Your fleet brought in $100,000 last month. Revenue looks solid. But three of your trucks are losing money, and you have no idea which ones.

This is the problem with tracking only total revenue. It hides which assets are profitable and which are draining cash.

Profit per truck is the KPI most fleets ignore. And it's costing them thousands every month.

Why Total Revenue Thinking Fails

Let's say you run 15 trucks. Total monthly revenue: $100,000. On paper, you're doing fine.

But what if the numbers actually break down like this:

• 10 trucks generating $8,000 profit each

• 3 trucks generating $2,000 profit each

• 2 trucks losing $1,500 each

You're still profitable overall. But two trucks are actively destroying value.

Why might a truck lose money?

• Too many empty miles - deadhead eats profit fast

• Low-paying lanes - consistently running cheap freight

• Excessive fuel costs - driver behavior or poor route planning

• Maintenance issues - constant breakdowns and shop time

• Poor utilization - sitting idle more than moving

When you only look at totals, these problems stay hidden. You're averaging profitable trucks with money-losing trucks and calling it success.

What Profit Per Truck Actually Reveals

Tracking profit per truck shows you:

Which Assets Are Worth Keeping

Some trucks consistently make money. Others consistently lose it. You can't fix what you can't see.

Where Dispatching Breaks Down

If one truck runs profitable lanes while another runs unprofitable ones, that's a dispatch problem, not a market problem.

Which Drivers Perform Best

Two drivers. Same truck. Same lanes. Different profit margins. Why? Driver behavior affects fuel costs, on-time delivery, and detention charges.

When to Repair or Replace

If a truck spends half the month in the shop and barely covers its costs when running, the numbers tell you it's time to replace it.

How to Set Growth Benchmarks

Before adding truck 16, know what trucks 1-15 are actually earning. If your average profit per truck is $3,000/month, does adding another truck make sense? Or should you optimize what you already have?

This isn't just accounting. This is operations strategy.

Why Most Fleets Don't Track This

It's not that fleet owners don't care about profitability. It's that tracking profit per truck is hard without the right systems.

The Spreadsheet Problem

You could build a spreadsheet. Track revenue per load, fuel per truck, maintenance per month, driver pay, insurance allocation, and fixed costs.

Then update it manually every week. Cross-reference invoices. Pull mileage data from your ELD. Import fuel card transactions.

It's technically possible. But nobody actually does it.

Why? Because you're already busy running a trucking company.

The Disconnected Tools Problem

Maybe you have:

• A TMS for dispatch

• QuickBooks for accounting

• Fuel card reports from a third party

• Maintenance logs in another system

• ELD data in yet another place

To calculate profit per truck, you'd need to manually pull data from all five systems, reconcile it, and build the report yourself.

Again, possible. But nobody has time for that.

The Real-Time Data Problem

Even if you could pull the data together, it's outdated by the time you finish. You're making decisions based on last month's performance, not this week's reality.

By the time you realize a truck is losing money, you've already lost thousands.

What You Actually Need to Calculate Profit Per Truck

To get accurate profit per truck, you need to track:

Revenue Per Load

Base rate plus accessorials. Detention, lumper fees, fuel surcharges. Everything that goes on the invoice.

Fuel Costs Per Truck

Total fuel spend allocated to each unit. Not fleet-wide averages.

Maintenance Costs Per Truck

Scheduled maintenance, breakdowns, tire replacements. All tied to specific trucks.

Driver Pay Per Load

Mileage pay, percentage pay, detention pay. Whatever your driver settlement structure looks like.

Mileage Per Load

Loaded miles, empty miles, total miles. Cost per mile matters more than total revenue.

Fixed Costs Per Truck

Insurance, truck payments, permits. Costs that don't change whether the truck runs 1,000 miles or 10,000 miles.

Once you have all this data, you can calculate: Profit Per Truck = Revenue - (Fuel + Maintenance + Driver Pay + Fixed Costs)

Simple formula. Hard execution. Unless your system does it automatically.

