out that I'd rather pay 11.2 cents per mile I run rather than 38.8. The difference between "Mick" and "Billy" is more than tossing a quarter out the window every mile for the entire trip. Or, more correctly, watching it pour out the exhaust stacks in the form of more diesel going up in smoke.