WHen calculating your cpm

I pay about $5300 in fixed costs I have to earn each month. That also give me personally about $3000 per month to live on. Pays the insurance, truck, phone and other incidentals to operate the truck.

My variables are maintenance and Fuel. With the $4.50+ fuel, that's about 84 CPM.

I am plan for 19 days on the road a month. Doesn't matter how far I go, I am just driving 19 days for planning purposes.

So I need to earn about $280 per day and for every mile I move the truck, 84 Cents. So it's to my benefit to find the shortest, highest paying loads I can get.


I have had days where I have run 180 miles and earned $800 revenue. That gave be about $370 profit for the day. Do that for 5 days. You are $1850 profit for the week. Get enough weeks like that, you can work 2 weeks for the month and shut down IF you wanted to.

 

Concerning my income, I do not put that into my cpm. I want my cpm to reflect cost per mile (what is coming out of my pocket), not what is going into my pocket.

per mile figuring is useful, and you should have a number. Mine is $1.20. But it's just an estimate. You can be a lot more accurate when you actually get to crunching numbers and making decisions. To do that I only use cpm for fuel, equipment depreciation, and maintenence/repairs.

trip expenses like tolls, CAT scales, permits, etc.. should be deducted straight from each load they were accrued.

and things like insurance, plates, cell phone, loan payments, etc... should be figured on time, not miles to be accurate. I total them up for the year and convert to per day expense. My spreadsheets update automatically every day. And whether I run 500 miles per week or 5000 miles per week it stays accurate.

 

As this truck and trailer are relied upon to pay for everything in my life, not just itself, I include everything. Even the toilet paper in my bathroom.

 

There's definitely more than one way to look at it. I find it useful to keep personal finances seperate from business.

The number I want to see as the net for my business becomes the gross for my personal income, and then I can decide on toilet paper for my bathroom out of that.

 

That's why I "pay" myself $3000 per month.

House bills are paid from that in a totally separate checking account

 

While you need to keep personal and business finances separate, you do need to calculate your pay into your rates. You have to make sure you are getting a rate that will pay you as well as your truck expenses.

 

I did not say that I don't have personal and business cash and checking accounts, as I do, indeed. I did say that the truck pays for everything and I mean everything, including retirement funds.
My cost per mile, so far this year is $2.03 per mile, all miles. My revenue has been $2.07 per mile, all miles.
I think I got it covered, plus a little beer money!

 

2.07 minus 2.03 times 65 mph equal $2.60 an hour..... drink slowly or cheaply

 

The beer and whisky are already included in the $2.03. The 4 cents is more beer!