How a Carrier-First TMS Handles This Automatically

Modern TMS platforms built specifically for carriers don't just track loads. They track profitability down to the truck level.

Here's how it works:

Revenue Captures Automatically

Document AI processes rate confirmations and creates loads instantly. Every accessorial charge gets captured and assigned to the right load.

Costs Attach in Real Time

Fuel card transactions sync automatically. Maintenance work orders import directly. Driver pay calculates based on load data.

Everything ties back to the truck and the load. No manual allocation.

Reports Generate on Demand

Want to see profit per truck this week? Click a button. Want to compare truck performance month-over-month? It's already calculated.

Real-time dashboards show profitability without waiting for your accountant to build a report.

You Can Filter by Anything

Want to see profit per truck, per driver, per lane, or per dispatcher? The data's already there.

This is how carriers scaling past 50 trucks stay profitable. They don't guess. They know.

Real Example: Finding the Hidden Losses

A carrier running 18 trucks started tracking profit per truck for the first time.

What they discovered:

• 12 trucks were consistently profitable ($4,000-$6,000/month each)

• 3 trucks were break-even ($500-$1,000/month)

• 3 trucks were losing money ($500-$1,500/month each)

Total monthly loss from those three trucks: $3,500.

Why were they losing money?

• Poor load selection - consistently running low-paying freight

• Low utilization - sitting idle 30% of the time

• Excessive deadhead - empty miles eating into margins

None of this was obvious when looking at total fleet revenue. It only became clear with per-truck visibility.

What They Did Next

They didn't sell the trucks. They fixed the problems:

• Reassigned dispatchers - better load selection for those specific trucks

• Changed lane assignments - moved trucks to more profitable routes

• Set fuel limits - controlled spending on fuel cards

Result: All three trucks turned profitable within two weeks.

That's $3,500/month in recovered profit. Over a year, that's $42,000. From visibility alone.

What This Means for Your Fleet

If you're not tracking profit per truck, you're flying blind.

You might have:

• Trucks that should be reassigned to different lanes

• Drivers who need coaching on fuel efficiency

• Equipment that needs to be sold before it loses more money

• Dispatchers who consistently make better decisions than others

But you won't know until you measure it.

Common Mistakes Fleets Make

Averaging Everything

Looking at fleet-wide averages hides individual truck performance. Stop averaging. Start isolating.

Tracking Too Infrequently

Monthly reports are better than nothing. Weekly reports are better. Real-time visibility is best.

By the time you see last month's numbers, you've already made this month's mistakes.

Not Acting on the Data

Visibility without action is useless. If a truck consistently loses money, do something about it.

Reassign it. Retrain the driver. Change the lanes. Or sell it.

Treating This as "Just Accounting"

Profit per truck isn't an accounting metric. It's an operations metric.

It tells you where to focus your dispatch team, which equipment to prioritize, and how to allocate resources.

The Bottom Line

In trucking, margins are tight. Every dollar matters.

You can't afford to run trucks that lose money. But you can't fix problems you don't see.

Profit per truck is the KPI that reveals what total revenue hides.

It shows you which assets are worth keeping, which drivers perform best, and where your dispatch team needs to improve.

And with the right system, you don't need to build these reports manually. They're already there, updated in real time, ready when you need them.

That's how smart carriers operate. Not on guesses. On data.

How Datatruck Makes It Easy

Ready to See Which Trucks Are Actually Profitable?

Datatruck is the carrier-first TMS that tracks profitability down to the truck level automatically. Our AI-native platform captures revenue, fuel costs, maintenance expenses, and driver pay in real time, then generates weekly profit reports showing exactly which trucks make money and which don't. See how carriers are recovering thousands in hidden losses with real-time visibility.

Book a free demo and see how Datatruck gives you instant clarity into per-truck profitability without spreadsheets or manual reports.