How do I track profit and loss for each truck?

Chapter 01

Why doesn’t my bank balance show which truck makes money?

Because the bank account combines the money from all your trucks. Payments for every load enter one account, and every bill is paid from it. So a profitable truck can hide an unprofitable one for months. The balance shows how much cash the company has. It cannot tell you which truck earned that money and which truck used it up. For that, you need a simple sheet for each truck, every month. It has three parts: what the truck earned, its own costs, and its share of the company’s shared costs.

Here is how that looks in real life. Say you run three trucks under your own authority, with three drivers. Truck 1 is two years old and still has a loan. Truck 2 is four years old and has a loan too. Truck 3 is nine years old and paid off. In August 2026 the three trucks hauled $52,000 of freight. Everyone was busy all month. Yet when you open the bank account in September, there is less money in it than at the start of August.

So you ask the question every owner asks sooner or later: is my truck making money, or is one truck using up what the others earn? The bank cannot tell you. You sit down with the August papers and build one sheet for each truck. A spreadsheet works, and so does a notebook.

Each sheet has the same lines. At the top goes what the truck earned. Under it go the costs that belong to that truck alone. Take those away, and you see what the truck has left after paying for itself. Under that goes its share of the shared costs, such as the office. What remains is that truck’s profit or loss for the month.

This is not the same job as working out your cost per mile. Cost per mile divides your costs by your miles, so you know the lowest rate you can take. Our guide to cost per mile shows how. The sheet here asks a plainer question: after everything, did this truck leave you money? Most of the work is putting each dollar on the right truck, so that is where you start.

Chapter 02

How do I put each load and each bill on the right truck?

Put every load on the truck that hauled it, and every bill on the truck it was for. The rate confirmation and your invoice show which truck hauled each load. The fuel card statement, the shop invoice, the tire bill, the toll statement and the driver’s settlement show which truck each cost belongs to. The truck payment goes on its truck, and so does the insurance when the policy prices each truck. Yearly bills are split into twelve months. If a paper does not show the truck number, fix that habit first.

Start with what each truck earned. Go through August’s loads one by one. The rate confirmation is the broker’s sheet with the agreed pay for the load. Your invoice for the load should carry the truck number. Put the whole payment for each load on the truck that hauled it: the line haul, the fuel surcharge, detention and any other extra pay. Decide which month a load belongs to by its delivery date, and keep to that rule. If you factor your invoices, the fee for each load goes on the same truck. For August, truck 1 earned $23,000, truck 2 earned $16,000 and truck 3 earned $13,000.

Write down each truck’s miles too. They come from its ELD or its odometer. In August, truck 1 ran 10,000 miles, truck 2 ran 8,000 and truck 3 ran 6,000. You will need them later.

Fuel comes next. Give each truck its own fuel card, or have each driver enter the truck number at the pump. Then the statement splits fuel by truck for you. Truck 1 burned $6,000 of fuel, truck 2 $5,000 and truck 3 $4,000. You also file one fuel tax return for the whole company each quarter, and most owners simply call it IFTA (the IFTA agreement). If that return ends in a payment, split the payment between the trucks by their miles in that quarter. How to prepare and file the return itself is in our guide to the IFTA quarterly return.

Repairs are next, and the law has done half the work already. Federal rules make you keep records for every truck you control for 30 days in a row. They must include “a record of inspection, repairs, and maintenance indicating their date and nature” (the maintenance rule). That means the date of each job and what was done. You keep those records for a year, and for six months after the truck leaves your company. The rule does not ask for the cost, but the shop invoice shows it. File each invoice with that truck’s record, and the repair line almost fills itself. Tires go on the truck they were put on.

In August, truck 1 had $600 of service and truck 2 had $700. Truck 3 needed $7,800 of engine work, a turbo and injectors. Before any bill like that lands on a sheet, check it. Our guide to checking a truck repair invoice shows what to look for.

Tolls work like fuel. Give each truck its own toll transponder, and the statement splits the tolls. August’s tolls were $300, $250 and $150.

Driver pay goes on the truck the driver drove. If a driver moved between trucks, split his pay by the miles he drove in each one. How to work out the pay itself is in our guide to driver pay and settlements. Your drivers earned $6,000, $4,800 and $3,600. If you drive one of the trucks yourself, put a fair driver’s wage on its sheet, even if you do not pay yourself one. Otherwise your own truck looks much better than it is.

The truck payment goes on its own truck: $3,000 for truck 1 and $2,500 for truck 2. Truck 3 is paid off, so its line shows nothing. Use the payment as it leaves your bank. How the loan splits for taxes is your accountant’s question. Insurance goes on each truck too, if your policy lists a price for each one. Yours does: $1,100 each for trucks 1 and 2, and $1,000 for truck 3. If your policy gives one price for the whole fleet, treat it as a shared cost.

Some bills come once a year for each truck, such as the plate renewal. For a truck with a taxable gross weight of 55,000 pounds or more, the federal highway use tax is another. You pay it on Form 2290 for a year that runs from July 1 to June 30 (the IRS instructions for Form 2290). Put one twelfth of each yearly bill on every month’s sheet. If you put the whole bill in the month you pay it, that month looks terrible and the other eleven look too good. Your yearly bills come to $3,000 a truck, so each sheet carries $250 a month.

