Most transport owners can tell you their monthly revenue to the nearest thousand. Far fewer can tell you which of last month's trips made money and which lost it. Profit is usually worked out once a month, or once a year, from the bank balance. By then, the loss-making routes and habits have already repeated dozens of times.
Trip-level profitability changes that. This article shows how to calculate profit per trip, walks through a real example, and explains how to capture the numbers without the driver or the office drowning in paperwork.
Why monthly profit hides the problem
A fleet of ten trucks can show a healthy monthly profit while three trucks quietly lose money on every trip. The good trips subsidise the bad ones, and nobody notices because the totals look fine.
The usual culprits are:
- Empty return legs, where the truck comes back without a load
- Diesel variance, where actual consumption is well above the vehicle's normal mileage
- Waiting time at loading and unloading points that eats into driver days
- Unrecorded cash expenses on the road, such as tolls paid in cash, police challans and repairs
- Freight rates that were agreed months ago and never revised when diesel prices moved
None of these shows up in a monthly total. All of them show up in a trip-wise view.
What counts as a trip cost
Separate your costs into two groups.
| Cost type | Examples | How to record it |
|---|---|---|
| Direct trip costs | Diesel, tolls, driver bata, loading and unloading charges, route expenses | Actual amount, per trip |
| Running costs | Tyres, servicing, repairs | A fixed rate per km, based on last year's spend |
| Fixed costs | Vehicle EMI, insurance, permits, driver salary | A fixed amount per day the vehicle is on the road |
Direct costs are recorded as they happen. Running and fixed costs are allocated with a simple rate, so every trip carries its fair share. Without the allocation, a trip can look profitable when it is not even covering the EMI.
A worked example
A truck makes a round trip from Coimbatore to Chennai and back, about 1,000 km over three days. It carries a load to Chennai and finds a return load back.
| Item | Calculation | Amount (₹) |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ||
| Outbound freight | 32,000 | |
| Return load freight | 18,000 | |
| Total revenue | 50,000 | |
| Costs | ||
| Diesel | 1,000 km ÷ 4 km/litre × ₹93 | 23,250 |
| Tolls | Both directions | 4,200 |
| Driver bata | ₹1,500 × 3 days | 4,500 |
| Loading, unloading and route expenses | 1,800 | |
| Tyres and maintenance | ₹3 per km × 1,000 km | 3,000 |
| EMI, insurance and permits | ₹1,500 per day × 3 days | 4,500 |
| Total cost | 41,250 | |
| Trip profit | 8,750 |
That is a profit of ₹8.75 per km. Now look at the same trip without the return load:
- Revenue falls to ₹32,000
- Costs stay at ₹41,250 (the truck still has to come back)
- The trip loses ₹9,250
One return load is the difference between making ₹8,750 and losing ₹9,250 on the same route. This is why trip-wise tracking matters: it tells you, in rupees, how much a return load is worth and how much you can afford to discount to get one.
Use your own diesel rate, mileage and cost figures. The method is what matters.
Capturing the numbers without paperwork
The biggest obstacle to trip costing is not the calculation. It is getting the numbers from the road to the office. What works:
- Open a trip before the truck leaves, with vehicle, driver, route, customer and agreed freight.
- Give the driver a fixed advance against the trip, and have him record each expense with a photo of the bill from his phone.
- Record diesel fills against the trip, with litres and odometer reading, so mileage is calculated automatically.
- Close the trip when the truck returns: settle the driver's advance, and record freight received or due.
- Review every closed trip within 48 hours, while the driver still remembers why a cost was unusual.
Checklist for each trip
- Trip opened with vehicle, driver, route and agreed freight
- Starting odometer reading recorded
- Driver advance recorded
- Every diesel fill recorded, with litres and odometer
- Toll, loading and route expenses recorded with bill photos
- Return load (or empty return) recorded
- Closing odometer recorded and mileage checked against the vehicle's normal figure
- Driver advance settled
- Freight invoice raised and payment due date noted
- Trip profit reviewed, with any loss explained
What to review every month
Once trips are recorded this way, a monthly review takes an hour, not a day:
- Profit per km by route: which routes make money and which do not?
- Profit per km by vehicle: is one truck consistently worse? Check its mileage and repair history.
- Empty running percentage: what share of kilometres ran without a load?
- Diesel variance by driver: who is consistently above the vehicle's normal consumption?
- Outstanding freight: which customers are paying late, and how much is overdue?
Each of these leads to a decision: revise a rate, drop a route, service a vehicle, talk to a driver, or follow up a customer.
Where a tool helps
A spreadsheet can do the calculation, but it cannot collect bills from a driver on the highway. TFleet was built with trip-level profitability at the centre: load booking, trips with freight and expenses recorded against them, own and hired vehicles, driver records, billing and outstanding tracking, so profit per trip is visible without monthly consolidation.
