How-to guides
How to price a load with the profit calculator
Who this is for: dispatchers and owners.
The calculator answers one question: after everything this load actually costs, what is left? It runs on a load opportunity, on an existing load, or standalone from Profit Calculator when you just want to check a number a broker read you over the phone.
What it needs
| Input | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Linehaul rate | The opportunity, or typed in |
| Loaded miles | The opportunity, or Calculate miles from city/state |
| Deadhead miles to pickup | Entered, or estimated from your driver's last known position |
| Return deadhead miles | Entered — the empty miles to get back to freight |
| Fuel $/gal and MPG | Your settings, or the assigned truck's own figures |
| Driver pay | The assigned driver's method and rate, or your defaults |
| Maintenance $/mile | The truck's figure, or your fleet default |
| Fixed monthly costs | Your settings, amortized over the days this load ties the truck up |
| Factoring % | Your settings |
| Tolls, lumper, other | Entered per load |
If a truck and driver are assigned, their real numbers are used instead of the fleet defaults, and the result tells you whose costs it used. The same rate can be a good load for one truck and a bad one for another.
What it gives back
- Total miles — loaded plus all empty miles, both directions.
- Rate per loaded mile and rate per total mile. The gap between these two is the single most useful number on the screen.
- Total cost, broken out by category.
- Estimated net profit and margin %.
- A recommendation — strong, acceptable, weak, or reject — scored against the margin thresholds in your settings.
- Watchouts: plain-language findings, ordered by how much they matter.
- A suggested counter-offer rate.
Reading the watchouts
These are the point of the tool. What they sound like:
Pays $2.85 a loaded mile, but $2.11 once you count the 165 empty miles to pick it up and 240 to get back out.
You come out of there empty — 240 miles back to freight, against 480 paid.
Ties the truck up 3 days, which carries $415 of fixed overhead — 22% of the rate.
Required average speed exceeds 50 mph, so the pickup and delivery times may not be feasible.
You would finish this load $180 down.
Severity matters. Timing problems that make a load physically infeasible are flagged above money problems, because an infeasible load is not a negotiation.
Where a number was estimated rather than entered — a deadhead inferred from your driver's last check-in, for instance — the watchout says so and names the source, so you can judge how much to trust a figure that might be driving a rejection.
The last watchout usually names the single biggest cost on the load, so you know where the money went.
Tuning what "good" means
Settings → Operations:
- Strong margin % (default 30) — green.
- Acceptable margin % (default 20) — yellow.
- Weak margin % (default 10) — below this, red.
- Target $/total mile — your line in the sand, measured on total miles.
Set these to your business, not to industry averages. They decide the recommendation on every load you screen.
An operational estimate, not a guarantee
These are estimates from the numbers you supplied. Fuel prices move, weather happens, and a shipper can hold your driver four hours. The calculator flags operational concerns; it does not certify HOS, DOT, FMCSA, insurance, or legal compliance, and it never makes the decision for you.
Related
Still stuck?
Email support@dynamanic.io with your company name, what you did, what happened — quoting any message on screen — and when, with your timezone.