Chapter 03

How do I split shared costs, and count a truck stuck in the shop?

Split the costs that belong to the whole company by one simple rule. Write the rule down, and use it every month. The easiest rule gives each truck the same share. Another splits by miles, so a truck that ran more carries more. We found no official standard for this, so the choice is yours. Just never switch rules to make a month look better. And show a truck in the shop in the month it sits there. It earns nothing, but its insurance, its yearly bills and its share of the office keep running.

Your shared costs in August were these. The office and phones cost $300. The ELD, load board and accounting software cost $600, and parking cost $600. On top of that comes $3,000 of pay for yourself, for running the company. That makes $4,500. With three trucks, each one carries $1,500.

Why count your own pay? Because if you stopped doing the office work, you would have to pay someone else to do it. Leave it out, and every truck looks better than it really is.

Now see what splitting by miles would do. Your trucks ran 24,000 miles between them. Truck 1 ran 10,000 of those, so it would carry $1,875. Truck 2 would carry $1,500, and truck 3 only $1,125. That sounds fair, but look closer. Truck 3 ran fewer miles because it sat in the shop, so part of its bad month moves onto truck 1. Splitting the same amount for each truck is simpler, and it hides less. You choose that rule.

That brings you to the truck in the shop. Truck 3 went in on August 11 and came out on August 19. That is nine days with no loads and no money coming in. Its insurance, its yearly bills and its share of the office did not stop. Truck 3 has no loan. But for a truck with a loan, the payment keeps running too. Your drivers are paid by the mile, so truck 3’s driver earned nothing those nine days, and a long stay can cost you the driver. If you pay a driver something while the truck sits, put that on the truck’s sheet as well.

So add one line at the top of every sheet: days in the shop. Then a weak month explains itself. Do not move a big repair into the office costs, and do not leave it out because it was bad luck. It happened to this truck, in this month. If one repair makes one month look unfair, the answer is to look at several months together. Here is August with every line filled in.

Add the bottom line across, and the company lost $1,150 in August on these sheets. The sheets help explain the cash shortage, though the bank balance also depends on when you receive and make payments. They also show that each truck contributed to the result in a different way.

Chapter 04

How do I tell which truck is losing money, and what then?

Look at two lines on each sheet. If the line “left after its own costs” is below zero, the truck does not even pay for itself. Every month it runs like that costs you money. If that line is above zero but the bottom line is below zero, the truck pays for itself. It also pays part of your office, just not its full share. Those are two different problems with two different answers. And never judge from one month. Look at three months or more.

In August, truck 3 is the first kind and truck 2 is the second. But August was truck 3’s worst month, because of one big repair. So you pull out the sheets for June and July too.

Over three months, the line “left after its own costs” reads like this. Truck 1 left $5,400, $5,900 and $5,750, for $17,050 in all. Truck 2 left $1,300, $1,100 and $1,400, for $3,800. Truck 3 left $900 in June, then lost $600 in July and $3,800 in August, for a loss of $3,500. Each truck’s share of the shared costs over those months was $4,500. So truck 1 made $12,550, truck 2 lost $700, and truck 3 lost $8,000. The whole company made just $3,850 in three months.

It is tempting to get rid of both losing trucks. First, look at what each one does for the company.

Truck 3 did not cover its own costs over three months, and its repair bills grew each month. If you sold it and its costs left with it, the company would have kept $3,500 more over those months. But parking it is not the same as selling it. A parked truck still carries its yearly bills, and its insurance too unless you change the policy. It earns nothing while it sits. Whether to fix it, overhaul it or replace it is a choice of its own. Our guide to repair, overhaul or replace walks through it, starting from the same repair records. If you do sell it, our guide to adding or selling a truck keeps the paperwork in order.

Truck 2 is the other kind. It covered its own costs every month and put $3,800 toward the shared costs. Now suppose you sell it. The office, the software, the parking and your pay do not shrink. The same $4,500 a month now falls on two trucks, $2,250 each. Truck 2’s $3,800 is gone, so the company ends up $3,800 worse off over three months. Truck 2 is not the problem. Its weak spot is revenue. In August it earned $2.00 a mile, while truck 1 earned $2.30. Better loads or more miles would lift it above zero. The answer there is a talk with the driver and with whoever books its loads, not a sale.

The same sheets tell you one more thing. Say all three trucks paid for themselves, and the company still did not grow. Then your shared costs may be too big for three trucks, or your rates may be too low across the board. Our guide to cost per mile helps you find the lowest rate you can take.

Keep these sheets for running the company. They are not your tax return, and they do not follow tax rules. Your accountant keeps the books for taxes, and questions about deductions go to your accountant. A few limits on what we checked, too. The method here is arithmetic, not law, and the example’s figures are made up.

If you would rather have someone keep the invoices, bills and payment records these sheets are built from, here is what that costs.