Small Trucking Fleet Costs: What to Track Beyond Fuel

Fuel Is the Easy Number. It Is Not the Whole Number

Fuel card statements make diesel easy to watch. In a trucking and logistics fleet, the bills that deserve equal attention often arrive through repair invoices, insurance renewals, payroll, and financing statements.

According to the American Transportation Research Institute's 2026 operational costs report, operating a truck averaged $2.336 per mile in 2025, a record and a 3.4% increase. Fuel accounted for about $0.482 per mile. Everything else totaled $1.854 per mile, up 4.2% while fuel costs remained nearly flat.

That does not mean fuel is unimportant. It means watching only diesel misses most operating spend. The same problem appears in fleet cost visibility: totals look manageable while one vehicle quietly absorbs an outsized share.

The Non-Fuel Costs Every Small Trucking Fleet Should Track

Start with the categories below and capture them by truck number, not just company total. Driver compensation also belongs in your full calculation: ATRI's 2025 averages were approximately $0.818 per mile for wages and $0.210 for benefits. If you drive your own truck, assign a realistic value to your labor instead of treating it as free.

Repair and Maintenance (It Climbs as Your Trucks Age)

ATRI recorded about $0.215 per mile, up 8.6% in 2025. Record the truck ID, odometer, service date, parts, labor, and roadside callout from each invoice. Check spending weekly and the per mile trend monthly. Older equipment may run well, but recurring repairs can turn a cheap truck into your costliest one. A complete vehicle service history lets you spot repeat failures instead of treating each invoice as unrelated.

Tires (Track Them Separately, Not Buried in Maintenance)

Tires averaged about $0.050 per mile, up 6.4%. Record each tire's purchase and installation cost, axle position, installation mileage, removal mileage, and reason for replacement. Compare miles delivered per tire and tire cost per truck mile. Early wear on one axle could point to inflation or alignment trouble, not simply a higher tire bill.

Insurance Premiums (The Quiet Climber)

Insurance averaged $0.106 per mile in 2025, about 24% above 2021. Record the annual premium, covered units, deductibles, and renewal date. Allocate premiums to each truck and divide by its miles monthly. A truck that runs fewer miles carries a larger insurance cost per mile. Review coverage and exclusions alongside price, using the fleet insurance coverage breakdown when comparing policies.

Truck and Trailer Payments

Lease or purchase payments averaged $0.404 per mile. Keep the monthly payment, truck or trailer ID, term, and miles together. A $2,400 monthly payment costs $0.30 per mile at 8,000 miles but $0.60 at 4,000 miles. Review that gap monthly before assuming a truck is earning enough simply because it has loads booked.

Tolls, Permits, and Licensing

Tolls averaged $0.043 per mile and climbed 13.2% in 2025. Log each toll by truck, trip, and lane; compare toll costs against revenue for that lane weekly. Allocate annual permits, registrations, and licenses by truck and review renewals yearly. ATRI identifies permits and licenses as a small cost category, but they still belong in the ledger.

Here is a compact starting benchmark. The dollar figures are 2025 industry averages from ATRI, not targets that every small fleet should match.

The Costs That Never Make It Onto a Small Fleet's Spreadsheet

Some of your most expensive problems will not appear as neat expense categories. Capture these events alongside invoices:

• Detention and dwell time beyond the agreed free window.
• Deadhead miles driven without a paying load.
• Delayed maintenance that later creates a bigger repair and lost operating time.
• Office hours spent collecting receipts, invoices, and inspection records.

Detention deserves its own log: truck, customer, arrival, appointment, release time, free hours, and amount billed or collected. ATRI's 2024 detention research estimated $15.1 billion in lost productivity and direct expenses across for hire trucking in 2023.

For a simple planning example, 20 trucks losing just one unbilled hour each week represent 1,040 hours per year. At an illustrative $50 of lost capacity per hour, that is $52,000 in annual exposure. Even when you bill detention, check whether you actually collect it.

ATRI's older 2019 detention findings reported an average $63.71 hourly charge against a then estimated $66.65 hourly operating cost. These are historical figures, not current rates, but they show why billing a delay does not always recover its cost.

Deadhead also needs a number. Divide empty miles by total miles for each truck and route. A truck can show plenty of movement while earning little on the return leg. Track paid miles, empty miles, revenue per trip, and reasons the truck repositioned.

Deferred maintenance compounds the problem. Record overdue service days and miles, plus any resulting repair and downtime. The cost of delaying basic maintenance shows why the original service invoice is rarely the full price of postponing work.

Administrative labor is less visible but still real. Ask whoever handles paperwork to record time spent chasing fuel receipts, inspections, repair invoices, and billing disputes for two weeks. Treat it as an operating cost, even if the owner does the work.

Then apply a consistent definition of what counts as a fleet expense so these hours do not fall outside the monthly review.

Turn These Costs Into a Cost Per Mile You Can Actually Use

You do not need an elaborate accounting model to get a useful comparison. Run this workflow separately for every truck each month:

For example, a truck with $12,000 in nonfuel operating expenses over 8,000 miles costs $1.50 per mile before fuel. If another truck costs $1.85, inspect its repair history, utilization, and insurance allocation before treating both trucks the same. For a deeper approach to tracking fleet costs without guesswork, keep the underlying records consistent month to month.

What to Review Daily, Weekly, and Monthly

Use a short, repeatable schedule so small issues do not wait until the quarter ends.

1. Daily: Log fuel exceptions, breakdowns, arrival and release times, and detention claims while details are fresh.
2. Weekly: Review repair spend, open work orders, tire exceptions, unbilled detention, and empty miles by truck or lane.
3. Monthly: Calculate total and nonfuel cost per mile by truck. Review insurance and equipment payment allocations, repeat repairs, and candidates for replacement or reassignment.

Keep the review focused on decisions: which truck is rising in cost, why, and who will act? A consistent fleet cost review process is more useful than a large report nobody checks.

Where Spreadsheets Stop Working for a Growing Trucking Fleet

A spreadsheet may work for three trucks while one person enters everything. As the operation grows, fuel receipts, maintenance records, inspections, invoices, and mileage often live in different files. You can still add the totals, but connecting a charge to a particular truck and seeing a pattern takes longer.

AUTOsist can bring preventive maintenance schedules, service history, work orders, fuel records, and reporting into one vehicle record. A fleet reporting dashboard helps you examine cost trends without rebuilding the same spreadsheet every month. Start with accurate entries and unit IDs; no tool fixes missing receipts or unrecorded downtime automatically.